Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War, 1971-2017

There are a wide variety of reasons we are currently experiencing a “crisis of democracy” in the United States and Europe; many of them stretch back decades and others are more recent. While there is more than one reason for the way things are now, Simon Reid-Henry generally just focuses on the economic-political forces in this book, with the emphasis on the economic side for most of the book. This is what most historians would call ‘a history at the top’, focusing on the power players, the leaders, etc. whilst almost ignoring the bottom part, the life of average people and smaller communities. In focusing on such a narrow area, economics, and generally not really paying attention to other factors, that is what makes his argument weaker overall. Mr. Reid-Henry is correct in stating that nation-states made drastic changes to their economic systems that had long-reaching impacts but that ignored larger social changes as well which impacted on the way people thought. By focusing on the West, and only looking at other countries in Asia and Africa as they interacted with Western countries, also makes his case less convincing.