The Many Lives of Democracy: Edward Luce and Anne Applebaum in conversation with Suhasini Haidar

Democracy has many faces, many lives, subject to change, investigation, reform. In The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Edward Luce makes a larger statement about the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of liberal democracy, of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a terrifying symptom. He warns of the dangerous ignorance of the West regarding its own socio-political trajectory, and its arrogance towards society's economic losers, insisting that we cannot move forward without a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. In her bookTwilight of Democracy, staff writer for The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum stirs a deeper inquiry into the nature of democracy and the rising appeal of an age-old blend of nationalism and autocracy. Fuelled by the discourse of conspiracy theory, political polarization and the 21st century use of social media, she charts the rising era of illiberalism and antidemocratic trends within the West. The two talk to Suhasini Haidar who is the diplomatic and national editor at The Hindu.