The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

74 JUNE 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL All nine contributors bring deep local knowledge and experience to their assessments of the state of democracy in their respective countries. mostly benefit from it and bear little of the cost, while ordinary citizens suffer from the degradation of the rule of law, less effective policymaking and dimin- ished levels of governmental account- ability.” With the exception of the Brazil chap- ter, which is the only one weighed down by page after page of graphs and analysis, the book is geared toward lay read- ers. Admittedly, the subject matter will primarily interest civic activists, political actors, scholars and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship. But even if your interest in political science happens to be minimal, you’ll find excellent, succinct overviews of each country’s history and demograph- ics. Indeed, I could readily imagine the book as a resource for the Foreign Service Institute’s area studies department. n Steven Alan Honley, a State Department Foreign Service officer from 1985 to 1997 and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Service Journal from 2001 to 2014, is a regular contributor to the Journal . He is the author of Future Forward: FSI at 70—A History of the Foreign Service Institute (Arlington Hall Press, 2017).