The Confidence Trap : A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present - Revised Edition / David Runciman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Runciman, David, author.

Contributor:

Runciman, David.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Democracy--History--20th century.

Democracy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (398 pages)

Edition:

Revised

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them-and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything-a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Tocqueville: Democracy and Crisis

Chapter 1. 1918: False Dawn

Chapter 2. 1933: Fear Itself

Chapter 3. 1947: Trying Again

Chapter 4. 1962: On the Brink

Chapter 5. 1974: Crisis of Confidence

Chapter 6. 1989: The End of History

Chapter 7. 2008: Back to the Future

Epilogue: The Confidence Trap

Afterword to the Revised Edition

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9781400888757

1400888751

OCLC:

1054881924