Can Democracy Cope?

Fro Radio 4 on Monday morning while Zella is having her breakfast and I then change her nappy!

DAVID RUNCIMAN
''The popular uprisings in the Middle East and the bloodshed following elections in Ivory Coast have thrust democracy once again into the spotlight. But while the optimists point to its inexorable spread, the pessimists fear that democracy has shown itself unsuited to dealing with the major challenges facing the world today. David Runciman turns to the intellectual history of democracy to make sense of what’s happening. From Nietzsche’s dismissal of democracy's short-term inherent weaknesses to Tocqueville’s view that its very success is part of the problem, he seeks an answer to ‘Can Democracy Cope?’''

David Runciman is giving the inaugural Princeton in Europe Lecture, ‘Can Democracy Cope?’, on Wednesday 13 April at Goodenough College in London.