The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future

What if the state as we know it didn't exist? Our air would be poisonous, our votes uncounted, and our markets dysfunctional. Yet across the world, in countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S., attacks on the modern state and its workforce are intensifying. They are morphing into power grabs by self-aggrandizing politicians who attempt to seize control of the state for themselves and their cronies. What replaces the modern state once it is fatally undermined is not the free market and the flowering of personal liberty. Instead, the death of government agencies organized under the rule of law inevitably leads to the only realistic alternative: the rule of men.

In the Assault on the State, political scientists Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein offer an impassioned plea to defend modern government against those who seek to destroy it. They dissect the attack on the machinery of government from its origins in post-Soviet Russia to the core powers of Western democracy. The dangers of state erosion imperil every aspect of our lives. Kopstein and Hanson outline a strategy that can reverse this destructive trend before humanity is plunged back into the pathological personalistic politics of premodern times.

如果我們所知的國家不存在會怎樣呢？我們的空氣將會變得有毒，我們的選票將不被計算，我們的市場將失去功能。然而，在世界各地，包括匈牙利、以色列、英國和美國等多樣的國家，對現代國家及其工作人員的攻擊正在加劇。這些攻擊正在演變成自我膨脹的政治家試圖為自己和他們的黨羽奪取國家控制權的行為。一旦現代國家被嚴重削弱，取而代之的不是自由市場和個人自由的繁榮。相反，政府機構在法治下的死亡不可避免地導致唯一現實的替代方案：人治。

在《對國家的攻擊》一書中，政治學家史蒂芬·漢森（Stephen Hanson）和傑弗里·科普斯坦（Jeffrey Kopstein）激情洋溢地呼籲捍衛現代政府，抵抗那些試圖摧毀它的人。他們從後蘇聯俄羅斯的起源到西方民主核心權力，剖析了對政府機構的攻擊。國家侵蝕的危險威脅著我們生活的方方面面。科普斯坦和漢森概述了一種可以扭轉這種破壞性趨勢的策略，以免人類再次陷入前現代時期病態的個人主義政治。

Stephen E. Hanson is the Lettie Pate Evans Professor of Government at William & Mary. He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles on Russian, postcommunist, and European politics in comparative perspective. In addition to faculty appointments at Harvard University and Yale University, he has served in many leadership positions, including as Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington, Vice Provost for International Affairs at William & Mary, and President of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Jeffrey Kopstein is Dean's Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He has written widely on democracy and dictatorship, political violence, and comparative politics. He has held faculty appointments at University of Toronto and Dartmouth College, as well as fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition to his award-winning books and articles, his popular writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the Globe and Mail.

Stephen E. Hanson是威廉和瑪麗學院政府學教授，擔任Lettie Pate Evans教授職位。他是許多關於俄羅斯、後共產主義和歐洲政治的學術書籍和文章的作者，並以比較的角度進行研究。除了在哈佛大學和耶魯大學擔任教職外，他還擔任過許多領導職位，包括華盛頓大學的Ellison俄羅斯、東歐和中亞研究中心主任，威廉和瑪麗學院的國際事務副校長，以及斯拉夫、東歐和歐亞研究協會的主席。

Jeffrey Kopstein是加州大學爾灣分校政治學院院長教授。他廣泛研究民主與獨裁、政治暴力和比較政治。他曾在多倫多大學和達特茅斯學院擔任教職，並在哈佛大學、普林斯頓大學和耶路撒冷希伯來大學擔任研究員。除了他屢獲殊榮的書籍和文章外，他的通俗寫作還刊登在《華盛頓郵報》、《大西洋月刊》和《環球郵報》等媒體上。