Amazing perspective on the big questions.
I would love to read an update from Mr. Zakaria on the observations he made back in 2003.

I can already imagine the breathless, mindless cries of "Elitist!" or quotations from the Declaration of Independence when thinking about this book.

Fareed Zakaria makes an argument for a more technocratic agency-run government that is still democratically elected but--as with his domestic examples of the Supreme Court, the military, or the Federal Reserve--is insulated from direct political pressure. Applying this principle to the United States' foreign policy, he suggests a transition period where the scales are tipped towards "Liberty," or classical liberalism, more than straight out democratic rule. In doing so, the Western world may have to tolerate dictatorships or at the very least, install some of our own friendly autocratic regimes in order to ease these countries' transitions into democracy.

What is interesting is to see how--since this book was published in 2003--Zakaria's theories have played out. Most prominently in my mind was his anticipation of the Arab Spring and how with a little nudge from the United States and tolerance for a milder autocratic leader, a place like Iraq could begin its transition to liberal democracy. At that time, many commentators and theorists of all political stripes were making the same argument. Yet with the advantage of hindsight in 2013, this policy might rank as the top foreign policy disaster we have made since the Vietnam War.
Essentially, his prescription for "more liberty" in our foreign affairs is to tolerate leaders who afford less liberty.

The central point of the Zakaria's book is that too much democracy can do more harm than good. A democratic government will only be just and work towards the common good if it operates within certain parameters (as opposed to direct democracy and mob rule). Delegating decision-making to unelected agencies that are supervised by elected officials will ultimately move government to a place where it does what is best for its constituents and not merely what is most popular at any given moment. Lobbyists and would-be tax code manipulators like today's Congress would not be able to easily sway agencies and officials who aren't under the daily pressure to get reelected.

Only, this already occurs. Going back to Zakaria's gold standards--the Supreme Court, the military, and the Federal Reserve-- these institutions are rife with political considerations and secret influence by corporate lobbyists. From the Roberts Court's mental gymnastics to assist corporate America in its looting to the Pentagon's outright corrupt practices in contracting, there is no insulation from politics unless we remove democracy from our government altogether.

On some points, I agree with Zakaria (why is it that our tax-code is merely hundreds of pages of corporate welfare?) I don't think the standard criticism of some functionary or judge being "unelected" and therefore somehow illegitimate is a valid one. Yet, as Zakaria points out himself, democracy is neither a force for good nor evil. This leads me to conclude that if there is indeed something dysfunctional with American democracy, then there is something dysfunctional with American society. That kind of society delegating more decision-making power to agencies won't hold back corruption or undue influence.

This is an important book to read at this time. It considers many issues and really should be read rather than the soundbites.

Dân chủ chưa hẳn đã tự do, và Tự do có thể tồn tại trong một đất nước kém dân chủ. Nền dân chủ xuất phát từ đâu, và vì sao phát triển không đồng đều ở các châu lục? Liệu nền chính trị Hoa Kỳ (một nền dân chủ rất được ngưỡng mộ hiện nay) có thực sự hiệu quả? Liệu sự dân chủ thái quá (ví dụ như các cuộc trưng cầu dân ý) có làm mất tự do? Đó là một phần những câu hỏi mà cuốn "Tương lai của tự do" tìm cách trả lời.

Được xuất bản năm 2003, và được dịch ra hơn 20 ngôn ngữ, "Tương lai của tự do" được xem là một cuốn sách kinh điển hiện đại về đề tài Tự do - Dân chủ, một đề tài dương như chiếm được sự quan tâm của hầu hết người dân Việt Nam có quan tâm đến chính trị, những người vẫn hàng ngày nhìn thấy sự bế tắc và không khí ngột ngạt của nền chính trị nước nhà.

Được khởi đầu bằng một cuộc truy nguyên về lịch sử xa xôi của loài người, và cố gắng tìm ra đâu là xuất phát điểm của tinh thần dân chủ, "Tương lai của tự do" đã tạo nên sự khác biệt rất thuyết phục so với hầu hết những cuốn sách được viết ra và bàn luận về tự do, với những khái niệm, phạm trù, định nghĩa, diễn giải và đề xuất giải pháp rất khô khan và có phần "tháp ngà" của những cuốn sách hàn lâm thuộc dòng này mà ta thường thấy. Người đọc sẽ tìm thấy những luận giải rất thú vị trong sách về lịch sử, kinh tế, xã hội...để thấy được nền tự do của loài người không phải ngẫu nhiên xuất hiện khi chủ nghĩa tư bản hình thành, mà nó đã có từ lâu, thật bất ngờ, từ cuộc "ly hôn" của nhà nước và tôn giáo: Cuộc dời đô từ La Mã sang Constantinople của Constantine.

