***Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award*From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty**Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fa...

America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq-a sobering and critical assessment of America's effort to implant democracyIn the fall of 2003, Stanford professor Larry Diamond received a call from Condoleezza Rice, asking if he would spend several months in Baghdad as an adviser to the American occupation authorities. Diamond had not been a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he felt that the task of building ...

The United States, Taiwan, and China are bound within a "silicon triangle." Semiconductors link our geopolitics, our ongoing economic prosperity, and our technological competitiveness. This book draws on the deliberations of a multidisciplinary Hoover Institution–Asia Society working group of technologists, economists, military strategists, industry players, and regional policy experts to contemplate the dynamic global supply chain in semiconductors—one in which US industry faces growing v...

"A neatly structured survey examines the prospects for universal democracy. . . . A refreshingly evenhanded overview of democracy's global prospects." — Kirkus Reviews"Meticulous [and] gleaned from his experience . . . Diamond is at his best when he recounts how ordinary people affect the democratic process." — The New York Times Book ReviewIn 1974, nearly three-quarters of all countries were dictatorships: today, more than ...

While Americans are generally aware of China's ambitions as a global economic and military superpower, few understand just how deeply and assertively that country has already sought to influence American society. As the authors of this volume write, it is time for a wake-up call. In documenting the extent of Beijing's expanding influence operations inside the United States, they aim to raise awareness of China's efforts to penetrate and sway a range of American institutions: state and loca...

Leading experts on China offer their enlightening analysis on one of the most crucial and complex questions facing the future of international politics.Moving toward open markets and international trade has brought extraordinary economic success to China, yet its leadership still maintains an authoritarian grip over its massive population. From repressing political movements to controlling internet traffic, China's undemocratic policies present an attractive model ...

Eight preeminent scholars debate the future of democracy.For almost a decade, Freedom House’s annual survey has highlighted a decline in democracy in most regions of the globe. While some analysts draw upon this evidence to argue that the world has entered a “democratic recession,” others dispute that interpretation, emphasizing instead democracy’s success in maintaining the huge gains it made during the last quarter of the twentieth century.Discussion of t...

East Asian democracies are in trouble, their legitimacy threatened by poor policy performance and undermined by nostalgia for the progrowth, soft-authoritarian regimes of the past. Yet citizens throughout the region value freedom, reject authoritarian alternatives, and believe in democracy.This book is the first to report the results of a large-scale survey-research project, the East Asian Barometer, in which eight research teams conducted national-sample surveys in five new democr...

This book evaluates the global status and prospects of democracy, with an emphasis on the quality of democratic institutions and the effectiveness of governance as key conditions for stable democracy. Bringing together a wide range of the author’s work over the past three decades, it advances a framework for assessing the quality of democracy and it analyzes alternative measures of democracy. Drawing on the most recent data from Freedom House, it assesses the global state of democracy and ...

With democracy in decline, authoritarian governments are staging a comeback around the world.Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retr...

World-renowned scholars explore how political clientelism works and evolves in the context of modern developing democracies.What happens when vote buying becomes a means of social policy? Although one could cynically ask this question just as easily about the United States’s mature democracy, Diego Abente Brun and Larry Diamond ask this question about democracies in the developing world through an assessment of political clientelism, or what is commonly known as pa...

Democratization scholars believe that the next regional wave of transitions to democracy may unfold in East and Southeast Asia.In their introduction to the 1998 edition of Democracy in East Asia, Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner predicted that East Asia, with its remarkable diversity of political regimes, economies, and religions, would likely be the most critical arena in the global struggle for democracy, a prediction that has proven prescient. Althoug...