Freedom House, which tracks democratic trends and elections around the globe, noted that 2007 was by far the worst year for freedom in the world since the end of the cold war. Almost four times as many states -- 38 -- declined in their freedom scores as improved -- 10.

Why is this? A big part can be explained by the recent rapid rise in oil prices. Oil wealth reduces a nation's need to obtain citizen support for its operations. At the same time, U.S. actions in Iraq, Guantanamo, within our own borders, and supporting oil-rich and/or anti-terrorism ally autocrats have tainted our efforts to promote democracy. Meanwhile, Russia, Venezuela, and others have denounced the activities of American groups within their borders as illegitimate political meddling.

"The Spirit of Democracy" points out that more than multi-party elections are required for democracy. Balanced access to media, impartial administration and dispute resolution, and independent observation are also essential. Sharing power and rule of law are essential.

Finally, Diamond sees the Internet and cell phones as strong forces that help undermine media control by autocrats, and help citizens build the foundation for democracy. He even makes the hopeful prediction that "countries like Iran and China, which now seem so immune to the global democratic trend, stand a very good chance of becoming democratic in the next two to three decades."

In 1974, over 75% of the world was covered with some form of autocracy- but three decades later, most of them have fallen apart and many of them are now Democracies. "The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout The World" is an examination of the developing democracies of the world and views on how to further it's growth further. It also doesn't turn a blind eye to potentially sham democracies such as Russia's growing oligarchy, deep with corruption from organized crime. A throughly researched and informative account, and intelligently composed account sure to provoke discussion, "The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World" is highly recommended to political science collections.

Probably the best and most comprehensive work on the state of democracies world wide.
Extremely well documented. Its only bias (if anyone would like to criticise it) is Larry Diamond forceful defense of democratic values

The author opens this extremely interesting book by asking whether it will be possible for the entire world to become democratic and asserts that the answer is yes. What follows in the book is an explanation of why he believes this is the case and what can be done to help expedite the process.

The book is extremely impressive in both its breadth and its depth. The author has detailed chapters about the state and trajectory of democracy in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. These chapters provide not only cogent analysis of current events in those regions but also describe the historical context, which I found very helpful because I had not known much about the background of some of the countries that the author discusses.

The author also does an excellent job blending academic analysis with on-the-ground anecdotes from his extensive travels. For example, he spends a great deal of time discussing the issue of corruption, its relationship with democracy development, and the impact that it has had particularly in Africa --- and he follows this with an interesting story about the corruption that he encountered many years ago on his first trip to Nigeria. I found that these stories made the book much more readable than other books in this genre that often have an exclusively academic focus.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who is interested in current events, foreign policy, rule of law, or 20th century history.