From Democracy Digest. Here is an excerpt:

The consensus on democratic norms has shown signs of fraying in recent years, with increased polarization, disillusion and authoritarian patterns of governance, including in advanced Western democracies, a recent World Economic Forum heard (above).

In the wake of what Stanford professor Larry Diamond, founding co-editor of the NED’s Journal of Democracy, calls the democratic recession, how serious are the strains on democracy and what steps can be taken to reinvigorate democratic societies and institutions? asked Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, executive editor of Foreign Affairs. 

Democracy is in crisis because we ignored the social problems caused by globalization, mismanaged the challenges of immigration and cultural diversity, and failed to appreciate how social media have changed the ways in which public opinion is structured and influences, said Egils Levits, the President of Latvia. Populism “offers the wrong answers to the right problems,” he added.

Read the full article here.