Abstract

"When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his seminal work Democracy in America (1835), he regarded democracy as the future of the West. Subsequent events, from the collapse of communism to the recent popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, seem to confirm his prescience. But a closer look at the history of democracy from the 1830s down to the present reveals a far more complicated picture. In fact, author Chilton Williamson Jr. concludes, the future appears rather unpromising for democratic institutions around the world. After Tocqueville traces that history and examines that future. Williamson shows that in Europe democracy has tended toward socialism, in America toward nationalism. Indeed, the definitions and concepts of "democracy" have become so varied that the very term democracy is in effect meaningless--something upon which people have never been able to agree, and never will"--