On 10 December, 1948, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming the view that “the will of the people” – democracy – should form the basis of any government. But seven decades later, the world’s democracies are in peril. After a fourfold increase in the number of democracies between the end of World War II and 2000, we are now in a sustained period of political regression.