Migration has split Europe in two – or I could say that it has split the West in two. One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations: they are nothing more than conglomeration of peoples … [In] our world, we are willing to mix with one another, but we don’t want to become peoples of mixed race.
Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary[1]
Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
John Dewey
In October 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged to turn China into a “great modern socialist country” that represents a “new choice” for humanity.[2] Jinping’s pledge showed his confidence that China’s unique path to modernization not only will transform China into an economic superpower, but also that it will present an alternative to Western democracies. He had reason to be confident. China’s impressive economic growth in the last few decades has lifted most Chinese citizens out of poverty, making China’s GDP second in the world after the US. The rise of China has upended one of the basic dogmas that followed from the post-Cold War world order: that free markets would not just bring predictable prosperity but also draw countries into closer political consensus around something like Anglo-American market liberalism.
At the same time, many liberal democracies are becoming less so. In recent elections, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, and the Philippines have moved towards far-right authoritarian leaders, who have pledged to crack down on loose morals and open borders. The situation in the US, the UK and the largest democracy, India, is not less dire. Many believe that the rise of authoritarianism and totalitarianism around the world has made the current moment among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance. Some historians have compared the threat facing America to the pre-Civil War era and to pro-fascist movements before World War II.[3]
The experts may not be exaggerating. At the end of 2020, the US was considered an anocracy, an annual classification developed by the Center for Systemic Peace, which measures several factors related to the quality of the governments around the world. The scale of the index goes from negative 10 to positive 10. Negative 10 is the most authoritarian, and Positive 10, the most democratic. Countries at the extremes of the scale, -10 and +10, tend to be “stable”; full autocracies and democracies rarely have civil wars. The most instability is in the anocracies, that is, countries in the middle zone, between positive 5 and negative 5, which have features of both. The US was briefly downgraded to a +5 and is now a +8.[4]
According to a recent poll, a majority of American voters, across nearly all demographics and ideologies, believe their system of government does not work. The discontent is driven by different factors, depending on party affiliation. For Republicans, it is driven by their widespread, unfounded doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections; even now a majority believe Trump was the legitimate winner. For Democrats, it is the realization that even though they controlled the White House (they lost their majority in the House in the 2022 elections), it is Republicans, joined with their allies in gerrymandered state legislatures and the Supreme Court, who are achieving long-sought political goals.[5]
The direction in which the country’s political process and democratic institutions will evolve from here will determine if it slides back to the anocracy range, even risking civil war, or becomes again a full democracy. The stakes are huge, not only for the US, but also the world.
The challenge of diversity
Traditionally, the most stable democracies have had a homogeneous population. This is, however, changing rapidly. In the late 1940s, after the Second World War, fewer than one in twenty people living in the UK had been born abroad. Now, it is one in seven. Until a few decades ago, Sweden was one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. Today, 20% of the population has foreign roots. Other democracies, from Austria to Australia show similar trends.
Why has diversity increased in these countries? Facing a shortage of unskilled labor after World War II, the UK encouraged migration from Commonwealth countries. Germany and Switzerland imported workers from Turkey and from Middle Eastern countries. In Denmark and Sweden, generous asylum laws played a significant role. As the political scientist Yascha Mounk, one of the world’s leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy, writes in his 2022 book, The Great Experiment, “None of these countries intentionally chose to turn themselves into diverse democracies, and so none of them ever developed a coherent plan for how to deal with the key challenges they would face.” [6]
The United States has been, since its inception, a country of immigrants. Nonetheless, it has also been ethnically exclusionary: For close to nine decades, African Americans were bought and sold as slaves. Even after their emancipation, they were barred from full participation in the nation’s public life. For much of its history, the country has also been less open to immigration from non-European countries. For example, when Chinese laborers started to arrive on the West Coast in great numbers, toward the end of the 19th century, politicians decided to enact a series of laws barring “undesirable” East Asian immigrants from entering the country.
