Between the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and the Arab Spring in 2011, the conventional wisdom of global political discourse has been celebrating two decades of “democracy” triumphant. Within actually existing democracies, by contrast, citizens are in mourning over “democratic deficits.” Obviously the dream of democracy is more pleasant than the nightmare of dictatorship, but don’t dreams and nightmares alike plunge us into a vulnerable state of sleep? This book is about what sort of democracy we might wake up to after the harsh and invigorating salts of realism come under our noses.

Consider how the performance of rich constitutional states on the major issues of the twenty-first century threatens to spoil the democratic triumph. On international terrorism, many of them decided that exporting their own political systems through military invasion would be the cure, with the result that the lucky recipients thereof have descended to new levels of lawlessness and civil war. This sort of policy choice makes Western democracy look out of touch with the realities of various places and peoples. On two equally ominous global issues, financial volatility and ecological degradation, most of the rich republics look like uninterested or distracted stewards of the public business, suggesting a more basic problem than particular politicians’ policy choices. Swaying delightfully down at the local saloon, the sheriff and deputies show little interest in the action around town, preferring to booze on ideological abstractions and ethnocultural myths: the sanctity of rights, the priority of liberty, the sovereignty of ballots, and so on. This is a good strategy, at least, for putting bullets in your own feet.