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There is no shortage of people and ideas to blame for liberalism’s decline, but searching for a single culprit is probably futile. Two new books by Gordon Brown and Daron Acemoglu take up the harder question of how to rebuild the institutions that once gave people a sense of community and power over their lives.

LONDON—Modern liberal democracy is buckling in many countries whose citizens have known no other system, with established parties shedding support and populist movements moving from the fringes into the political mainstream. As governments weaponize tariffs and sanctions, the postwar liberal order is giving way to spheres of influence and naked exercises of raw power.