It was not until after 1965 that, with the adoption of the Immigration and Nationality Act, strict limits on immigration from countries outside the Western Hemisphere were relaxed. As of 2020, the total number of international migrants represented 15.3% of the total population, with new arrivals mostly from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Given current trends and demographics, the US is projected to become “minority white” sometime between 2041 and 2046.[7]
Diversity has been a source of conflict in democracies that were not really prepared for the rapid growth of immigrant communities, with different ethnicities, cultures and religions (see Box 20). The election of Barack Obama, the first Black president, was a clear sign that the country had become more racially diverse and seemed destined to become even more so. At the same time, Obama’s ascendance produced a huge backlash that was undeniable racist in nature. He was accused, without evidence, of being a “closeted” foreign-born Muslim and thus ineligible for the presidency. Trump embraced this and other conspiracy theories, and so did millions of his supporters. Since then, racial prejudices have been on open display.
Box 20: Diversity and its Discontents We generally think of diversity in a population as a good thing. Why is it then that diversity appears to be a source of polarization and conflict? In his book, The Great Experiment, Yascha Mounk identifies three main drivers of conflict: anarchy, domination and fragmentation.1 Anarchy: It is almost a truism that the weaker the government the higher the possibility of chaos and anarchy; this has been shown throughout history. Singapore, for example, is a country with a highly developed state and one of the lowest crime rates, with a 0.2 homicide rate per 100,000. In El Salvador, where the state is compromised by pervasive corruption, the homicide rate is 310 times higher, at 62 per 100,000. This may give rise to what Mounk calls structured anarchy: a destructive fight between rival groups. This is common in poor countries where several tribes or ethnic groups compete for economic or political power in the absence of a strong central government. Dominance: Even if the government is weak, a country can avoid structural anarchy and may achieve a high standard of living. This appears to be if one group dominates the others. Throughout history many diverse societies have dealt with their diversity by allowing one group to dominate the others. “From the monarchies of early modern South Asia,” writes Mounk, “to the democracies of 20th century Europe, diversity has gone hand in with some scheme of domination.” He distinguishes three forms of domination: hard, soft and minority. In the hard form, the majority explicitly claims the right to dominate the minority. For example, the US in the 19th century forcefully brought Africans into the country and kept as slaves. In soft forms of domination, the majority pretends to grant equality to all citizens, but effectively marginalizes or disenfranchises a large portion of the population. Examples of this are European democracies in which many immigrants and their descendants feel permanently excluded from full membership in the countries that are supposed to be their homes. Finally, under minority domination, it is not the many who rule the few, but rather the few who rule over the many. This happens in countries such as Iraq, Rwanda, Syria and Guatemala, where the ruling elite has been recruited from a powerful minority. Whether it takes the form of hard, soft or minority domination, domination is an ever-present danger for diverse societies; by its nature, domination of any kind is inherently unstable. Fragmentation: The end of World War II also marked the end of the colonial era, as the victorious nations no longer had the strength to sustain their vast empires. In the postwar years, many countries gained independence from their colonial masters. One of the legacies of the colonial era, however, was the creation of arbitrary national boundaries that didn’t consider geographical, cultural, ethnic or economic factors. The founders of these countries faced the impossible task of molding highly diverse populations into functional nation-states. “In many countries,” writes Mounk, “that aspiration quickly foundered. In the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of newly independent states set out to build democratic institutions. But most soon descended into civil war or turned into authoritarian regimes led by dictators who relied on the loyalty of their own tribe or faith group to entrench themselves in power.” One such example is Côte d’Ivoire, which obtained its independence from France in 1960. Before its colonization, the country was home to several states, which spoke different languages (there are around 78 languages spoken). The country also has a religiously diverse population, including numerous followers of Christianity, Islam and indigenous faiths. Like many other African countries, its borders were the result of negotiations among the colonial powers, without much regard of cultural, ethnic or religious factors. Although the country has been relatively more stable than its neighbors, it has been plagued by a coup and by two civil wars since 2002. Most of the conflict is due to ethnic and religious tensions.2 1. Mounk, Y. (2022). The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. Penguin Press, New York. Chapter Two: Three Ways Diverse Societies Fail. 2. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast.
One of the main tenets of liberal democracy is that all citizens should be treated equally. It is not clear, however, that all democracies will succeed in achieving this ideal, which is why Mounk refers to this as “the great experiment.” The problems that arise from diversity are not the only ones facing democracies, however, they may be the most challenging to resolve.
