A Bad Start for a new King

Charles III has been in authority over us for some 24 hours and has already succeeded in making me very angry – on 3 counts.

• By crafting an oath that treats us all as feudal “lieges” ie slaves

• by agreeing that Liz Truss, the new PM, should be in tow as he makes ceremonial visits to the 3 other nations which form his kingdom – thereby breaching the principle of royal neutrality which his mother observed so faithfully for 70 years

• by avoiding the 40% succession tax which is normally applied when an heir dies – and by the ease with which the Duchy of Cornwall (worth more than a billion pounds) passed to his elder son.

I have no great feelings one way or another about the British monarchy - although I will confess that when, in my youth, the National Anthem was still played an the end of a cinema session, I would never stand. But there were (and remain) more important things to bother about - one of so many reasons why I can never take Liz Truss seriously for having proposed - some 25 years ago - at a Liberal Democrat Conference the ending of the British monarchy.

So I have a lot of sympathy for the post I received today from Ian Leslie which suggested there were perhaps psychological reasons why such countries as Scandinavian, Netherlands  and UK had managed to remain open, democratic and civilised

One of the country’s best bloggers did a great twitter thread today which indicated the immensity of what is at stake. It starts with questioning the suspension of parliamentary business for an unspecified period

• the continuity of the monarchy requires the business of government to continue - after the appropriate pause for reflection that was provided on Friday and Saturday - starting on Monday morning.

• Other business is continuing next week. Debts will also be chased. Schools and other public services will all operate. But the process of accountable government will be suspended. That is a powerful and worrying symbol suggesting there is no accountability in the UK, after all.

• There have been ample such other symbols, all of which have been troubling. I was astonished that the Accession Council was not asked its opinion on the ascent of Charles III to the throne: not once were the 200 or so Privy Councillors assembled asked their opinion.

• If the so-called ‘great and good’ were present to offer counsel - as is their task - why was their opinion not sought on the matter laid before them? And yet it was not. A simple call for ‘Ayes’ and ‘Noes’ would have sufficed. But it did not happen. So, nor did democracy.

• Instead Charles III ascended as of right. Eugenics trumped democracy here - and our leaders didn’t even pretend otherwise.

• Worse, the accession proclamation said that Prince Charles has ‘become our only lawful and rightful Liege Lord Charles the Third’. A liege is the vassal of a feudal superior, where vassal means a person holding rights on conditions of homage and allegiance.

• I have to say that I object to the idea that I hold anything as a favour from a monarch who did no more to acquire that right than to be born. Every political sensibility that I have is offended by that idea.

• This notion also affronts my senses as a believer in the equality of all. It offends me as a democrat.

• Let’s also be blunt: there is nothing about this that can be reconciled with any declaration of human rights. So the question has to be, why was this wording used?

• unless its use was deliberate and a reflection of what is really happening on this accession. Might it be, in other words, that the language was deliberate, just as the rush to get Charles on the throne whilst the country is still in shock also very deliberate?

• In other words, the whole point of this rushed exercise that emphasises status, inherited power, the perpetuation of wealth and control of the populace, coupled with a wholly unnecessary suspension of parliamentary scrutiny, is to highlight the real power in this country?

• I wondered until it was announced that the new King would do a tour of the capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I cannot object to that. I can when he is to be accompanied by Liz Truss as new prime minister.

• t could, of course, be argued that the King must act in consultation with ministers. But the message is deeply dangerous. First, it seeks to tie the Crown to the Tory party, which is threatening to the monarchy. Second, it makes the Crown political, and it should not be.

• At a time of national crisis all this worries me, greatly. Truss has already made clear that she will allow energy poverty to continue. This was implicit in the statement she made last week. She has also refused to tax the war profits of energy companies.

• Truss could not than have made it clearer, already, that she favours an unfair and divided society. Charles has ascended to the throne on the basis of feudal promises, and deeply divisive oaths pertaining to religion. Associating these things is deeply unwise, but is happening.

• The point I am making is that democracy, equality, and the right of the citizen to be who they wish is under varying challenges in these arrangements, promoted when parliament, and so democratic accountability, is suspended.

• This is not the working of a functioning state. Nor is it the work of what I think a parliamentary democracy should be. There is instead in all this an ancient regime seeking to remind the country where power lies, backed by a prime minister all too willing to reinforce division

John Harris is one of the rare journalists who gets out of the metropolis and makes a point of finding people whose opinions generally give a better sense of how social values are changing. He’s been out and about these past few days and has an interesting take.

