Democracy as an ideal and practice seems to have entered into a period of crisis, says Ian McKay, history professor at McMaster University.

He notes recent developments from Brazil to Thailand, the Philippines to Hungary, not excluding North America.

“Scholars offer a multitude of competing, often useful explanations, and pundits enthusiastically add their favourite historical analogies, from conflict in ancient Greece to fascism in the 1930s,” Dr. McKay says.

He will present a Canadian perspective on the question “what is going on with democracy?” in his free public lecture “Democracy: Perspectives on its Present Crisis,” Monday, March 4, at 4 p.m. in room 123, Odette Building.

McKay is the author of Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada’s Left History and co-author of The Vimy Trap: Or How We stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Great War.

His UWindsor lecture is sponsored by the Humanities Research Group as part of its Martin Wesley Lecture Series.