About the author
American political theorist (b. 1964), professor at the University of Notre Dame. Following the influence of Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen became a central intellectual of the post-liberal and 'common good' right; Regime Change is his more programmatic and combative statement of where that politics should lead.
Synopsis
Deneen argues that liberalism has hardened into the ideology of a self-serving managerial elite, and that the remedy is to peacefully replace that elite's rule with a politics of the common good. Drawing on the 'mixed constitution' tradition and on integralist and post-liberal currents, he proposes an 'aristopopulism' uniting popular discontent with a reformed governing class committed to family, faith, nation, and the dignity of labour, using state power to those ends.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workDeneen argues that liberalism has become the creed of a detached ruling elite, and calls for a peaceful 'regime change' that replaces it with a leadership devoted to the common good and the interests of ordinary people.
Where Why Liberalism Failed diagnosed, Regime Change prescribes: a transfer of power from the liberal managerial class to a common-good elite. The program crystallizes the post-liberal right's turn from critique to the active pursuit of governing power.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with liberals who see Deneen's 'regime change' as authoritarian or anti-pluralist, with conservatives who defend the liberal-constitutional order, and with critics who question who would wield the strong state his common-good politics requires, and to what end.
Reading note
Read it as the programmatic sequel to Why Liberalism Failed and a key text of the contemporary post-liberal right, alongside Vermeule and Hazony, and against its liberal and conservative critics.
Best paired with
Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed; Adrian Vermeule, Common Good Constitutionalism.