BACK in 1935, George Dangerfield wrote a book about the pre-1914 period called "The Strange Death of Liberal England". In this, he pointed out that Edwardian Britain, often portrayed as a Arcadian era before the horrors of the Somme, was in fact marked by violent protests - over women's suffrage (hunger strikes and bombs), workers' rights (frequent strikes) and Irish home rule (the threat of mutiny and civil war). The cracks in the system were already apparent.
The high point for liberal democratic triumphalism is often seen as the fall of the Soviet Union and the publication of "The End of History and the Last Man", Francis Fukuyama's 1992 influential book. A quarter of a century later, and democracy looks a lot less healthy, an argument I have returned to often in this blog (and a book). Voters have become disillusioned with the parties of the centre-left and the centre-right and a good chunk of them have been on the...Continue reading
from Economics http://ift.tt/1HQFpHI
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment