What Happened to Liberal Democracy?

A new theory of liberalism for a post-industrial world, from Nobel prize winning author of Why Nations Fail. Economist Daron Acemoglu offers a new theory of liberalism, one that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - rehabilitate liberal ideas and practices, now more than ever.

Shared prosperity, equality, democratic values and the free pursuit of knowledge. Liberalism promised much, and even delivered on some of those promises. But now the remaining relics of establishment liberalism are being eroded by elitism, intolerance and rising autocracy. What went wrong? And what comes next? Liberalism flourished as the underdog in a sea of competing political ideologies. But once it became the dominant ideology, it faltered. It failed to adapt in a postindustrialist world. And the very systems designed to deliver prosperity began to undermine it. Nobel prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu offers a new theory of liberalism, one that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - rehabilitate liberal ideas and practices, now more than ever.

Autorentext

Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT, Faculty Co-Director of MIT's Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, and a Research Affiliate at MIT's newly established Blueprint Labs.

He has been awarded several prizes for this work, including the John Bates Clark Medal, the Nemmers Prize, the BBVA Frontiers Award, and the Global Economy Prize. Most recently, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024.

Acemoglu's work and writing has been featured in leading publications, including, among others, the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Prospect, TIME, and WIRED magazines.

Acemoglu is the author of six books, including Why Nations Fail with James A. Robinson, for which they were jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize.

Klappentext

'Timely ... an important call to arms' FINANCIAL TIMES

'A must-read' THOMAS PIKETTY, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

'A thoughtful solution to the most important question of modern democracy' JARED DIAMOND, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

**'Brilliant and insightful a tour de force' STEVEN LEVITT, author of Freakonomics
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From its inception, liberalism offered a glittering promise of shared prosperity, equality, democratic values and the free pursuit of knowledge. At first, it flourished. And then it faltered. Once a tantalising beacon of hope, it began to erode and decay at the hands of elitism, intolerance and rising autocracy.

One could say that liberalism is broken. So what comes next?

Nobel prize-winning co-author of Why Nations Fail Daron Acemoglu charts the rise and fall of liberal democracy, and offers hope for a way forward: a new theory that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - remake liberalism before it's too late.