Commentary: A century of surviving crises left democracy overconfident and vulnerable

We could be in the midst of the beginning of the end of democracy as we know it. Or we could just be in another of those eek-yikes crises that democracy has always managed to triumph over in the last reel. So far. David Runciman is a professor at Cambridge University; his book "The Confidence Trap, a History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present" predates the 2016 Brexit vote and Trump election but presupposes the challenges to the strength of democracy that both of those pose. Unlike the crises of the past century _ the end of World War I, the Depression, the Cold War and others _ democracy's present stresses are created by democracy itself. And the outcome this time might be very different.