Democracy and Empire theorizes the material basis of popular sovereignty via the Black radical tradition. Popular sovereignty contains an affective attachment to wealth, secured through collective agreements to dominate others, i.e., self-and-other-determination. Inés Valdez expands on racial capitalism by theorizing its Anglo-European-based popular politics, which authorize capital accumulation enabled by empire and legitimated by racial ideologies. This stunts political projects in the Global South. Valdez masterfully outlines how social reproduction is provided by racialized others who sacrifice families and communities, and how the political alienation from nature in wealthy polities is mediated by technology and enabled by a joint devaluation of nature and manual labor performed by racialized others. The book concludes with a theorization of anti-imperial popular sovereignty based on political relations that encompass nature. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Honorable Mention, 2024 Sussex International Theory Prize for Best Book, University of Sussex

Winner, 2025 T.V. Paul Best Book in Global International Relations Award, International Studies Association

‘Inés Valdez’s Democracy and Empire is an ambitious and highly original account of the interconnections between imperialism, racism, environmental devastation, and popular sovereignty. Drawing insightfully on the black radical tradition, she offers a powerful challenge to celebratory accounts of democratic politics in the Euro-American world. Spanning political theory, global history, and political economy, this is an important contribution to scholarship on racial capitalism and democracy.’

Duncan Bell - Professor of Political Thought and International Relations, University of Cambridge

‘For decades, political theories of democracy and of empire alike looked past questions of exploitation and expropriation. They will be hard pressed to do so after Valdez’s Democracy and Empire. The book is a tour de force that compels us to think together popular sovereignty, racial capitalism, immigration, and ecology in a unified analytic field. Valdez ingeniously argues that the democratic self-determination of white polities have historically depended on their despotic determination of the status, value, and economic function of workers on the other side of the color line. Infusing meticulous research in imperial archives with theoretical animus drawn from the Black radical tradition, Valdez reconstructs the political projects of ordering lives and ecologies across the planet into a racialized division of labor and extractivism. An exemplary work of theoretical and methodological syncretism, the book should be an essential reading for students and scholars of democracy, capitalism, racism, and empire.’

Onur Ulas Ince - SOAS, University of London

‘Democracy and Empire deftly probes the intimate ties between modern democratic politics and imperial and racial domination. Inés Valdez makes a powerful case that freedom and flourishing in the Global North have long relied on control of the labor, land, and natural resources of racialized others. Especially valuable are the book’s analyses of the imperial roots of border and migration policies, often considered a core democratic prerogative, and the ecological toll of privileged citizens’ attachment to popular sovereignty as we know it. An original and vital contribution to democratic theory and the political theory of empire.’

Jennifer Pitts - Professor of Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

‘Democracy and Empire is a brilliant work of scholarship and an important intervention in the growing literature on both racial capitalism in the study of settler states and the centrality of the evolving notion of popular sovereignty in establishing imperial forms of rule. This book is required reading for graduates student and scholars pursing research in this area.’

Raymond Rocco - Professor Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles

‘… offers a groundbreaking re-conceptualization of racial capitalism by revealing how popular sovereignty intertwines domestic hierarchies with global systems of exploitation. As such, this work provides an important framework for anyone interested in the mechanisms of power and exploitation in today’s world.’

Andrew S. Rosenberg Source: The Journal of Development Studies