The Rise and Decline of Modern Democracy assesses the rise of, subsequent political challenges to, and decline of, contemporary liberal democratic processes, in particular since the -third wave- of democratization from the 1990s.
Democracy is in global decline. Fewer countries are democratic and fewer people, globally, live in substantive democracies. Autocracy is now the dominant political form and the future looks, at best, challenging for the retention of such democracies that remain. As they did a century ago, nationalism and populism have again reared their ugly heads, and more people are claiming that democracy no longer addresses their most compelling needs or interests. This book examines what democracy is and the circumstances that allowed - even encouraged - it to arise. Democracy has been a product of a need to find a political model that mediates between competing interests, building on conducive conditions. However, there have since been fundamental chang
