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So, I've come up to the rooftop garden here at the FT's head office.

It's in the city of London, which is of course the heartland, a British capitalism.

And I have a wonderful view of the neighbouring building, some very tall skyscrapers,

churches, and the biggest building in the most famous is St Paul's, which is just to my right.

But I'm actually more interested in another building, which I can just see peeping out.

In the distance, the pale, gothic tower stuck, perhaps symbolically, between vast skyscrapers

that dwarf it. That is the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament.

I'm Martin Wolf, and this is episode two of my series, Saving Democratic Capitalism.

And today I'm going to focus on the democracy part of that title.

As an institution, the Parliament at Westminster is quite old. It dates back to the 13th century.

But British democracy, in the sense of everybody who is adult has a vote, only goes back to 1928.

And that's a bit less than a century ago. It's a similar story across the rest of the world.

For thousands of years of human history, people have been ruled by kings or emperors.

And basically, they had no say whatsoever with very few exceptions in how they were governed.

But since the Industrial Revolution, things have changed with the rise in prosperity,

greater education and so forth, we have seen demands for democratic rule.

And that democratic rule has been really in all a remarkable success.

And yet in the last two decades, things have gone into reverse, with the reemergence of anti-democratic

forces, even in the most advanced democracies. Last week I discussed why I thought this was happening.

This week I am going to talk to somebody else. And today it's going to be Larry Diamond,

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