The Future of Freedom

Fareed Zakaria separates democracy from liberty and argues that the first does not guarantee the second. Starting from a historical overview of Western democracy, he contends that a liberal democracy is more likely to form and endure when an autocracy liberalizes first, as in South Korea, than when a society holds elections before building liberal institutions, as Western Europe did early in the twentieth century. He describes illiberal democracies, regimes mixing elections with authoritarian rule, as the product of democratizing without a sound market economy and checks and balances. Zakaria then turns the argument on the United States, linking perceived failures of government to growing democratization. A later afterword addresses building democracy in occupied Iraq.

Michael Voss, co-author of B.S. Incorporated, read it while heading internal communications at a Fortune 50 company expanding abroad, and said it gave him insight into the geopolitical forces shaping the world and showed him the risks and opportunities ahead for businesses that operate globally.