Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking Up the United States - Paperback

by Christopher F. Zurn (Author)

Splitsville USA argues that it's time for us to break up to save representative democracy, proposing a mutually negotiated, peaceful dissolution of the current United States into several new nations.

Zurn begins by examining the United States' democratic predicament, a road most likely headed for electoral authoritarianism, with distinct possibilities of ungovernability and violent civil strife. Unlike others who share this diagnosis, Zurn presents a realistic picture of how we can get to reform and what it would involve. It is argued that "Splitsville" represents the most plausible way for American citizens to continue living under a republican form of government. Despite recent talk of secession and civil war, this book offers the most extensive treatment yet of the issues we need to think through to enable a peacefully negotiated political divorce.

Splitsville USA is a provocative conversation opener about the problems that have gotten us into our current political pickle and how to get out of it by seizing the reins of our own constitutional destiny. The book will appeal to readers of political science, American politics, history, political philosophy and law, along with all general readers interested in the future of democracy in the United States.

Author Biography

Christopher F. Zurn is Professor of Philosophy at UMass Boston, USA, specializing in social and political philosophy. Along with journal articles and book chapters, he has published two monographs: Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review (2007) and Axel Honneth: A Critical Theory of the Social (2015). He has also co-edited two essay collections: New Waves in Political Philosophy (2009) with Boudewijn de Bruin, and Anerkennung (2009, in German) / The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (2010, in English) with Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch.