When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, from Ancient Athens to the Present Day - Paperbackby Archon Fung (Editor), David Moss (Editor), Odd Arne Westad (Editor) This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY NC ND 4. 0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Democracy is often described in two opposite ways, as either wonderfully resilient or dangerously fragile. Both characterizations can be correct,