Op/Ed: All the Ways Democracy Is Crashing and Burning

The accelerated erosion of democratic regimes in the West is the subject of a series of recent books and articles in the United States.

By Yoram Peri | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

"At the end of the last century, the West was in the grip of euphoria. The collapse of the communist empire prompted Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard political scientist, to write “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century” (1991), extolling how 60 new countries had joined the prestigious club. Francis Fukuyama expanded an article he’d written in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, and published the book that made him a superstar, “The End of History.” In the 20th century, he explained, liberal democracy had dealt a crushing blow to all the other competing ideologies, from fascism to communism. The world was coalescing, he predicted: All countries would adopt the liberal democratic model, and global conflict would end.

"Twenty years later, the West appears to have lapsed into a state of depression. Not only has the dream of convergence faded, but the democracies themselves are moving ever farther from liberalism. The June issue of the journal Foreign Affairs even asked directly whether democracy has reached its end."

Read the complete analysis by Yoram Peri, Jack Kay Professor of Israel Studies and director, Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, in the Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Photo: A message board adorned with notes for loved ones who took their own lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. John Minchillo/AP via the Haaretz Daily Newspaper.