In this exclusive end-of-year conversation with ourCo-Managing Editor Ece Özbey, Nobel Prize–winning political economist Daron Acemoğlu reflects on what 2025 revealed, and failed to resolve, about the state of democracy. From Trump’s global impact to the limits of personalizedpolitics, from institutional decay to AI-driven distortions of political judgment, he explores why liberal democracy is struggling across regions and where renewal might still begin. He offers a concise yet wide-ranging assessment of democracy’s present, defined by the widening gap between ambitious promises and lived outcomes—and the uncertainty ahead.