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o liberalism. Mill insisted that politi-
cal institutions had to manage the
tradeos between liberty and equality
and foster the social conditions for
individuals to Áourish. In the United
States, the reformist ideas o Theodore
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and other
progressives in the early twentieth
century brought these impulses into the
industrial age, but only through Presi-
dent Franklin Roosevelt and the New
Deal did modern liberalism Änd a way
to bridge a Jeersonian appeal to
citizenship and a Hamiltonian commit-
ment to an activist state. Traub argues
that liberalism lost its way in the 1990s,
aligning itsel with globalization and
losing its deeper commitment to a
progressive vision o nationalism and
the common man.Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the
West Since the Cold War, 1971–2017
BY SIMON REIDÏHENRY. Simon &
Schuster, 2019, 880 pp.In this massive, kaleidoscopic history o
the current democratic age, Reid-Henry
Änds the roots o the crisis o modern
liberal democracy in the early 1970s. He
argues that a series o small changes in
economic, social, and political life
across the Western world conspired to
erode the consensus-oriented model oRecent Books
Political and Legal
G.John Ikenberry
What Was Liberalism? The Past, Present,
and Promise of a Noble Idea
BY JAMES TRAUB. Basic Books, 2019,
320 pp.
A
s liberals grapple with rising
populism and authoritarianism,
Traub turns to history and
theory to reclaim liberalism’s principles.
His book mounts one o the best eorts
o this kind yet, tracing liberalism’s core
ideas from the age o democratic
revolutions to the grand ideological
struggles o the twentieth century to the
convulsions o the current vexed mo-
ment. Traub shows that liberalism is an
amalgam o often conÁicting ideas:
classical republican principles, Lockean
individualism, the commitment to
popular sovereignty, and evolving
notions o rights and progressive social
ideals. Various settings and Ägures
populate the narrative, but Traub sees
John Stuart Mill as the pivotal thinker
linking the classical and modern strains
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD has retired as reviewer o the section on the United States,
and we thank him for his outstanding contributions. We are fortunate to have as his suc-
cessor JESSICA T. MATHEWS, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. From 1997 to 2015, she served as Carnegie’s president. Prior to that,
she was director o the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington Program and a senior
fellow at μ. Earlier in her career, she served as deputy to the U.S. undersecretary o
state for global aairs during the Clinton administration and as director o the Oce
o Global Issues at the National Security Council during the Carter administration.