A review of Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals, by Ernest Gellner.
About the Author
Marc F. Plattner, founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy. He also serves as cochair of the International Advisory Board of the Institute for Political Studies at the Portuguese Catholic University.
In 2011–13, the undemocratic political outlook of both secular and Islamist actors helped to ensure the failure of democracy in Egypt. Today, the populace appears to have backed away from…
The “democratic deconsolidation” thesis is overblown. Emancipative values continue to spread worldwide, and clearly point to brighter democratic days ahead.