Những chương tiếp theo, bằng cách phân tích rất sắc xảo của một nhà báo lành nghề, Fareed Zakaria đưa người đọc đến những câu hỏi mà có lẽ ai quan tâm đến đề tài này cũng thấy, nhưng không phải ai cũng có thể trả lời: Vì sao nền dân chủ thực sự hoạt động hiệu quả ở những quốc gia như Tây Âu và Hoa Kỳ, nhưng rất kém hiệu quả ở những nước vùng Trung Đông, Nam Mỹ và Đông Âu? Nếu câu trả lời nằm ở việc dân chủ là sự đảm bảo cho thịnh vượng và phát triển kinh tế, thì đâu là câu trả lời thỏa đáng cho Singapore, Hàn Quốc, Hồng Kong...? (Một cái nháy mắt đến cuốn sách "Tại sao các quốc gia thất bại" đã được xuất bản ở VN). Câu trả lời của Fareed Zakaria dường như thuyết phục hơn, khi ông cho rằng các quốc gia nên cải cách kinh tế trước, và đạt được một mức độ thịnh vượng nhất định và tạo ra được một tầng lớp trung lưu đa số, thì mới tiến hành cải cách chính trị theo hướng dân chủ. (Các số liệu thống kê ở nhiều quốc gia mà cuốn sách cung cấp, chứng minh rất thuyết phục cho luận điểm này). Tất nhiên, không có một bài thuốc nào công hiệu cho mọi bệnh tình ở các quốc gia, và tác giả cũng thừa nhận như vậy, nhưng "xét từ góc độ lịch sử, chỉ có đúng một câu trả lời hay nhất cho câu hỏi này, đó là sự thịnh vượng về kinh tế".

Cuốn sách còn cung cấp rất nhiều những phân tích sâu sát liên quan đến chính trị vùng Trung Đông, và Hoa Kỳ, để cho thấy vì sao mặc dù rất nhiều quốc gia tuy giàu có và ôn hòa, vẫn gặp rất nhiều khó khăn khi tiến hành dân chủ hóa, và vì sao một nền dân chủ mạnh như Hoa Kỳ lại ngày càng đưa ra những quyết sách kém tự do đi. Nền tự do của thế giới trong thế kỷ XXI sẽ đi về đâu, và đâu là con đường tốt nhất cho Việt Nam, đó là câu hỏi mà mỗi người đọc sẽ phải tự suy ngẫm và tìm câu trả lời cho chính mình.

Một cuốn sách rất thú vị và xuất sắc giới thiệu cùng bạn đọc.

Nečítam veľa politológie, preto nemám s čím porovnávať. Ale zdá sa mi, že toto je výborná kniha. Oceňujem analýzu politiky moslimského sveta, lebo oblasť dosť dobre poznám. Brilantná je analýza úpadku politických strán. Všetci nadšenci priamej demokracie by si mali prečítať príslušnú kapitolu, je dosť odstrasujuca. A fajn je obhajoba európskej únie.

Everyone should read this book. It explains economics , history and politics. It is an amazingly clear book.

A critical and unique perspective on how democracy in practice is not the same as lofty theories idealized by leaders.

Too often with books that address contemporary politics, a favorable review is dependent on the reviewer endorsing the same argument as the author. I will start by saying that I reject and/or have major qualms with many of the arguments that the author puts forward. That said, I think Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, published in 2003, raises questions that we cannot afford to ignore given the recent upsurge in authoritarian populism and alt-right violence in the United States and elsewhere. While the book, written in the immediate wake of 9/11, devotes many more pages to the future of democracy in the Middle East and East Asia, it does devote several chapters specifically to the United States and offers a theoretical approach to the rise of illiberal democracy that strives for universal applicability.

Zakaria begins the book by drawing a clear line between democracy and constitutional liberalism. The former he defines simply as a government in which officials are elected by the adult populace in largely free and fair elections. Liberal constitutionalism, he states, refers to a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but one which is defined by the rule of law and the protection of certain basic freedoms, such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc. This bundle of freedoms, he argues, has nothing to do with democracy. A democracy can include protection of those freedoms, in which case it is a liberal democracy. If it does not safeguard those freedoms or operate according to the rule of law, it becomes an illiberal democracy. As noted earlier, the vast majority of the book focuses on why liberal democracy has failed to take root in other parts of the world, that is, why newly created liberal democracies devolve first into illiberal democracies and then dictatorships. He claims that democracy requires a strong middle class, a strong civil society, and a system of governmental checks and balances that not only keeps elites in check but also imposes restrictions on democratization. The latter may seem surprising too many Americans, who assume more democracy is always good. But as he notes, civil rights' gains in the 1950s/ 1960s came first through the courts in the United States -- the least democratic of institutions--not through Congress.

