Jim:

I feel for what it is to lose a post. I started my last longish post a couple days ago in a posh Anchorage Starbucks, swatted a mosquito as big as my knuckle then found I'd lost my post. For some reason when I type up a long paragraph, the computer will select a large patch of it and if I hit one other key it evaporates. The hazards of using an old laptop with an off-center touchpad.
Anyhow, while I think there are definite differences between societies, as I have already posted, I could add that from my point of view many supposed democracies, hence Democracy, are under severe challenge right now. Zimbabwe has long been a depressive regime under the over-long lifespan of Mugabe. South Africa is underachieving under the corrupt ANC. North Africa is full of frightful killer regimes. Venezuela has been ruined by Chavez and his heir. The Phillipines have elected, literally, a mass killer who is imprisoning his political opponents, and in Turkey the secular legacy of Kemal Atatuk is being corrupted and is falling to the dictatorial Erdogan.
In Russia the ex-KGB agent running the show is perpetrating a rule by mafia, and of the once Socialist Republics many have gone under the sway of strongmen.
China is sort of in a netherworld, by form maintaining a Communist vener, but in reality woshipping the almighty dollar and going through the motions of fighting corrupt officialdom. Is Vietnam doing the same?
Funny how the countries once colonized or occupied by the English have maintained or strengthened their modicums of constitutional government. Does Ireland count?

Other interesting books of or for these times:

All the King's Men by the poet Robert Penn Warren. (Very) loosely based on the career of Huey Long of Louisiana.
Dark Horse by Doug Richardson. Story of a political race in Texas where one of the candidates has no behaviorial boundries. Kind of a guilty pleasure novel.