In the evening of the last century, one smart American intellectual from the Rand Corporation looked out of the window and saw the cadaver of history rotting in the wreckage of the Soviet empire. Sorry Marx, McWorld accepts no boundaries. The end of history, and the triumph of liberal democracy-"the end point of mankind's ideological evolution"-and, from Moscow to Berlin, from Prague to Budapest, from Warsaw to Bucharest, it was a spectacular sprawl of freedom. Nations were transferred from the Leader to the people, for so long an abstraction called the masses. For democracy, already on a roll elsewhere in the world, what followed was an inevitable conquest. Then, as the idyll of order was swept aside, old ghosts of history marched out of the far corners of liberation, in the Balkans most awesomely. End of History Ha Ha Ha! Enters one smart professor from Harvard into the democracy bazaar and prophesies: take note, it's the clash of civilisations. 9/11 and it was clear to everyone except Chomsky and other fossils: it's a rage against civilisation-and the free world. The way out, as the leader of the free world has shown in Iraq, is to send freedom to those wretched places through Tomahawks. Only the naive would ask, well, invader, where are those weapons of mass destruction? It was Project Democracy, silly, throughout, the neocon agenda that had turned the President of the United States from a compassionate conservative into a combative conservative. The new hope: from the blasted statues of the dictator will be built the first Arab version of the Statue of Liberty. It is the age of Democracy Unbound and the future is bright-so, citizens of the free world, let's party. Enters Fareed Zakaria and he spoils the celebration.

THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM: ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY AT HOME AND ABROAD By Fareed Zakaria W.W. Norton & Company Price: $24.95 Pages: 286

Too much democracy and too little liberty-that is the verdict from the latest provocateur in the marketplace of arguments. Zakaria, the brainy editor of Newsweek International and formerly managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the sacred periodical for policy wonks, looks around and sees what the Endologist at the Rand had missed: democracy is flourishing (62 per cent of the countries in the world are democratic today) but liberty is floundering. Free elections do not necessarily bring in freedom. Rather, it is the age of the elected governments breaching constitutional limits and denying citizens their basic rights-call it illiberal democracy. (Hitler was democracy's child.) Constitutional liberalism-which Zakaria calls a bundle of freedom like rule of law, separation of powers, protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property-has nothing to do with democracy, and they seldom travel together. Take the two largest democracies: India, where the author was born and brought up, and America, his adopted homeland. The first, still a romantic ideal for those who argue that you do not have to develop economically first to build democracy, is today less liberal, less secular, and hardly a just society. Zakaria, full of adolescent nostalgia here, blames it all on the proverbial Hindu nationalists (pretty predictable), corruption and the absence of the rule of law. This democracy is illiberal as well as dysfunctional.

Free elections need not bring in freedom. It is the age of elected governments breaching constitutional limits and denying citizens their basic rights-call it illiberal democracy.

Zakaria takes refuge in stereotypes to unravel the illiberal India. Pass those few pages and he is compellingly brilliant, particularly in his take on America and the Middle East. America is the biggest victim of the democracy wave-or over-democratisation. He is harsh. Politics has surrendered to client groups. The party is dead-it is just the reflection of its candidate. And the answer is not direct democracy-the Californian example, for referendums and initiatives take power away from the politicians and give to "the people", but through lobbyists and pollsters, thereby creating a hidden elite. And Zakaria genuinely mourns the death of America's traditional elites and institutions. (After all, historically, the church and the aristocracy have been the mediators between the state and the people, and custodians of individual liberty.) Where is the gentleman banker J.P. Morgan ("A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.") today? The loss of authority-a product of the democracy wave-is there not only in the money market, it is equally visible in evangelical Christianity, and also in culture, which has already migrated "from townhouse to megastore". The buzz has replaced the worth. The bigger tragedy is: America has lost the public-spirited elite, the good old WASP, and what you have in the arena today is the populist, a prime agent of illiberal democracy.

ZAKARIA: The new Manhattan prophet

And the real democracy mission of the future has to be played out in the Arab world. Zakaria slays quite a few stereotypes here, most convincingly the argument that Islam is incompatible with democracy, for 800 million Muslims live in democracies. So, the danger is not the Islamic world but the Arab world. The problem is wealth-which has produced the biggest terrorist, Osama bin Laden-not poverty: "easy money means little economic or political modernization". Economic reform first, then political; perhaps an Islamic reformation may be of some help, and in this department, paradoxically, Iran could show the way, for theocracy there today stands discredited. And an Arab showpiece for the future? Iraq. Saddam is gone, good, but let democracy wait. Let there be a minimum of five years of transition-economic stability and institution building. If the US engages in a long-term period of nation-building, "Iraq could well become the first major Arab country to combine Arab culture with economic dynamism, religious tolerance, liberal politics, and a modern outlook on the world. And success is infectious". The immediate democratic alternative could be a Mesopotamian Ayatollah rising from the ashes of Saddamism. Paul Wolfowitz may take note.

This book is not the rage of a post-modern fascist inspired by the virtues of benevolent dictatorship-Hail Mr Lee Kuan Yew!-and angered by illiberal democracies like Vladimir Putin's Russia. Zakaria is a classical conservative for whom democracy is still "the last best hope" but it has to be strengthened by liberty. First it was a Frenchman who marvelled at American democracy and asked a few difficult questions. More than a century after Alexis de Tocqueville-liberally sprinkled in The Future of Freedom-the Bombay boy has reached Manhattan to demythologise the high temple of democracy, though he himself could be a poster boy of its virtues.