Everyone likes to say democracy is dying. This started, in its last iteration, after 2016. I have been provoked to write about this by something Owen Jones has just written. But let me make a list to show you how an exciting literature emerged:
- In 2017 Paul Mason wrote in the Guardian that “democracy is dying”
- Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future (Viking, 2018)
- Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk, now at Johns Hopkins, published The People versus Democracy (Harvard, 2018)
- Cambridge professor David Runciman, who was critical of Levitsky and Ziblatt, published How Democracy Ends (Profile, 2018)
- Chicago Professors Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq published How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (Chicago, 2020)
- Anne Applebaum published Twilight of Democracy (Allen Lane, 2020)
- Amazon reveals that there are other books such as How Social Movements Can Save Democracy by sociologist Donatella della Porta (Polity, 2020), How Democracies Live by Stein Ringen (Chicago, 2022), Can Schools Save Democracy by Michael Feuer (Johns Hopkins, 2023), How to Save Democracy: Advice and Inspiration from 95 World Leaders edited by Eli Merritt (Amplify, 2023), Common Sense to Save Democracy by a lawyer Steve Kramer (Palmetto, 2024)
- Anne Applebaum goes for it again with Autocracy Inc (Allen Lane, 2024)
It’s all about ‘rising authoritarianism’, ‘populism’ and the ‘erosion of norms’. Runciman offers the subtlest analysis, suggesting that democracy promises two things: dignity (since we are adequately represented, feel we have a say etc.) and results (policies that solve actual problems); and he suggested that these are falling apart. Democracy only seems to be able to do one if it ignores the other. For instance, it solves problems (COVID-19) if it ignores the voice of the people.
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