Twilight of Democracy, the (Next Rpt)

Kennon, a former CIA official, argues that democracy ``has become marginal as a system of government'' and that we must turn to bureaucratic experts. Thus, he begins a broad historical survey of governments and bureaucracies around the globe, addressing the stable developed world, the ``second world'' of authoritarian stability (e.g., Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R., plus such newly industrialized countries as Taiwan and South Korea) and the Third World (Latin America, the Indian subcontinent and much of Africa), where subgroups seize the state for their own interests. He makes challenging points-Third World states can't rise to First World status through democratic means; economic internationalism should prove more powerful in the future than tribalism-but his thesis that representative politics will be vitiated in the First World is speculative and highly arguable: in Japan, his prime example of bureaucratic rule, a coalition government has recently been formed that represents the first transfer of power since 1955. (Jan.)