The rise, and decline, of democracy
One central notion in the field of development economics is that poor countries can get “trapped” on their way to industrialization. There are several ways this can happen; for example, a country may be landlocked, so restricted by high transportation and transaction costs, or it may be conflict-prone and stuck in an endless cycle of coups and countercoups. A country may be trapped by corruption and bad governance, which can have a devastating impact on the economy by redirecting expenditures to unproductive activities, and by squandering the country’s natural resources.[8] Economists view these traps as “black holes” that keep countries poor by interfering with the freely working of the markets and with the democratic political process.
A conflict-free democratic country with free markets is well on its way to industrialization. But is it really the end goal? There is no doubt that liberal democracies and free market capitalism emerged victorious after the contentious ideological wars of the twentieth century. There is wide-spread agreement that the market-based, mixed economies associated with liberal democracies “solved” the central challenge of modernity, reconciling democracy and capitalism.[9]
In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously argued that the advent of liberal democracy signaled the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution, and the final form of human government. According to Fukuyama, humanity has reached “not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”[10]
This fin de siècle optimism has been drastically tempered by the realities of a global financial and environmental crisis, by the rapid rise of a non-democratic powerhouse (China), and by the political dysfunction and policy gridlock plaguing the major liberal democracies. Worse, liberal democracies seem to be “trapped” in a downward spiral that is threatening their stability and even their ideological supremacy over other systems. Particularly worrying is the situation in the US and the UK, considered the worlds’ quintessential democracies.
According to Freedom House’s 2022 Freedom in the World report, democracy has been in decline for 16 years, with some of the largest setbacks coming in the world’s two largest democracies, the US and India. In the last few years, coups have taken place in Myanmar, Tunisia and Sudan, countries that had previously taken promising steps toward democracy. As the US and UK withdrew its military from Afghanistan, the elected government in Kabul collapsed and gave way to the Taliban, returning the country to a system that is diametrically opposed to democracy, pluralism, and equality. As stated in the report:[11]
The present threat to democracy is the product of 16 consecutive years of decline in global freedom. A total of 60 countries suffered declines over the past year, while only 25 improved. As of today, some 38% of the global population live in Not Free countries, the highest proportion since 1997. Only about 20% now live in Free countries.
We are at a critical point, and if current trends continue, authoritarianism will become the dominant form of government. Autocrats have created a more favorable international environment for themselves over the last years, empowered by their own political and economic might as well as waning pressure from democracies. As it is also stated in the report, “The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.”
Indeed, US society is being harmed from within by anti-democratic forces, including unscrupulous politicians willing to corrupt and shatter the very institutions that brought them to power. This became evident when rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6 as part of an organized attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election. The reason we got there is because many public officials working for Trump enabled his mounting authoritarianism. Each helped bring us to a point where, according to a recent survey, more than half of Americans believe a civil war will erupt in the United States in the near future.[12] We may already have reached the tipping point.
Understanding democracy and how can it go wrong
Reversing current trends and this democratic downward spiral is going to be difficult. It will require the active participation of all the players involved: governments, corporations and regular citizens. What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone. The first step to defend democracy is to acquire a correct understanding of what it is. The word “democracy” is a term that comes from Greek, and it is made up of two other words, demos= People and kratein= to govern, to rule. “Democracy” can be translated as Government of the People or Government of the Majority. However, democracy means more than just majority rule.
In its ideal form, democracy is a governing system based on the will and consent of the governed, with institutions that are accountable to all citizens, adherence to the rule of law, and respect for human rights. In a 2004 lecture titled “What is Democracy?” the Stanford sociologist Larry Diamond describes democracy as a system of government with four key elements:[13]
1. A system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections.
2. Active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.
3. Protection of the human rights of all citizens; and
4. A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
A country cannot be called democratic if one or more of these elements is missing. Thus, the word democracy is wrongly applied to the “Democratic People’s Republic” or North Korea, which is really a dictatorship. In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect democracy, and the criteria described above can be applied to a more or less degree in each country called democratic. This is reflected in the index developed by the Center for Systemic Peace, which as we saw ranges from -10 (“most authoritarian”) to +10 (“most democratic”), with anocracies between -5 and +5.