He also claims that reforms introduced in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s that were intended to make government more transparent had unintended negative consequences. For example, he argues that the so-called Sunshine laws that aimed to make Congress more answerable to the public, actually made Congress more vulnerable to influence by special interest groups. Because negotiations no longer took place behind closed doors, senators and members of the House found it more difficult to ignore special interest groups who controlled the purse strings for their reelection campaigns. Similarly, he argues that the introduction of party primaries undermined the authority of political parties and contributed to polarized politics and legislative deadlock. Once the party no longer chose candidates, it lost substantial power over those candidates. Moreover, since the people in both parties who vote in primaries tend to be more activist-oriented, the candidates that they choose tend to lean more toward the far right or far left. As a result, the introduction of more democracy actually resulted in candidates who were less representative of the US populace as a whole. It also made these same candidates more beholden to fund-raising entities to win elections. The result of these developments has been that parties take on the positions of whoever is at the head of the ticket, rather than the candidate taking on the positions of the party. One need to look no further than the current crisis in the Republican Party, during and post-Trump, to see that there is a grain of truth in this analysis. However, I could not help asking myself is the solution to this problem actually less democracy or more? In other words, is the answer in fact returning to a closed-door system of selecting candidates? Instead, might the correction to this issue be finding ways to ensure that more Americans vote in primaries, so that the candidates chosen would then represent more closely the position of most Americans, rather than that of a minority? This is not to say that more democratization is always the answer, just that we need to be careful that we do not do a knee-jerk reaction in the other direction.

I also was surprised after spending multiple chapters explaining why the success of liberal democracy is intrinsically linked to the presence of a strong middle class (minimum average income) in other parts of the world, the author did not spend more time addressing the erosion of the middle class in this country as a threat to democracy's survival. The gap between the haves and have nots in this country as been expanding exponentially since the 1980s. How does the growth of this gap affect the future of democracy in this country? And what will happen, if as Zakaria suggests is necessary, we were to reduce social security benefits? Would not the very middle class that he defines as essential for liberal democracy be crippled if we reduce the social safety net even further? As for other countries, such as South Korea, where the author seems to think the country followed the right approach, that is economic reform first, then political reform, the author largely glosses over the years of human rights abuses that cost the lives of many South Koreans

Beyond the political sphere, Zakaria also makes some thought-provoking points about how democratization has reshaped nonpolitical institutions such as cultural and religious institutions. For example, democratization of culture has had some potentially unsavory consequences for libraries and museums, which rather than trying to shape public tastes, now simply mirror consumer interests and tastes. This change can be seen in that many libraries now use the word "customers" or "users" rather than "patrons." This change in nomenclature has been accompanied by libraries stocking more romances, westerns, and mysteries and many fewer difficult reads. The problem with this strategy is that libraries are no longer serving as the "poor man's university" as increasingly the expectation is that libraries should be run using a business model -- give the customer what he/she wants.

Ultimately the book boils down to one question: Does less equal more when it comes to preserving democracy in the twenty-first century? And if so, how do we restore the delicate balance between democratization and a system of checks and balances without allowing the pendulum to swing too far back in the other direction? While the author’s concerns about popular democracy and about the tyranny of the majority certainly are not unfounded, his failure to address systematically how the corruption of elites can be checked is a major flaw in his analysis? After all, the reforms of which he is so critical did not occur in a vacuum; at least in the United States, they were the product of blatant abuses of power by elites that the current system of checks and balances failed to prevent (the political boss system of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Watergate, Vietnam, etc.).

So although I would argue Zakaria’s analysis suffers from major flaws, it is a read that is sure to spark discussion no matter where the reader is on the political spectrum.

