Book Review: the confidence trap: a history of democracy from World War I to the present by David Runciman

In David Runciman’s new book on the nature of democratic crisis, the author looks at a history of such events from the early 20th Century to today. In doing so, he makes the argument that democracy is good at ‘muddling through’ crises, but less good at the long-term planning which averts them. Sean Kippin argues that it is a useful resource for understanding the nature of the particular events covered, though not necessarily a unifying theory of democratic crisis.