As Runciman puts it: "So democracy becomes a game of chicken. When things get really bad, we will adapt. Until they get really bad, we need not adapt, because democracies are ultimately adaptable. Both sides play this game. Games of chicken are harmless, until they go wrong, at which point they become lethal." (This was written with reference to recent confrontations between Democrats and Republicans in the US. But the behaviour of Greek politicians and voters during the two successive elections of May and June 2012 would also be a case in point.)
Runciman tests his thesis about democratic entrapment by studying, through its prism, seven moments of major crisis faced by democracies in the last 100 years: 1918 and the dramatic and unexpected victory of the Allies; 1933 and the Great Depression; 1947 and the onset of the Cold War; 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, a scandal that shook West German democracy, and the Sino-Indian war; 1974 and the perturbations that followed the oil and inflation crises; 1989 and the swift collapse of Communism; 2008 and the ongoing global financial crisis.
Are we then left with Harold Nicolson's verdict, that "democracy, for immediate, as distinct from ultimate purposes, [is] a fool''? Maybe, but we should not underestimate the qualification. Runciman agrees with Tocqueville that democracies have the advantage in the long run, provided the long run is allowed to happen. For the future, Runciman identifies four challenges: war, public finance, environmental threats, and plausible competitors.
On war, the evidence suggests that democracies do not fight each other and that "in the wars they do fight, democracies win far more often than they lose". He dismisses as scaremongering recent warnings that Europe could return to the wars that scarred its history. "Peace between democracies is not an illusion; it is real and it is robust."
On finance, Runciman finds that democracies are "analogous" to markets: overconfidence in the efficiency of well-functioning markets causes participants to behave in ways that undermine that efficiency — another case of the confidence trap. On the environment, Runciman challenges the traditional complaint that democracies "prioritise immediate over future experiences, simplicity over complexity, gut instinct over science". There is an alternative explanation: "The democracies have failed to act not because they are stupid, but because they know they are not stupid and will take the necessary action when it is required." His concern is that the past may be a bad guide to the future: "Just because democracies have been guilty of crying wolf in the past doesn't mean there is no wolf out there."
