Liberal Democracy Needs a Cause Worth Fighting for to Survive

Liberal Democracy Needs a Cause Worth Fighting for to Survive
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., April 4, 2013 (AP photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez).

The emergence of nativist movements and populist leaders in Europe and America has had Western liberal democracy on the ropes over the past few years. Two developments in the past week suggest that things could get worse before they get better.

The implications of the first development were clear. The two most formidable long-term challengers and counterweights to Western power—Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin—were returned to office, perhaps indefinitely.

The second might take some time to sort through and make sense of. Revelations about the practices of a British political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, have put the spotlight on the potential uses and abuses of the massive amounts of user information generated—and ostensibly safeguarded—by Facebook, as well as other social media and Big Data giants.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review