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.
The “democratic deconsolidation” thesis is overblown. Emancipative values continue to spread worldwide, and clearly point to brighter democratic days ahead.
Liberty and self-government are not only good in themselves, but also have powerful and beneficial effects on a nation’s level of economic development and prosperity.
