Quote of the Day (Thomas Carothers, on Slow Growth and Western Democracy Woes)

“Broadly speaking, European and other Western democracies were built on the back of two centuries of remarkable economic growth, albeit with major shocks along the way. Now, the West is in for a protracted, possibly indefinite, period of slow growth or even stagnation. It’s not clear whether the liberal democratic consensus can withstand the inevitable public anger and alienation that will result. The toxic political fallout of the financial crisis does not bode well.”—Thomas Carothers, Senior Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “A Good Democracy Is Hard to Find” (review of Sheri Berman’s Democracy in Europe), Foreign Affairs, May/June 2019 Issue