The reasons why democracy is in decline around the world
Back in another time, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, threw a high-spirited New Year’s Eve party at their manor house in rural Poland to celebrate the turn of the millennium. Sikorski was then a deputy minister in the country’s center-right government, and his native homeland had become his American wife’s adopted one. The guests, a klatch of journalists, diplomats, and civil servants, belonged to a highbrow conservative crowd that shared a set of common beliefs:
