Introduction to a Collection of Reviews and Commentaries on Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains

It is an understatement to say that Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains generated a wave of controversy when it was published in June 2017. Indeed, no other recent book has generated such immense interest among scholars of neoliberalism and historians of economic thought. The book portrays the work of James Buchanan, winner of the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, as the skeleton key to unlocking, in the words of the book’s subtitle, “The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For” undermining American democratic institutions. In particular, the book argues that Charles Koch, multibillionaire businessman and philanthropist, supporter, especially, of libertarian causes and the Republican Party, discovered and funded the implementation of Buchanan’s anti-democratic strategy. This plan came to final and successful fruition, according to MacLean’s narrative, with the election, against the wishes of the majority of Americans, of Donald Trump in 2016. MacLean’s book was published by a trade press, rather than an academic publisher, and a number of critics immediately denounced her analysis because it had not been subjected to peer review. This makes MacLean’s book all the more remarkable because it has enjoyed immense success with readers in and out of academia. Indeed, the book was nominated for the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction.