The Minimum Irreducible Condition for a Liberal Democracy

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The ability of the people to choose and replace their leaders in truly free and fair elections, period full stop. If you don't have a level playing field, and there's no decent chance for an opposition candidate to win, it would require a Herculean effort of the opposition with one hand tied behind its back,. That's not a democratic election. Sometimes, as with Milosevic in Serbia, you can have an unfair, undemocratic election than the opposition can prevail. But we should have no illusion that just because there's a serious contest, it means the election is a democracy. There are democracies around the world that don't do a very good job of maintaining the rule of

In this second episode of Martin Wolf’s series, the renowned FT columnist and economist speaks to Larry Diamond, a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies and a senior fellow in global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Drawing on arguments in Martin’s latest book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, they discuss what’s behind a deepening global ‘democratic recession’.

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Martin Wolf: in defence of democratic capitalism

For Martin’s FT columns click here

For the FT review of Martin’s book click here

This episode is presented by Martin Wolf. The producer is Laurence Knight. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa and the sound engineer is Breen Turner. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

Clips: BBC, CNN, WION

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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