Comic Democracies

“Invites its readers to note the leaders and people who are willing and able to laugh, with and at themselves . . . Our political life may depend upon it.” — The Review of Politics For two thousand years, democratic authors treated comedy as a toolkit of rhetorical practices for encouraging problem-solving, pluralism, risk-taking, and other civic behaviors that increased minority participation in government. Over the past two centuries, this pragmatic approach to extending the franchis