In this short accessible book, leading democratic theorist Jason Brennan guides listeners through the evolution of the concept of democracy and actual democratic practice over time to help them understand the foundations of this longstanding and yet newly fragile political system.

In his wide-ranging tour of the concept, Brennan will examine what democracy meant to the Greeks who first developed the concept before examining how it changed throughout European and later Western history. This will open up rich and perplexing questions. Over time, democracy shifted from being a fringe idea to the gold standard of political institutions: how did this change occur? How did the question of who counts as part of the ruling "people" change over time? As monarchies were replaced with democracies, what did theorists think the promises and perils of republican democracy were? How did actual democratic practice change the debates? What have we learned about how democracy functions—and in some cases, doesn't function—and what does this mean for future philosophical or empirical work? Brennan provides a curated guided tour of the most important arguments for and against democracy, looking through the core values of stability, virtue, wisdom, freedom, and equality. The goal is to help listeners understand what is really at stake in democracy and its alternatives.