"A provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for our democracy and international affairs of state. In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay as the United States was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people,' who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. The demands of identity fuel much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is founded has been increasingly challenged by restrictive forms of recognition and resentment based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious environment of many college campuses, and the hideous emergence of white nationalism. The struggle for recognition cannot be transcended--but we must begin to direct it in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. [This] is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict."--Dust jacket.