At the time of her coronation, the idea of a tightly bound national community with the monarch at its apex made an appealing kind of sense. The left’s social democracy had fused with the right’s patrician instincts to produce the postwar consensus. In 1953, a Conservative government built nearly 250,000 council houses, the largest number ever constructed in a single year. By modern standards, most employment was relatively secure. Even if lots of people were excluded from this dream, and many lives would subsequently take a turn into insecurity and uncertainty, the postwar era inculcated enough faith in the UK’s institutions to keep the monarchy safely beyond criticism.

And now? The social attitudes that defined that period, and lingered into the 1990s – a strange mixture of solidarity and deference, and a widely shared optimism about the future – seem very quaint. If you are in your late teens, just about all of your memories will be of the endless turbulence that followed the financial crash of 2008. Your most visceral experience of politics will have been the opposite of consensus and harmony: the seething polarisation triggered by Brexit.

For many of those aged under 40, home-ownership is a distant dream, and hopes of job security seem slim. Meanwhile, perhaps because society and the economy have been in such a state of flux, space has at last been opened to talk about things that 20th-century Britain stubbornly kept under wraps: empire, systemic racism, the plain fact that so many of the institutions we are still encouraged to revere are rooted in some of the most appalling aspects of this country’s history.

The result of that change is a kingdom with two distinct sets of voices: one that reflects Britain’s tendency to conservatism and tradition, and another that sounds altogether more irreverent and questioning. In all the coverage of the Queen’s passing, the first has been dominant: how could it be otherwise? But as the period of mourning recedes, and a new monarch tries to adapt fantastically challenging realities, that may not hold for long. The post-Elizabethan age, in other words, is going to be very interesting indeed.

What will it take to rekindle our lost faith in the political process?

This is the time of year I devote to reviewing the year’s posts to see what sort of sense they make. Two years ago – on noticing a few common themes I actually structured the collected posts around those issues and wrote introductions to each section which you can see at Peripheral Vision – the 2020 posts. I am inclined to do so again for this year’s collected edition as several things have combined, for example, to get me writing fairly frequently this year about the quality of government – with the pandemic exposing the very different capacities of state and government in different parts of the world 

Of course, it doesn’t take much to get me going on this issue – my dissatisfaction with the combination of politics and bureaucracy goes back fully 50 years to my initial experience as an elected member with a local municipality; subsequent successes in making a large Regional authority more open and democratic; and experience since 1990 as a consultant in “capacity development” in ex-communist countries. 

The tragic failure of the rule of law to take root these past 30 years in this part of the world has slowly become obvious even to the most obtuse. Recent elections in Bulgaria and Romania have demonstrated the extent to which people have, understandably, completely lost trust in both their governments and the state. Adages of good governance and anti-corruption have been tried – and failed.

In a post in May, I posed some questions which needed to be asked about this failure - 

- how do we find out what conciliation efforts have already been attempted - let alone lessons learned - in BG and RO? South Africa had hundreds of such efforts 

- how would effective and "trustworthy" mediators be identified? There’s an Association of Conciliators here in Romania (presumably for commercial and family disputes) but perhaps they have relevant resources?

- who are the key actors who would be involved in any such meeting?

- how do we identify the positive lessons from other efforts throughout the world to bring societies together? Latin America clearly has had many such efforts

- how do we deal with the cynics who dismiss such experience as irrelevant to their country? 

Unfortunately the state has for the past few decades been losing what capacity it had throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The global financial meltdown of 2008 and the austerity policies that produced compounded the process. The political class's dedication to the notion of the minimal state promoted by globalisation and neoliberalism has encouraged many citizens to reward the populists. 

One of the limitations of blogposts is their brevity – although I know that will make some of you laugh. But my posts do tend to take either a positive or negative perspective on an issue – balance is more difficult. A post this year on how to build state capacity makes my point exactly.

An annual collection of posts, however, makes such balance possible. There have been more than 20 posts so far in 2021 dealing with the question of how ordinary citizens might rediscover their lost faith the political process – an issue which the blog has also explored in previous years. I will therefore read them carefully – along with earlier writing on the issue – and pen an introductory summary of the posts which deals with this critical question.

