"Adam Smith's ahistoric view": John Kay engraving, 1790. Wikicommons/United States Library of Congress. Public domain.
It is difficult to find a major country in which democratic institutions are not under stress, in many cases under aggressive attack. The United States has a profoundly anti-democratic regime. In Europe long-standing authoritarian tendencies have enjoyed a quantum leap under the neoliberal austerity regime fostered by the German government under cover of the European Commission.
The draconian austerity measures that were imposed on Greek citizens represent an obvious and shocking example of the mainstream authoritarian trend in Europe. Authoritarian movements and political parties hold power in Austria, Italy, Poland and Hungary. Outside the EU, efforts of the government of Europe’s most populous country, Russia, to undermine democracy domestically and in the rest of Europe are well-documented. The few developments in major countries supportive of democracy come in Spain where the Socialists hold government and the progressive and participatory Podemos is a strong political force; and the shift of the British Labour Party to social democracy with the imminent possibility of an election victory.
