Books by Larry Diamond
“The Spirit of Democracy still reflected the optimism of what Samuel Huntington labeled ‘the third wave of democratization’. This is the wave that began with Spain and Portugal in the early 1970s. It peaked with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the transition of a lot of former communist countries to democracy. In the book Larry Diamond is an advocate of what is called ‘modernization theory’. It’s a theory that a lot of social scientists have held that as countries become richer, more educated, more open to a global, cosmopolitan, liberal order they are going to be more democratic—there’ll be a spontaneous shift towards democratic institutions. At the time he wrote it, he would look at a country like South Korea or Taiwan, both of which had been military dictatorships in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s but then, as they hit a certain level of income, became pretty good liberal democracies.” Read more...
The best books on Liberal Democracy
Francis Fukuyama, Political Scientist
“This book reflects all of the bad things that have gone on in the last 10 years. That includes the rise of Russia and China as consolidated authoritarian states…But I think that Larry would point to the rise of populist nationalism as an equally grave threat. In a sense, we’ve always been dealing with these external threats. In the 20th century there were very powerful authoritarian countries. Today, the threat is really an internal one that was captured by the January 6, 2021 riot, where pro-Trump protesters occupied the US Congress. Larry wrote the second book, Ill Winds, before that happened, but I think that it would simply confirm the kinds of anti-democratic trends that he saw arising in the United States. And that, in a way, caps a very bad turn in which people have lost confidence in basic democratic institutions, both on the right and on the left.” Read more...
The best books on Liberal Democracy
Francis Fukuyama, Political Scientist
Interviews where books by Larry Diamond were recommended
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1
The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World
by Larry Diamond -
2
Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency
by Larry Diamond -
3
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
by Daniel Ziblatt & Steven Levitsky -
4
Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition
by Robert Dahl -
5
Democracy in America
by Alexis de Tocqueville
The best books on Liberal Democracy, recommended by Francis Fukuyama
The best books on Liberal Democracy, recommended by Francis Fukuyama
Even some of the world’s most authoritarian rulers continue to pay lip service to democracy and people’s right to vote for their leaders, but the days when many social scientists believed that all countries at a certain level of prosperity would eventually turn to liberal democracy are over, says Francis Fukuyama, now a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute. Here, he recommends books to better understand liberal democracy, and what those of us lucky enough to live in one can do to protect our form of government.