Those Clever Romans – the tactical Playbook of the Corporate Elites

That’s half a dozen posts I’ve done in a row on the apparent increased divisiveness in our societies – without any real attempt at either explanation or prescription. Indeed the blog’s focus on political frustration can be traced back to the first mention of the pending election in Bulgaria at the beginning of April. The posts since then have argued that -

- few (if any) societies can any longer claim to be democratic

- we need, very loudly, to be exposing such claims to be the falsehoods they are

- a better vision of democracy needs to be articulated

- pressure groups should coalesce around the demand for citizen juries – initially at a municipal level to demonstrate their benefits

- political parties no longer serve any useful purpose

- we should be insisting that governments start focusing on the big issues - which governments currently seem incapable of even attempting to deal with

- using citizen juries

- governments, in other words, should govern

So let me try to pull the posts together by questioning the way the media has placed the issue of political polarisation on the agenda. It’s clear that social media have increased the rancour of the tone of conversations - - certainly since Twitter started in 2006.

But can we really blame the social media for the strong and sustained political divisions? The fact that 70% of US Republican party members still cannot accept the validity of Jo Biden’s victory in the 2020 Presidential elections certainly indicates not just a very significant shift in the US political mood but a major question about the resilience and legitimacy of that country’s basic political system. This may or may not be part of “American exceptionalism” but is certainly very serious.

But the wider populist backlash against elite rule is part of something much deeper – and was there for anyone with any sensitivity to see some 20 years ago. I don’t profess to have any particular skills of foresight but in 2001 I drafted a short note which forms the first seven pages of this longer paper (written a decade later). I summarised the basic message at the time thus

·       The “mixed economy” which existed from 1950-1980 was an effective system for the West.

·       It worked because power was diffused. Each type of power – economic (companies/banks etc), political (citizens and workers) and legal/admin/military (the state) – balanced the other. None was dominant.

·       deindustrialisation has, however, now undermined the power which working class people were able to exercise in that period through votes and unions

·       a thought system has developed which justifies corporate greed and the privileging (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large international company

·       All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought system which now rules the world

·       People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic

·       Privatisation is a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring wealth to the few

·       Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of its new freedom

·       It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us

·       Social protest is marginalized - not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” ready to act against “dissidence”

·       But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project need more detailed exposure

·       as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power

·       We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against privatisation - existing and proposed

·       to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed) 

But the elite - and the media which services their interests - noticed something was wrong only when Brexit and Trump triumphed – 5 years ago. But that was simply the point at which the dam broke – the pressure had been building up for much longer.

If we really want to understand what is going on we have to go much further back – not just 20 years but probably at least 50 years – as Anthony Barnett, for one, most recently argued in his extended essay “Out of the Belly of Hell” (2020)

The demos have been giving the Elites a clear warning – “your social model sucks”. Some may not like some aspects of what the crowd is saying – for example the border restrictions….but we ignore its message at our peril. So far I don’t see a very credible Elite response. Indeed, the response so far reminds me of nothing less than that of the clever Romans who gave the world Bread and Circuses. Governments throughout the world have a common way of dealing with a problem – which runs like this –

-       Deny the problem

-       Rubbish the critics

-       Blame the victim

-       Marginalise the issue – concede a little by suggesting that the problem was caused by “just a few bad pennies”

-       set up an Inquiry

-       But ensure (by its composition and direction) that it goes nowhere

-       Compartmentalise the responsibility – to confuse

-       Sacrifice a few lambs

-       Bring on the games and spectacle

-       clowns and jesters

-       Feed the dogs with scraps

-       Starve any programme conceded of serious funds

-       Take the credit for any eventual concession that there was indeed a problem

Suggested Background Reading

We are so  swamped with books these days that someone like me can offer only what catches his eye. But the OECD, Lakoff and Tarrow are significant sources which should be taken seriously!