While indices like this are useful for broad comparisons across regimes, it is unlikely that they capture the full complexity of a country’s political, institutional and civic environment. Indeed, the criteria used to determine “democracy” in commonly used democracy rankings has been deemed “misleadingly narrow”, and even the best indices suffer from weaknesses.[14]
Box 21: Free Communication: Strength but also Weakness In order to live up to its name, democracy must be open to free communication and expression. This very feature, alas, opens democracies up to the forces of chaos, fragmentation and demagoguery that undermine them. This is the main premise of the 2022 book The Paradox of Democracy by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing. “At the very heart of democracy,” they write, “is a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies from ancient Greece to contemporary America.”1 Thinking of democracy merely as a body of institutions and practices, they argue, is too narrow and misses the “constitutive condition” of this type of society. It is better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture. It is the open communicative culture – the manner through which citizens in a society persuade one another – that drives the direction of a democracy: “To see democracy as a culture of free expression is to foreground its susceptibility to endless evolution, even danger.” Democracies, as we know, can vote themselves into fascism. Communicative cultures are shaped by the technologies upon which they happen. As Gershberg and Illing write, “our media environment decides not just what we pay attention to but also how we think of ourselves in the world. For every form of media possesses its own epistemology, a series of biases and disruptions that shape how we, as citizens, come to know things.” Indeed, the development of Twitter, Facebook, and other media outlets has profoundly shaped the way we think, the qualities we look for in our politicians, the way we absorb news, the kind of political discourse we engage in and so much more. This is captured in mid-century media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “the medium is the message.” One key insight by the authors is that media evolves much faster than politics, resulting in recurring patterns of democratic instability. Today, information flows from digital communication platforms that provide instantaneous information and nonstop networked dialogue. Faced with a deluge of information, some of it contradictory, “many find it easier to retreat into echo chambers and share misinformation than discern what’s real amid the chaos of the public sphere.” This chaos and confusion invite political actors to exploit novel media technologies and draw from demagogic rhetorical styles (see also Idea 11). These ideas are not new. In The Republic, Plato compared what he thought, in order, the “worst” forms of government: Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny. Oligarchies turn into democracies when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the rest. Democracies, however, are unstable and are bound to become tyrannies. The reason is that boundless freedom can degenerate and eventually the state falls sick, and the people pine for order and stability, which gives rise to the tyrannical strongman. Plato was pessimistic about democracy but did not offer any other viable alternative. More modern critics of democracy include the 20th century journalist Walter Lippman. Like Plato, he doubted the capacity of everyday citizens to live up to the demands of democratic politics. While he believed in democracy, he couldn’t figure out how to make it work. The reality is that democratic societies exist, by their nature, in a state of permanent tension. The key is an active, discerning citizenry, with education at the heart of the community. This is reflected in Dewey’s statement that “democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife”. For starters, we should all be aware of this tension, so we can understand what is at stake. As democracies evolve and become more diverse, we should also rethink basic questions such as what does it mean to be a citizen in an endangered world: what obligations do we have to each other, what values do we share? Despite the difficulties, I believe there is no viable alternative to democracy. Moreover, the edge of chaos, where democracies find themselves, is also where the greatest creativity occurs. In short, democracies are worth fighting for. 1. Gershberg, Z. & Illing, S. (2022). The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion. The University of Chicago Press.
For example, a critical aspect of a democracy is self-correction. When one part of the system falters, the others can be used as tools to repair and strengthen it. This unique and inherent capacity for self-correction is what makes democracy so successful at delivering long-term stability and prosperity. This is not, however, readily captured by democracy indices.
In the US, self-correction has failed twice. In 2019 Trump was impeached over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Despite plenty of evidence supporting the indictment, the Senate could not reach the two-thirds majority needed to find him guilty. After the January 6 insurrection the country missed a second opportunity to impeach Trump. The hearings by the House Select Committee investigating the events on January 6 revealed that Republicans initially condemned Trump’s behavior – only to later acquit him during his second impeachment and downplay or rationalize the attack.[15]
This was perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself. The obvious reason so many Republicans balked is because they feared retribution from Trump’s enthusiastic followers, which remain in the millions, despite Trump’s heinous actions. In other words, unconditional support for Trump is the main reason the self-correcting process failed, placing American democracy in jeopardy. Trump’s infamous claim that he could “stand on 5th Avenue and shoot someone” and not lose support is frighteningly true.
