The Trouble With Democracy

The Trouble With Democracy

A bad couple of months for Western democracy: NSA scandal, US government shutdown, Syrian fiasco. Are these structural problems, and are they getting worse? Yes and no. “The pattern of democratic life is to drift into impending disaster and then to stumble out of it. What is hard for any democracy is to exert the constant, vigilant pressure needed to rein in the forces that produce the crises. It is so much easier to wait for the crisis to reveal itself”