Catching the Deliberative Wave (OECD 2020) Executive summary of recent important book Innovate Citizen Participation and new democratic institutions - catching the Deliberative Wave which tries to help the global elite make sense of the latest challenge to their rule

Macron’s Grand Debat; useful article about the French approach

citizen jury experience (2016) german; rather academic

Creating Freedom – the lottery of birth, the illusion of consent, the fight for freedom Raoul Martinez (2016) Fascinating book which starts from the proposition that the current failure of our social systems must lead us to question our foundational beliefs

Can Democracy be Saved?  - participation, deliberation and social movements; Donatella Della Porta (2013)  Too much of the discussion on democracy is conducted by anglo-saxon political scientists. Here an Italian sociologist makes the connection to the social movement literature

The New Machiavelli – how to wield power in the modern world ; Jonathan Powell (2011) Tony Bliar’s Chief of Staff does some musing about the government class thinking

Moral politics – how conservatives and liberals think; George Lakoff (1996) an important psychologist sets out our tribal thinking

Power in movement – social movement and contentious politics; Sydney Tarrow (2011 edition – first in 1994) one of the key writers in this field

Metaphors we live By  George Lakoff (1980) our very words betray us

Democracy as skeleton, flesh AND blood

I have, these past few days, been fixated on the question of the future of education – triggered partly by what is apparently a famous TED video with Sir Ken Robinson about how modern schools tend to kill creativity in children - very impressive performance, with lots of laughs - so sad therefore to hear of his recent death. His books include "Creative Schools – the grassroots revolution that’s transforming our schools" (2015). 

When, however, I translate these thoughts into words, I discover that I’m writing about democracy which, of course, we know is in trouble – the masses, somehow, have broken loose and are no longer accepting what their masters are telling them. This, of course, has been a perennial fear of the elites – it has happened before and, in that sense, might have been anticipated.

But the elites are not as clever as before… so let me give them some simple advice – based on a simple adage - ”If you treat the general public as idiots, they will behave as idiots”. You have, for the past few decades, made the following assumptions about your fellows –

- They need to be worked hard - but bread and circuses will keep them happy

- Told what to do and measured by how well they do it

- Given a choice at elections only of those who represent an ever-circulating elite

- you no longer even bother going through the motions of serving up promises and manifesto programmes

- the public is so stupid and so easily distracted that they will believe any of your lies

- you can do whatever you want, safe in the knowledge that you have a servile media which knows that its basic business is to keep the public entertained

I spent more than 20 years of my life helping the establishment of new democratic systems in ex-communist countries and tried to convey a sense of what that involved in a definition which perhaps reflects the thinking of the period...... 

“The Government system in a democracy is made up of several structures or systems each of which has a distinctive role. It is this sharing of responsibilities – in a context of free and open dialogue – which ideally gives democratic systems their strength – particularly in

-   Producing and testing ideas

-   Checking the abuses of power

-   Ensuring public acceptance (legitimacy) of the political system – and the decisions which come from it”.

We used to call such a system “pluralist” – with reference to its multiple sources of power and legitimacy - but, these days, it seems that the public have become impatient with talk and favour instead action. demagogues and strongmen. This is a fundamental perversion of the spirit of democracy….and the focus in the final part of my (admittedly dated) definition on institutions is meaningless without ideas and discussion…. 

The key institutions for a democratic system are -

·       A political executive - whose members are elected and whose role is to set the policy agenda- that is develop a strategy (and make available the laws and resources) to deal with those issues which it feels need to be addressed.

·       A freely elected legislative Assembly – whose role is to ensure (i) that the merits of new legislation and policies of the political Executive are critically and openly assessed; (ii) that the performance of government and civil servants is held to account; and (iii) that, by the way these roles are performed, the public develop confidence in the workings of the political system.

·       An independent Judiciary – which ensures that the rule of Law prevails, that is to say that no-one is able to feel above the law.

·       A free media; where journalists and people can express their opinions freely and without fear.

·       A professional impartial Civil Service – whose members have been appointed and promoted by virtue of their technical ability to ensure (i) that the political Executive receives the most competent policy advice; (ii) that the decisions of the executive (approved as necessary by Parliament) are effectively implemented; and that (iii) public services are well-managed

·       The major institutions of Government - Ministries, Regional structures and various types of Agencies - should be structured, staffed and managed in a purposeful manner

·       An independent system of local self-government – whose leaders are accountable through direct elections to the local population The staff may or may not have the status of civil servants.

·       An active civil society – with a rich structure of voluntary associations – able to establish and operate without restriction. Politicians can ignore the general public for some time but, only for so long! The vitality of civil society – and of the media – creates (and withdraws) the legitimacy of political systems.

