What Happened to Liberal Democracy?

Shared prosperity, equality, democratic values and the free pursuit of knowledge. Liberalism promised much, and even delivered on some of those promises. But now the remaining relics of establishment liberalism are being eroded by elitism, intolerance and rising autocracy. What went wrong? And what comes next?

Liberalism flourished as the underdog in a sea of competing political ideologies. But once it became the dominant ideology, it faltered. It failed to adapt in a postindustrialist world. And the very systems designed to deliver prosperity began to undermine it.

Nobel prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu offers a new theory of liberalism, one that lays the groundwork for how we can - and must - rehabilitate liberal ideas and practices, now more than ever.