With David Runciman, Lyse Doucet, Thant Myint-U and Christopher Clark

At the end of 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by David Runciman (which would later become a book) with the title: ‘Is this how democracy ends?’

‘It is not possible to keep behaving like this without damaging the basic machinery of democratic government,’ he wrote of Trump’s election. ‘Fake disruption followed by institutional paralysis, and all the while the real dangers continue to mount. Ultimately, that is how democracy ends.’

Ten years on, the LRB and David’s Past Present Future podcast have assembled an exceptional panel to reflect on the state of democracy in the West, and around the world. Will democracy survive as a 21st-century form of government, or are we watching it slide towards bankruptcy, first gradually, then suddenly, as Hemingway put it?