The main sources of polarization: racism and xenophobia
Are Trump supporters “noble victims” of his lies, as some have tried to paint them, or willing participants and enablers? This is a complex question that has stimulated much research from sociologists and political scientists. There are various reasons given for Trump’s appeal. It has been argued, for instance, that people were driven to Trump because of economic anxiety and insecurity, or that they felt betrayed by the nation’s elites, or because of cultural alienation.[16] All these may have been contributing factors to Trump’s initial appeal. Yet, they do not really explain why so many people continue to support him. Evidently, his followers are connected to him by emotions that have the capacity to eclipse any rational debate (see Idea 11).
It is not hard to identify some of the “raw” emotions that bind them to Trump. For example, there is substantial evidence that Trump has encouraged racism and benefitted politically from it, and that Trump’s support in the 2016 campaign was driven by racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Overall, the data demonstrates that anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and sexism are much more strongly related to support for Trump than insecurity or economic factors.[17] This has contributed to the creation of a highly polarized society – those that support Trump no matter what, and those that are repulsed by him – to the point that many fear that another civil war is imminent.
The US is not the only democracy where politicians have encouraged racism for their own benefit. In 2015, the year before Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, known as Brexit, net migration to the UK reached a record high of 336,000, with many of them coming from Eastern Europe and Middle East. The idea of a foreign invasion was all over British media. Prime Minister David Cameron even talked publicly of a “swarm” of migrants trying to gain access to Britain.
Not surprisingly, when voting day came around, more British citizens chose, against the advice of most economic experts, to leave the E.U. than stay. Instead of a revitalized and stronger Britain, as promised by pro-Brexit politicians such as Boris Johnson, who’d become Prime Minister only to resign before the end of his term because of scandal and unpopularity, the country became economically stagnant, socially fragmented and politically adrift. Indeed, if the current trends continue, by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.[18]
Fragmentation is a common issue afflicting diverse democracies (see Box 20). The most effective way to deal with fragmentation, it would appear, is to reduce it. In fact, most developed democracies have made progress in creating a sense of common national identity. For example, despite its popular image of racism and intolerance, Germany has made great strides in assimilating immigrants; Muslim immigrants have an easier time finding a job and building a community than those in Switzerland, Austria, France and the UK.[19]
One recent successful story is that of Dr. Ugur Sahin, a Turkish immigrant, and his wife Dr. Özlem Türeci, born in Germany, the daughter of a Turkish physician. Their company, BioNTech, pioneered the development of an effective coronavirus vaccine, in association with the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer, whose CEO, Albert Bourla, is himself a Greek immigrant.
Yet, there is still a long way to go. The US is now struggling with some of the challenges of diversity, including a backlash against immigration from Latin America and bursts of Islamophobia. Prominent Republican leaders, such as Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, are doing their best to discontinue all the diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public institutions of higher-learning and restricting what teachers could say about race and racism.[20]
The US, the UK as well as other democracies, face a real danger that ethnic and religious fragmentation might slow or even reverse the progress of recent years. The increasing discrimination and marginalization of minority groups has incentivized many of them to hold on to their racial or religious identities. If these trends continue, there is a risk that these groups might fragment into increasingly rigid and hostile groups, further destabilizing democratic societies.
To conclude: Liberal democracy is worth fighting for
We have seen why diversity is a potential source of conflict in a democracy. Yet diversity is not only unavoidable, given current demographic and migration trends, but also desirable. A diverse democracy challenges each citizen to reckon with the perspectives of people whose backgrounds and worldviews are significantly different from their own. For a democracy to be truly successful, it needs to meet this challenge. Diversity can be an invaluable asset for a democracy that aims to engage with a world full of, well, highly diverse peoples.
Another intractable problem plaguing democracies is growing inequality. As the rich get richer, they use their wealth to get more power. They then use their power to get more wealth and so on. In the US, inequality is taking a toll on economic growth and is making the political system more dysfunctional, thus contributing to the instability of the economic system, which in turn generates more inequality. This is not just a problem for the US, as there are similar trends on a global scale. The concern with these trends is not only that they are exacerbating inequality, but that they will leave democracies “trapped” in a dysfunctional, stagnant state.[21]
To regain their status and compete economically, politically and morally against rising autocracies, democracies will need to achieve a successful transformation to multiracial, multi-cultural societies, in which all groups are treated equally under the law, have an equal saying in how government should function, and everyone has an opportunity to earn a decent living. This will be hard given the polarization and gridlock that afflicts many democratic societies.