·       An independent university system – which encourages tolerance and diversity

But such bodies are merely the skeleton of democracy – conversation and discussion is its lifeblood and is built on civility and respect

Take the fundamental issue of education about which the public has become increasingly vexed as international league tables have demonstrated national weaknesses in systems which are now seen as crucial for a country’s economic success…..To whom do we – and should we - turn for advice on such things?

- Politicians – who have the authority to make changes?

- Teachers – who have the responsibility for managing the system of schooling?

- Experts – who study the workings of the system?

- Parents – who have variable degrees of responsibility, activity and expectation?

- Pupils – who have their own expectations and attitudes?

When we ask such a question, the variability of the answers is quite amazing. Each country tends to have its own pattern – with the Finnish system regularly quoted as the most successful but outlier country in which highly-trained professionals are trusted to get on with the business. Most people would probably still respond to the question with a reference to the need for collaboration - few would trust the politicians. 

And yet that is precisely the situation in which most countries have landed!

Many of my generation are still marked by the critique of schools conducted from the 1960s by the likes of Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire, RF McKenzie and even Neil Postman. In that sense Ken Robinson is part of an honourable 50 year tradition which includes psychologist Howard Gardner of Multiple Intelligences fame. And it is to this strain of thinking I would like to devote a future post.  

Masterclasses in reviewing non-fiction books

This is the first of a couple of posts looking at the lessons we can learn from two great practitioners of the reviewing non-fiction books – UK historian Richard Evans and German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck. 

Back in Bucharest, I took the opportunity yesterday to walk down the famous Calea Victoriei Bvd to the Kretzulescu Humanitas bookshop for the first time in many months and browse in the generous selection of English books it has. One of the titles which caught my eye was the rather fat The Empire of Democracy – from the 1970s to the end of the Cold War.

This is almost exactly the period I have been trying to cover in the current draft of Dispatches to the Next Generation which I uploaded a few days ago.

This called for the test to which I now subject interesting titles – namely check

- its “user-friendliness” (which nowadays includes size of font)

- whether it bothers to explain why yet another book should be inflicted on us (which requires the author to gives us a brief survey of the relevant literature and identify what’s distinctive about his/hers)

- its list of recommended reading

- make a note of the title and return home to google the reviews

In this case, the book claimed to be the 

“the first full account of the way the political life of Western democracies have been going for most of the past half-century” 

– a rather questionable claim given the scale of books about the crisis in western liberalism pouring from the presses in the past few years – let alone such books as Contesting Democracy – political ideas in 20^th century Europe by Jan-Werner Mueller (2013) which warrants only an endnote on page 794).

Nor is there is a recommended list of reading and, although the text certainly looked highly readable, I returned home reasonably clear that this was a 900 page book which would add little to my understanding of this important period in my life. 

Google gave me the excellent news that not only had historian Richard Evans reviewed The Empire of Democracy (in “The Nation”) but that he had given us a masterclass in the art of reviewing.

I should make it clear that Richard Evans is well known as a caustic reviewer – who gets as good as he gives, particularly in the London Review of Books which gives him full scope for both critical reviews of his own work and his own reviews of others. His 1998 book “In Defence of History” was mauled by a reviewer in LRB – occasioning eventually his own strong reply. One review of his brought forth energetic responses – as did this one 

In this case, too, Evans does not pull his punches – although he gives credit where it’s due. The review covers so many important points that I am reproducing it more or less in full……. 

Empire of Democracy – the remaking of the west since the cold war tells us how we got to where we are today - tracking the rise and fall of an economic, social, and political order that now seems to be under fundamental and potentially lethal pressure.

Despite, however, the convincing nature of his overall diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of neoliberalism, however, there are many problems with how Reid-Henry tells this story, starting with the narrative style in which he has chosen to cast it.

To put it bluntly, he doesn’t seem to be aware of even the most basic rules of historical narrative.

 

- Individual actors in the story, from Mitterrand to Trump, are introduced with only scant background information; important dates are missing in dense chapters; and statements and observations are ventured without any attempt to ground them in evidence. For a more or less random example, near the end of the book we are told that

 

      “Dodd-Frank had belatedly been passed in 2011, along with its famous Volcker rule.”

 

You have to read back more than 60 pages for any explanation as to what these things are. At roughly that time, Reid-Henry tells us on the very same page, 

“amplified by the extended reach of new media, the culture wars…leapt back into life as never before, as tirades blared out across the raucous and indiscriminating airwaves of shock-jock radio and Fox television.”

