As democratically elected populists challenge liberalism, seeing it as the ideology of the elite, we ask whether democracy and liberalism are in tension, and whether they can coexist.

Rather than equating good government with democracy, should we instead ask whether governments are improving living standards? Is it time to drop the term “democracy,” and talk instead about more concrete ideas, such as elections and wealth redistribution? Or is democracy still our best weapon against tyranny? 

After two World Wars destroyed competing colonial powers, the United States forged a global hegemony of unprecedented size and reach, absorbing the remnants of fallen empires into a single Pax Americana. But with the rise of China, military losses culminating in Iran and Ukraine, and the relentless deepening of economic inequality inside the US, this undemocratic American empire is being undermined, shifting the global order.