But is saving democracy worth the effort? Maybe Fukuyama is wrong and there are better forms of political organizations to which humans can aspire. Maybe. Nonetheless, I agree with Winston Churchill, who famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Clearly, all systems of government have strengths and weaknesses. However, one unique strength of any democracy is the means it provides for people to bring attention to their own flaws and attempt to correct them. This is why losing this self-correcting feature spells doom for a democracy.
As mentioned earlier, the best bulwark against the implications of the dilemmas and challenges reviewed here is a discerning citizenry. If democracy requires independent-minded people who can reason well, autocracy requires the opposite: people who will obey orders about what to think as well as do. The real danger for a democracy is having gullible citizens that can be easily manipulated by demagogues and by anti-democratic agents. It is worrisome then, that millions of American citizens believe in conspiracies (see Idea 11). And on Jan. 6, 2021, we saw that a lot of them were willing to act on those beliefs.
As a first step, we all should be aware of the challenges and dangers facing democracies, so we can understand what is at stake. As democracies continuously evolve and become more diverse, we should also rethink basic questions such as:
What does it mean to be a citizen in an endangered world?
What obligations do we have to each other and to future generations?
What values do we share?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but they force us to think about what kind of country we want for ourselves, and for our children. It is for us to decide if we want to live as free agents in a democracy, or as blind followers in an autocracy.
[1]Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the 31st Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, Jul 23, 2022. [2]“Xi presents China as ‘new choice’ for humanity as he readies for next term,” by Christian Shepherd and Lily Kuo, The Washington Post. Oct 16, 2022. [3]“Historians privately warn Biden that America’s democracy is teetering,” by Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker and Tyler Pager, The Washington Post, Aug 10, 2022. [4]Center for Systemic Peace, https://www.systemicpeace.org/index.html. [5] “What Voters Think About Trump’s Post-Election Actions,” by Reid Epstein. The New York Times. Jul 13, 2022. [6]Mounk, Y. (2022). The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. Penguin Press, New York. p.8. [7] Center for Immigration Studies: Immigration Data Portal. (Retrieved Jul 18, 2022). https://cis.org/. [8] Collier, P. (2008). The Bottom Billion, Oxford University Press. [9]Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, writes in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue (p.3): “with the creation of the postwar order of mutually supporting liberal democracies with mixed economies, that challenge was being met, and as a result, more people in more places have lived longer, richer, freer lives than ever before. In ideological terms, at least, all the rest is commentary.” [10]Fukuyama, F. (1989). The End of History? The National Interest (16): 3–18. [11] “Freedom in the World 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rules,” by Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule. [12] “Over 50% of Americans expect a civil war 'in the next few years',” by Grayson Quay. The Week. Jul 20, 2022. [13]Diamond, L. (2004): What is Democracy? https://diamond-democracy.stanford.edu/events/lecture/what-democracy. [14]Munck, G. L & Verkuilen, J. (2002), Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices, Comparative Political Studies, 35 (1): 5–34, [15] For example, clips showed Kevin McCarthy, then the House minority leader, and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell declaring that Trump was responsible for the attack shortly after the insurrection. McConnell even went as far as saying “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.” Yet both of them voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment, and declared that they’d vote for him if he runs again for president “’I’ve Had It with This Guy’: GOP Leaders Privately Blasted Trump After Jan. 6,” by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times. Apr 21, 2022. [16]“I Was Wrong About Trump Voters,” by Bret Stephens, The New York Times, Jul 21, 2022. [17]Williamson, V. & Gelfand, I. (2019). Trump and racism: What do the data say? The Brookings Institution. Aug 14, 2019. [18]“The uncomfortable question: Was the Brexit vote based on racism?” By Adam Taylor The Washington Post, Jun 25, 2016. Also, “The Fantasy of Brexit Britain Is Over,” by Richard Seymour, The New York Times. Aug 1, 2022. Also, “Britain’s Cautionary Tale of Self-Destruction,” by David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times, Jan 25, 2023. [19]“Muslims assimilate well in Germany, even though many Germans don’t like them, a new study finds,” by Amanda Erickson, The Washington Post, Aug 25, 2017. [20]“DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one,” by Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, Jan 7, 2023. [21] Stiglitz, J. (2012). The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future, W. W. Norton & Co. Also: Vitali S., Glattfelder, J. B. & Battiston S (2011) The Network of Global Corporate Control. PLoS ONE 6(10).
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