 He makes no attempt to unpack this sentence, simply assuming that readers will understand the references. But it’s not a safe assumption to make, and terms such as “culture wars” and “shock-jock radio” really do need to be explained for the uninitiated.

There are more substantive problems as well. For quite long stretches of the book, I found it difficult to understand the sweeping generalizations that pepper the text. For instance, what was “the distinctive sense of ennui that had haunted the Western democracies during the 1990s”? Among whom? Bored with what?

“Americans in particular,” we read a couple of pages earlier, “found themselves in a confusing place.” All Americans, and what place? “They were concerned about growing inequity,” the text continues, but we aren’t told how or why or which Americans were concerned or in what way.

 

Similar generalizations occur about other peoples, such as “the French,” who apparently “felt that they were immune from the troubles that had struck the United States, because their banking system was more prudent.”

Actually, most likely the vast majority of “the French” neither knew nor cared very much about their banking system, prudent or not. Later, we are told that a “declining sense of trust within society” in the early 21st century meant that “left and right now converged upon a resolutely anti-state ethos.”

Leaving aside the question of precisely which countries this applies to, one can think of myriad issues where this is simply untrue, from the introduction of the Sure Start program in the UK in 1998 to the British left’s growing demand for the renationalization of private utilities, including the railways (now part of the official program of the Labour Party), to the pressure exerted in the US by the right for the expansion of the state security apparatus in the “war against terror” and the persistent advocacy by Republicans of more state expenditure on the military.

 

Often, Reid-Henry’s use of the passive voice disguises an almost complete absence of detail: 

“the balance between freedom and democracy that Western liberal democracies had struggled for forty years to maintain was now rejected altogether.”

 What is the evidence for this struggle? Why should freedom and democracy be treated as opposites between which a balance needed to be maintained? And was this balance actually rejected by everyone? Or if only partially rejected—or not rejected at all—then by whom and when and where? It’s not even true of Poland and Hungary, where substantial forces remain in opposition to the right-wing nationalists currently in power.

 

In many sections, the book reads more like a commentary on events than an analytical narrative. The description of the election that put Barack Obama in the White House is a good example. There are some interesting observations on Sarah Palin, but we’re not told what public office she held before becoming a candidate for the vice presidency; the Tea Party is brought into the narrative, but we’re apparently expected to know what it was, who helped launch it, and what policies it advocated; and no statistics are provided for the election to indicate how many people voted for Obama and who they were.

 

The nature of Obama’s appeal is also largely left unexplored (his powerful catchphrase “Yes, we can!” isn’t even mentioned), and running throughout the book is also the highly dubious assumption that street politics exercise a profound effect on political systems, from the anti–Vietnam War movement, which the author tells us inaugurated the remaking of the West in the early 1970s, to the Occupy movement, which flared up briefly in 2011 and is now almost completely forgotten. Yet the more than 1 million people who marched through the streets of London on February 15, 2003, to protest the impending invasion of Iraq achieved precisely nothing, nor did the similar number of people who marched through the same streets on March 23, 2019, to demand that Britain remain in the European Union.

 

There are still many passages in this book that can be read with considerable profit: The account of the 2008–09 financial crisis is particularly perceptive, and one could mention many other examples. But there is a more fundamental and perhaps more interesting respect in which the book rests on a highly questionable assumption. Chief among these is the concept of “the West” itself and its linkage with liberalism and democracy.

Empire of Democracy falls into a long tradition of historical writing centred on predictions of the downfall of the West. In the 19th century, the idea of the West became a foil against which political theorists developed their recipes for progress and change. Russian Slavophiles rejected what they saw as Western individualism and the Western advocacy of material progress based on industrial capitalism, for example, while Russian Westernizers saw their country’s future very much in embracing these things. In the early 20th century, right-wing nationalists in Germany and Central Europe offered similar warnings, excoriating what they saw as the decadent materialism, spiritual weakness, and moral corruption of a West that was no longer able to prevent its own decline.

Foremost among them was Oswald Spengler, whose book Der Untergang des Abendlandes, usually translated as The Decline of the West, became hugely popular in Germany during the 1920s, largely because it was read as a prophecy of Germany’s resurgence under a future nationalist dictatorship and then was taken, not entirely accurately, as a prediction of Hitler’s coming to power in 1933.