What has happened to liberal democracy? Aviezer Tucker's smoothly written book adds to a burgeoning literature exploring this question. Writing about the fractured and always tenuous relationship between liberalism and democracy, Tucker depicts liberal democracies across the world, new and old, as finding themselves on a dangerous road to authoritarianism. Far from fatalistic, however, the book holds that with a proper diagnosis and a rededication to—and reimagination of—liberal safeguards, future bouts of illiberalism may be avoided.

As Tucker is aware, his is a relatively late contribution to the “political apocalypse now” genre of political theory (29). Deviating somewhat from other recent texts, Tucker adopts a broad approach, eschewing narrow analysis of, say, the rise of populism. Populism, defined here as the “rule of popular passions” (11), still plays a role as one among several sources of attack on liberalism. Liberal constitutions and institutions were designed to frustrate political passions, thus setting themselves up to receive the ire of populists. When populists find themselves in conflict with liberal institutions, they are liable to make common cause with absolutists and illiberals who likewise seek the elimination of liberal restraints.

Instead of populism, the key concept for Tucker, and the focus of his book, is “neo-illiberalism.” The term is meant to correct a perceived conceptual drift from “populism,” to “illiberalism,” to “authoritarianism” (3), allowing Tucker instead to zero in on the striking move made in recent years by some democratic governments to engage in a “war of attrition against liberal institutions” (46). This makes the present (i.e., neo) illiberalism distinctive in that it reflects a slippage from entrenched liberalism. The incidents that constitute neo-illiberalism often appear as “small, innocuous, insignificant” events (47); any one of which may not be alarming on their own but when combined work to undermine liberalism. The examples provided by Tucker read like a survey of recent political history. Among them are the efforts to diminish the ability of the judiciary to act as an independent check, the intention of transforming governmental bureaucracy and civil service into a corrupt patronage system, and the limiting of the independence of institutions of higher education when they contradict neo-illiberal government. Neo-illiberalism's rise has been facilitated by various transformations in politics, education, and media, including increasingly democratic—and thus more liable to passion—political systems as well as poor education combined with the proliferation of disinformation. Particularly insidious, and prompting the rise of populist neo-illiberalism, has been “the constructive misinterpretation of the economic recession as an archaic extinction event; and elite populism that blocks social mobility and thereby generates popular populism” (154–55). Ultimately, the danger of neo-illiberalism is that its success would create the conditions under which democracy might “transition smoothly to authoritarianism” (21).

The definition of neo-illiberalism as the tearing down of entrenched liberal institutions necessarily leaves out some instances of populism one might otherwise expect to see addressed, either for being insufficiently illiberal (as Tucker believes left-wing populism to be) or for not having entrenched liberal institutions (as in the case of much Latin American populism). Britain is also largely absent from the account. While Brexit was born of a populist, illiberal referendum, Tucker identifies no extended attacks on liberalism itself. The book most extensively treats Hungary and the United States, alongside discussions of Israel and India. With the analysis of Hungary in particular, the reader benefits from Tucker's deep knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe, but one wonders whether the conceptual precision Tucker strives for with his turn to “neo-illiberalism” comes at the cost of excluding other relevant, if slightly divergent, cases. Still, there is a benefit to delimiting the study in this way as it allows Tucker to focus on the troubling erosion of liberal institutions in formerly liberal democracies.

To better appreciate the nature of illiberalism, the book fruitfully employs a comparative approach—both historical and cross-country. The reader is whisked from Athens and Rome to nineteenth-century France, and then to the European interwar period. The comparisons of neo-illiberalism in Hungary, Israel, India, and the United States then help to clarify the concept further. This approach proves particularly helpful for the reader, allowing one to better comprehend the contemporary democratic extremes as being, at least in some ways, not anomalous. The figures that symbolize the present illiberalism, such as Modi, Trump, and Orbán, all would have “looked familiar to the average fourth-century-BCE Athenian,” writes Tucker (39). Making explicit his intent to “decenter” and demystify today's illiberal figureheads, Tucker's historical and comparative approach succeeds in doing so (4).

Perhaps owing in part to the book's historical perspective, there is a cautious optimism that runs throughout. Tucker regularly insists that the movement towards neo-illiberalism was contingent and avoidable, and that simply with some liberal tweaks we can avoid future descents into neo-illiberalism. The final chapter of the book purports to direct the reader towards a “new liberalism” that will steel liberal institutions without resorting to nostalgia for a mythical and certainly unrecoverable past. There is no panacea here; rather, the proposals are “general and theoretical,” provocative and aspirational (159). Some proposals are more readily attainable than others—which Tucker readily acknowledges. For example, tracing, identifying, and labeling online (dis)information, while challenging, certainly seems plausible. Revising electoral systems, at least in the United States, to remove first-past-the-post elections seems less immediately achievable. Other suggestions include a universal basic income, an open-borders immigration policy, increased social mobility, and better historical education. Each is meant to address particular issues that led to the rise of the present neo-illiberalism. Namely, measures meant to “prevent the misinterpretations of recessions as evolutionary extinction events; measures designed to facilitate, increase, and promote social mobility even under conditions of economic stagnation or contraction; and measures to strengthen liberal institutions to better withstand and resist illiberal assaults” (155). The depiction of them as “general” should be taken seriously, and the proposals vary as to their level of detail. But, assuming Tucker's diagnosis is correct, they all address the problems of neo-illiberalism in a fairly direct way.

There is much to applaud about Tucker's new vision of liberalism. The book is unabashedly future-oriented, free of nostalgia for past liberal dogmatisms. A new vision of liberalism, one focused on responding to the weak points exposed by neo-illiberalism, is alluring. Yet if we take seriously the understanding of neo-illiberalism as corroding liberal institutions, one wonders if we should be more concerned with rebuilding the foundations of liberalism than Tucker appears to be in this text. When Tucker writes of strengthening liberal institutions, an example provided is “the founding of constitutionally independent boards to protect the global economy from self-destructive passions” (193). This presupposes that the corruption of liberal institutions does not run deep and that such additions can put liberalism back on course. But if neo-illiberalism's war of attrition corrodes the underlying liberal ethos, the creation of new institutions may not be enough. And it is not clear how the additions of a universal basic income or open borders will help to reconstitute a culture of liberalism once the latter has been lost.

Even so, Tucker has written an insightful and thought-provoking book. The comparative and historical perspectives help us to dispassionately locate ourselves on the road between democracy and authoritarianism. A reinvention of liberalism, and a rededication to its governing, would be beneficial, and Tucker prompts a conversation about what such a project might look like.