Six months before she died, in October 2021, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright published a memorable essay in Foreign Affairs , “The Coming Democratic Revival.” Amid rising pessimism about the future of democracy, Albright, who was a friend of mine, offered a hopeful counterpoint. Authoritarianism was brittle and self-defeating, she argued, whereas the desire for freedom and accountability remained universal. “Democracy is not a dying cause,” she wrote. “It is poised for a