"Is Democracy Dying?", vv.aa.

The United States has turned out to be less exceptional than many thought. Clearly, it can happen here; the question now is whether it will. To find an answer, the articles in this issue’s lead package zoom out, putting the country’s current troubles into historical and international perspective. 

Some say that global democracy is experiencing its worst setback since the 1930s and that it will continue to retreat unless rich countries find ways to reduce inequality and manage the information revolution. Those are the optimists. Pessimists fear the game is already over, that democratic dominance has ended for good.

To counsel against despair, Walter Russell Mead uses history, and Ronald Inglehart uses theory. Democracies in general, and American democracy in particular, have proved remarkably resilient over time. They have faced great challenges, but they have also found ways of rising to those challenges and renewing themselves. There is no reason they can’t do so once again—if they can somehow get their act together.

Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa offer a bleaker view. The collective economic might of authoritarian powers now outweighs that of advanced liberal democracies, they point out, and it is probable that the future will look less like the end of history than a renewed struggle for global ideological supremacy.