IN A desperate attempt to avoid a collapse of democracy in Nepal, the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, has called a general election, albeit not until November 13th.
This time it's a propaganda speaker built from flea-market finds that leads you into a bureaucratic office where Trotsky is lamenting the collapse of democracy in the Soviet Union.
"If the Americans, at this stage, do not take a bold stance against this coup and demand immediate restoration of the democratic process, I do believe the people in this region will put this burden of the collapse of democracy on American shoulders as well," he said.
Ultimately what we are seeing in Israel is not necessarily the collapse of Israeli democracy but a fading down of democracy and of the open debate that we used to be so proud of".
But, however the result goes, this has been a uniquely unsettling and frightening year for the world's biggest democracy, so it feels fitting that The Iron Heel, London's book about the collapse of US democracy and brutal rule by a thuggish elite, emerged as the first popular choice in our vote.
The far right isn't the only beneficiary of the collapse of social democracy, of course.
Through the collapse of Christian Democracy and the advent of a leftist local authority and a right-wing Silvio Berlusconi to national government, the system remained intact.
But "Money for Nothing" casts a much wider net, blaming the financial crisis on a systemic collapse of corporate democracy caused by the failure of many if not most corporate boards to simply do their jobs.
As if watching a dystopian science fiction movie, visitors to the Republican national convention in Cleveland this week were offered a glimpse of what the collapse of American democracy might look like.
A stock-footage retelling of the dramatic collapse of Weimar democracy alternates with pages on England's colorless march toward "a vigorous policy of social benefits to the extent that fiscal responsibility allowed it".
