"The Great Experiment" by Yascha Mounk

Talk of democracy being endangered is fashionable these days. It’s easy to be alarmed but Yascha Mounk says there are reasons to be optimistic. In “The Great Experiment,” Mounk spells out his reasons: “Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly,” he said. Achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world and is the greatest experiment of our time, said Mounk.   Mounk said societies have long suffered from domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy. So it is hardly surprising that most people are pessimistic of a harmonious outcome but Mounk said the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in the future. There is real reason for hope.“It could go wrong in all kinds of ways but in the United States, we’ve made some real progress,” he told Steve Tarter.   It is up to us and the institutions we build whether different groups will come to see each other as enemies or friends, as strangers or compatriots. To make diverse democracies endure, and even thrive, we need to create a world in which our identities come to matter less—not because we ignore the injustices that still exist but because we have succeeded in addressing them said Mounk..   Scanning the globe, Mounk said there are no perfect democracies to emulate and that nobody is doing any better at it than the United States.We need to reject politicians who are unwilling to compromise and try to pit groups against one another, he said.