کتاب سعی می‌کنه بگه چطور دموکراسی که همه این سالها مساوی با آزادی در نظر گرفته شده، گاهی سد راه آزادی میشه. چه وقتی که تو کشورهایی که زمینه مساعدی برای تشکیل دموکراسی ندارند پیاده میشه و استبداد اکثریت رو شکل میده، مثل ایران. و چه وقتی که این روند افراطی دموکراتیزه کردن همه نهادهای قدرت تو دموکراسی‌های لیبرالی مثل آمریکا باعث هرج و مرج و تحمیل هزینه‌های اقتصادی و اجتماعی مختلف به کشور میشه. نویسنده میخواد بگه لیبرالیزه کردن حکومت به دموکراتیزه کردن‌اش تقدم داره. نشون میده که خیلی حکومت‌های غیر دموکرات که حاکمین‌شون به سمت لیبرالیزه کردن حکومت رفتند و بعد آرام آرام روند دموکراسی شدن رو طی کردند در نهایت تبدیل شدند به دموکراسی‌های لیبرالی با ثبات و قدرتمند، مثل نمونه‌های شرق آسیا. و بر عکس، حکومت‌هایی که به زور خارجی دموکراسی رو وارد کردند خیلی زود به ورطه دیکتاتوری افتادند. بعد سعی میکنه نشون بده دموکراسی کنترل نشده تو یه لیبرال دموکراسی موفق مثل امریکا چطور میتونه ضررهای هنگفت اقتصادی و اجتماعی به بار بیاره. زکریا معتقده باید بخش‌هایی از قدرت رو غیر دموکراتیک نگه داشت و از فشار مردم و لابی‌ها و چانه‌زنی‌ها دور کرد، در عین حال که باید به دولت و نمایندگان مردم پاسخگو باشند و فعالیت شفاف داشته باشند. و معتقده که باید هر چه بیشتر به سمت دموکراسی غیرمستقیم و پارلمانی برگشت و از دموکراسی مستقیم رفراندوم‌ها و نظرسنجی‌ها فاصله گرفت.
در کل جذاب‌ترین کتابی بود که تو این یکی دو سال خوندم. هم از جهت اطلاعات تاریخی که میده، هم از جهت تحلیل‌هایی که میکنه. نکته اینه که کتاب ده سال پیش منتشر شده و خیلی هشدارهایی که میده رو وقتی با وقایع این چند سال تطبیق میدی میبینی هشدارهای به جایی بوده. مثلا وقتی از حفظ حکومت مبارک در مصر دفاع میکنه اما هشدار میده که باید اجازه داده بشه که گروه‌های اسلام‌گرا مثل اخوان المسلمین از فضای تبلیغی صرف خارج بشن و وارد جریانات سیاسی کشور بشن تا مردم بتونن نگاه واقع‌بینانه‌تری بهشون داشته باشن.
تو فصلی که راجع به کشورهای اسلامی حرف میزنه، یه سری دلایل رو میگه برای توضیح اینکه چرا این کشورها سخت‌تر به سمت لیبرال دموکراسی حرکت می‌کنن، که یه بخش جالب‌اش بحث منابع انرژیه و اینکه دولت از فروش منابع انرژی ثروتمنده و نیازی به ثروت مردم نداره و مردم یه جورایی وامدار دولت‌اند. و یه موضوع مهم بحث عرفی نشدن اسلام برای مردمه - بخاطر ذات اسلام که اصولن مثل کلیسا هیچ وقت سلسله مراتب مشخص و ثابتی نداشته بعد از فروپاشی سیستم خلیفه‌گری- که زمینه قدرت گرفتن حکومت‌های دینی رو فراهم میکنه. و اینجا میاد از ایران به عنوان تنها استثنای این قاعده اسم میاره و میگه سازمانی که بعد از انقلاب برای روحانیت در ایران ایجاد شد، خیلی شبیه به سازمان کلیسا در اعصار گذشته‌ست و با این روندی که در این سالها طی شده، ایران در آینده ناچار به سمت یه دموکراسی سکولار میره و مردم برای همیشه به اسلام سیاسی پشت می‌کنن. همونطور که جامعه مسیحی این کار رو کرد. درمان مسیحی برای بیماری مسیحی ایران شیعی.

The premise of the book is that democracy and freedom are not the same thing. Zakaria believs that too much direct democracy is bad. He believes that the indirect republican form of democracy is the best form of governance that leads to more freedom than direct democracy does.

I agree with the author that freedom and democracy are not the same thing. Minority rights can be trampled by direct democracy where people make the laws. Just witness the results Proposition 8 in California. A few polls have even shown that many United States citizens think that The Bill of Rights is too radical. Conversely, a republican democracy is better able to protect minority rights and give freedom to more people. The Civil Rights Act in the 60s probably never would have passed under a direct democracy.

I part with the author most importantly is his sometimes praise of dictatorships where the author contends that there is more freedom than in what he calls so-called democracy. He points out that under the Indonesian dictator Suharto, Indonesia was economically richer and more secular than the democracy that replaced it. Is this true? Ask the hundreds of thousands killed by Suharto's armed forces from 1965-1966. Then ask what the people of East Timor thought. The Indonesians invasion of East Timor killed around 200,000 people in East Timor out of a population of about 700,000. I think Zakaria should not be praising a mass murderer.

I found the book interesting and thought provoking. It made me think about democracy and freedom and had many interesting and important observations about the state of freedom in the world. But be forewarned, the author does not necessarily understand and/or take into account all issues of freedom and human rights. For his approval of a mass-murderer I give this book only one star.

If you ever told me I would give Fareed Zakaria a 5 star rating on a book, I would spit my coffee across the table.

The fact is, the book is brilliant. Zakaria in many ways reminds me of Nehru. His knowledge of history and geography is incredibly expansive. Interestingly, he was able to set aside his almost blind hatred of his political opponents to write this book. (Is his CNN show staged?)

Indian is and perhaps will always be an enigma, but they produce some amazing authors. This book is a must read for the economic historian.

Excellent incisive reflection into unfolding future