The challenge for Keane is shape-shifting despotism. Every despot is different, from foghorn extremes to subtle local variants. Keane includes a wide array of countries in the category, from Turkey and Iran to Brunei and Singapore, with particular attention paid to China and Russia. He argues that despotism is not an old style of government revived but a ‘form of extractive power with no historical precedent’.

There is no single definition offered for this protean concept. Instead, Keane builds, chapter by chapter, a set of despotism’s characteristics, exploring each angle in detail, complete with local terms and topical jokes to show how general trends play out in specific regimes.

Despotism, argues Keane, makes a virtue of avoiding the divisions and conflict of democracy. Despots emphasise national character, the unity possible under a single ruler. They offer ultra-modern states, keen to be seen as more efficient than democracies, more responsive to popular opinion. Rulers present themselves as voices of the people, ruling in their name.

Behind this façade is the apparatus of surveillance, tight control of social media, and the ability to make critics disappear. Despots use public-opinion surveys to understand popular moods, and tame media to lead public discussion. Violence is always the implicit threat, but the aim is stability. What despots want, above all, is voluntary servitude. This many achieve, ruling through seduction rather than terror. Across the globe, Keane reports the willingness of citizens to surrender political involvement for a quiet life. A clever despot ‘lures subjects into subjection’ so eventually ‘the slave licences the master’.

In particular, argues Keane, the middle class proves fickle about democratic principles. It can be bought with good services, cash payments, and being left alone. Older political theory expected a prosperous middle class to demand representation. Yet any assumed link between a bourgeoisie, capitalism, and democracy is daily disproved around the world.

Early in The New Despotism, Keane suggests that he might follow the example of Machiavelli’s The Prince and describe the inner dynamics of power outsider democracy. This proves hard to deliver, since despotic regimes are rarely open or accessible to independent research. So there is less Machiavelli than Montesquieu or Tocqueville, intelligent observers trying to make sense of the gap between form and substance in every despotic state.

Despots embrace many of the outward symbols of accountable and legitimate democracy. They use elections to test the public mood and identify potential opponents. Such contests are rarely free or fair. Despots proclaim the rule of law, yet everyone understands that courts can be manipulated by corruption or by the state using the law to close down its enemies. Despots promote social media to ensure lively public discussions yet just out of sight wait the censors, those cyber units that influence opinion, release disinformation, discredit other voices, and silence unwanted conversations. There are armies of Winston Smiths from 1984, trained to create a simulacrum of free speech.

Hence the claim of novelty. These new despots are not dinosaur authoritarian regimes, the lumbering dictatorships of North Korea or Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. They are instead flexible regimes led by ‘learning despots’, determined to develop long-term regimes, using ‘whip-smart ruling methods.’ Despots point to failed democratic states to say there is no obvious alternative. Should neighbouring democracies prove robust, they can be disrupted by the same cyber units developed for domestic control.

The New Despotism is important because it brings an acute understanding of democracy to focus on its potential fate. The first chapter in particular is a tour de force about the overly optimistic reading of the future after 1989, when democracy briefly became the dominant form of government around the world, only to slide away in many states.

Keane argues that this was not just an unsuccessful transition to democracy. It was instead a reaction to the perceived failure of democracy, the inefficiencies associated with party competition, the cynicism of people who see around them high levels of inequality, poor leadership, the hollowing of social life, dark money in elections, cuts to public services and repressive responses to terrorism. At some point, the promise of strong government and order through despotism becomes attractive.

And so a book on despotism completes its circuit, starting and finishing with democracy. If nations committed to popular rule do not address internal deficiencies, they risk populism and illiberal movements. Despotism is not the opposite of democracy, but a parasite that resides within, waiting for its opportunity.

Will Keane succeed in reviving the concept of despotism? Though boundaries blur and a single definition remains elusive, he makes a strong case in The New Despotism for the urgent need to understand this global trend. Keane offers not just a lively argument with numerous examples, and a rich assembly of sources through detailed endnotes, but also a writing style that commands attention. Democracy faces ‘desolation row’ but is marked by ‘braided tempos and multiple rhythms’. The patron–client relations that run through despotic societies mean that ‘every soul is implicated in nested circles of soiled solidarity’.

The analysis embraces a poetics of power, offering cumulatively a description as dark as Machiavelli on principalities. Here is no historical portrait but our times made stark. Democracy may once again become rare in a world dominated by despotic empires with no commitment to the rule of law. As John Keane, scholar of democracy, asks in his final sentence: is despotism our future? It is a disturbing but pressing question from a major new study.