This is a book review by Karl-Friedrich Israel of “Public Debt: An Illusion of Democratic Political Economy” written by Professors Giuseppe Eusepi of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and Richard E. Wagner of George Mason University. The authors added another book to the already extensive list of literature on the political economy of public debt. The purpose of their book is to correct two major flaws in the existing literature. First, they argue that it is “pure illusion to treat a democratic regime as being indebted.” Second, they try to show that it is “pure mythology to treat so-called fiscal policy as the means by which governments manipulate public debt to promote systemic stability”. […]