Democratic ideals and reality: Mackinder’s geopolitics in the twenty-first century

Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), the largely forgotten British polymath, argued that democracy should look with suspicion on populist governments. He described this as ‘a wise self-knowledge’ and set out two essential functions states in ‘free countries’ had to perform: ‘to prevent tyrannous things from being done whether by offenders at home or invaders from abroad’ (Mackinder 1942 , p. 71). What makes him pertinent in the twenty-first century is that he went beyond the distinctive problems of political philosophy such as what are (or ought to be) the proper limits of government power over the members of society. His aim was to ‘depict some of the realities, geographical and economic in their twentieth century perspective’.