Liberalism and Its Discontents

 I’m in the process of writing a book that will be published by Profile next spring, on liberalism and its discontents. I’m going to focus on the rule of law part of liberal democracy. The reason I’m writing it is that it’s come under severe attack from both the right and the left. So you’ve got this global populist right-wing movement that takes a nationalist form in Hungary and in the United States. It takes a religious form in India and in Turkey. It’s a severe challenge to the basic principles of the rule of law that seeks to concentrate power in the hands of a single executive leader. Vladimir Putin famously said in an FT interview that liberalism is an outmoded doctrine. So that’s one attack.

But it’s also coming under attack from progressive people on the left, who are very frustrated that liberalism has not brought about greater racial equality in the United States, for example, that it’s denied the legacy of colonialism and slavery and a lot of other bad things that have happened under liberal regimes. It’s led to an intolerance of certain forms of speech, which begins in elite places—like universities and in Hollywood and in the arts—but is gradually spreading to other parts of society. Liberalism itself, as a principle, needs to be defended against both the critiques from the right and the left. That’s what I’ve been trying to do in the last few years and I think it’s a pretty urgent agenda right now.

The best books on Liberal Democracy recommended by Francis Fukuyama