Revised October 7, 2016                                                                                                                      PDF Version         

by Eric Chenoweth

Editorial boards of newspapers have become the most responsible civic voices in this year’s US presidential election. […]

Revised July 28, 2016                                                                                                                                  PDF Version

by Eric Chenoweth

“Democracy may, after all, turn out to be an historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes.” — Jean François Revel, How Democracies Perish, 1983

There have been many who prognosticated democracy’s doom. […]

June 24, 2016                                                                                                                                              PDF Version

by Eric Chenoweth

In 1976, the French political theorist Jean François Revel warned of the “totalitarian temptation” in the West at a time when many intellectuals were attacking political democracy, often in favor of Soviet communism. Forty years later, the danger posed by Soviet communism is gone, but political democracy is again under severe threat, this time from an authoritarian temptation that has reached the United States. […]