In Demagogues in American Politics, Charles Zug makes an original and striking argument about a traditionally reviled form of political leadership and rhetoric. He contends that demagoguery, although subject to excess and abuse, is not inherently bad. In fact, it can be a legitimate mode of provocative communication, bringing attention and urgency to neglected causes, social interests, and a political community’s highest “substantive goals and aspirations” (p. 3).

The book’s nine chapters are arranged into two major parts. The first part develops Zug’s philosophical and historical account. After an introduction and overview (chapter 1), chapters 2–5 trace the evolving form and meaning of demagogues from “Greco-Roman antiquity” (p. 18) to modern political regimes, including the American republic. In the second major part, Zug applies and develops his theory alongside a series of absorbing case studies involving demagogues on the Supreme Court (chapter 6), in Congress (chapter 7), and in the presidency (chapter 8). The concluding chapter serves as a brief coda.

In the early chapters, Zug associates demagogues with “appeals to the passions and prejudices of one’s audience” (p. 2) and with orators whose power is tethered to identifying an authoritative people “whose unified will constitutes the common good, and whose collective judgments about all aspects of policy therefore cannot be scrutinized” (p. 3). From this point of departure, the author explores how the meaning of (and danger posed by) demagoguery varies along several dimensions, especially (1) political regimes (namely, classical polities and modern constitutional republics) and (2) particular governing institutions within these regimes. Across these contexts, Zug considers the ways in which demagoguery can assume good and bad forms.

Classical regimes, seeking to cultivate the moral excellence of leaders and citizens, view demagogues as figures of bad character who betray the common good and degrade the virtue of the populace. In comparison, modern regimes do not eliminate demagogues or fret about their personal ethics. Instead, we incentivize these figures to behave in ways that redound to our advantage, in part by placing them in institutions that promote accountability to other officials and the public. Thus, when “routine negotiation and deliberation” (p. 7) break down, the rhetoric and tactics associated with demagogues can advance the public interest and common good by galvanizing leaders and the public alike and otherwise fostering deliberation and other republican goals.

Zug concedes that there is some tension in both identifying demagogues as disruptive figures who appeal “to non-rational sources of public motivation” (p. 68) and seeing them as compatible with the hallmarks of modern constitutionalism such as securing domestic tranquility. Our leaders’ successful navigation of this opposition is critical in evaluating whether demagogic figures can be considered good or bad demagogues. Because exchanging ideas and “reason-giving is…fundamental in a community of free and equal human beings” (p. 61) good demagogues must ultimately persuade others through their rhetoric, however heated, and offer “an adequate argument for why the Constitution’s own structure and principles require” (p. 86) departures from traditional forms of communication. In contrast, bad demagogues rely on emotion and provocation to distract us from flaws in their underlying reasoning.

Zug insists that a modern demagogue, good or bad, must be an actual government official with “formal political power at his or her disposal” (p. 9). This is, in part, because today’s political orders have shifted “the burden of speaking publicly in politically suitable ways from the general public to officers of the state” (p. 4). In addition, focusing on constitutional officials gives us standards for judging demagogues. The US Constitution’s structure, formal powers, and general aspirations give us “implicit criteria for evaluating the public speech” (p. 15) of these leaders. For example, federal judges should be more constrained by institutional speech norms than members of Congress and should refrain from using their rhetoric for overtly partisan reasons or “to gauge public opinion or to sway it in their favor” (p. 78).

The inventive case studies that make up the second part of Zug’s book examine a variety of historical demagogues who have occupied each of the major branches of national government. He compares seemingly unlikely figures like Samuel Chase and Antonin Scalia, or Franklin Roosevelt and Donald Trump. These cases flesh out our understanding of good and bad demagogues and the ways in which their institutional responsibilities and historic challenges inflect their rhetorical choices. For example, he argues that Rep. Adam Clayton Powell’s “insults, exaggerations, and deliberate provocations” (p. 121) in the House were mostly justified tactics to move a resistant and “oftentimes hostile white audience” (p. 124) to recognize the realities of entrenched racial discrimination.

This book is undoubtedly one of the most sophisticated and nuanced treatments of demagoguery available. Zug’s theoretical framework helps us delineate the features and preconditions of good and bad demagogues and compels us to take seriously leaders’ institutional obligations—how “different jobs require different kinds of speech” (p. 10). His thesis is both hard to refute and urgent: demagoguery is not an oddity or a perversion of American politics but an endemic feature of our republic and one that can potentially invigorate our national discourse and constitutional politics. He treats his subjects with a welcome generosity, concluding, for example, that U.S. Senator Huey Long’s critique of American politics possesses an “underappreciated sophistication” (p. 143).

At the same time, in calling itself Demagogues in American Politics this book promises somewhat more than it delivers. Zug focuses on officeholders at the federal level, yet the universe of American demagogues stretches much wider. We might identify Father Coughlin or Charles Lindbergh as important demagogues and, in more recent years, figures like Alex Jones. Of course, Zug might respond that constitutional officers have unique responsibilities to guide our national conversations—generating rhetoric we can judge through standards arising from their official duties. But if that is the case, why spend an entire chapter considering the status of Daniel Shays, who was not even a soldier at the time of the insurrection that bears his name? Moreover, many state officials take oaths to support the Constitution, an obligation that arguably makes them suitable for inclusion in this project. Zug may have practical or theoretical reasons for not considering these different figures, but he should make the case directly, especially given our fear that in an era of negative partisanship and populism, demagoguery is likely coursing through the republic.

Some readers may also leave this book with lingering questions about what are the core elements of demagoguery. We have a good sense of how the classical and modern conceptions differ and how good demagogues diverge from those who rely “on hope and emotion at the expense of coherent argument” (p. 155). But at different points in the book, the author associates demagoguery with “hyperbole,” “norm-breaking,” and rhetoric that is “personalistic” or “provocative and divisive” (p. 109). Are these all equally constitutive of demagoguery? Do demagogues generally flatter the “unreflective prejudices and desires of the people” (p. 67), or is that only a byproduct of bad leadership? At several points, Zug indicates that demagogues defend their rhetoric as a response to political crises, but can good demagoguery be used for more routine constitutional maintenance?

Again, Zug’s interest in exploring the “range of meanings that demagoguery can have” (p. 77) is part of what makes the book so analytically powerful. But this definitional openness raises the question of what unifies the concept across its different manifestations and substantive tensions. There seems to be some irreducible competition, for example, between the imperative that a good demagogue must provide reasonable claims with “empirical evidence and argumentative rigor” (p. 163) and our understanding that part of what distinguishes demagogic power is its capacity for invective, divisiveness, and emotion. Without a more vivid account of what demagoguery is, one wonders whether good demagogues are, to some degree, anti-demagogic.