A Fiery Defense of the Open Society

Åsa and Mårten Wikforss have entered Sweden’s election campaign with a book that Göran Greider describes as a fiery defense of the open society. “Democracy’s Hour of Destiny” arrives in what he calls an alarmingly sluggish campaign, offering an angry and urgent intervention ahead of election day.

Greider agrees that democracy may be facing a decisive moment. Over recent decades, the number of democracies worldwide has declined, he writes, while explicitly dictatorial states have gained new technological tools to monitor and control their citizens. In Western countries, growing right-wing populist movements have weakened trust in democratic institutions and divided populations along ethnic lines.

He points to Germany’s AfD, Britain’s Reform UK, Spain’s Vox and Sweden’s Sweden Democrats as examples. He also presents the United States as the most striking case, arguing that a country long regarded as the guardian of the free democratic world is now troubled by a power-hungry narcissist with imperial ambitions and little interest in elections beyond winning them by any means.

The review says the book is likely to anger many supporters of Sweden’s Tidö government. Wikforss places the government on a path toward a more autocratic society, Greider writes, while stressing that this is a path, not a claim that Sweden has already reached such a system.

One of the book’s strongest arguments, in his view, is that authoritarian societies usually emerge gradually. They do not necessarily arrive through a sudden military coup. Free elections and tactics that slowly shift social norms can also move a country in that direction. Greider praises the authors’ detailed account of Donald Trump’s methods for manipulating voters, but concludes that their broader explanation of democracy’s crisis is too limited.