The number of autocracies is surging, that of democracies ebbing. It is impossible to define exactly what causes one state to fall and another to rise, but Ibn Khaldun, a character in this story and its presiding spirit, identified asabiyya, the cohesion essential for a society to thrive: ‘Many nations suffered a physical defeat, but that’s never marked their end. Yet when a nation becomes the victim of psychological defeat, that marks the end.’
