Sarah Repucci from Freedom House joins the podcast to offer an assessment of democracy worldwide. Sarah coauthored (along with Amy Slipowitz) the most recent volume of Freedom in the World: Democracy Under Siege. We discuss the global decline of democracy, the impact of the pandemic, and highlight developments in India, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, and the US. ... Continue Reading →
Michael Miller joins the podcast to offer a novel theory of democratization. We discuss his new book Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democratization. This is the 52 episode of the podcast. So many cases of democratization start with these episodes and this period of elite political violence where... Continue Reading →
James Loxton explains why authoritarian successor parties succeed in democracies through a conversation about conservative parties in Latin America. He is the author of the forthcoming Conservative Party-Building in Latin America: Authoritarian Inheritance and Counterrevolutionary Struggle. This is the 47th episode of the Democracy Paradox podcast. They really view their history as one of victimization, one... Continue Reading →
Derek W. Black explains how the expansion of public education has developed alongside democracy in America. His recent book Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy links the current threat to public education to attacks on democracy. This is the 46th episode of the Democracy Paradox podcast. I find it hard to believe,... Continue Reading →
Michael Hughes explains the history of democracy in Germany. Michael is a professor of history at Wake Forest University. He discusses his most recent book Embracing Democracy in Germany: Political Citizenship and Participation, 1871-2000. A History of Democracy in Germany The German Question haunted international relations for generations. Like China, it was... Continue Reading →
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TMIBdtSDteLnLYBLuNDv4 Jonathan Pinckney is a program office with the Program on Nonviolent Action at the United States Institute of Peace and the author of From Dissent to Democracy: The Promise and Perils of Civil Resistance Transitions. This is the third part of a three episode arc called, "Resistance, Revolution, Democracy." My conversation with Erica Chenoweth explored... Continue Reading →
It is impossible to study the subject of democracy without coming across Huntington’s Third Wave. It is a landmark study of democratization. Moreover, it has a scholarly thoroughness which is rarely matched. Every author has a distinctive style. Dahl has an awkward optimism. Fukuyama has a teacher’s approach where he tries to bring complex subjects... Continue Reading →
Larry Diamond is the intellectual conscience of democracy scholarship. Perhaps this assessment is unfair. He is among the great intellectual minds among scholars of democracy living today. Yet his legacy is not necessarily theoretical but rather moral. He has challenged leaders around the world to live up to the standards of liberal democracy. Writing in... Continue Reading →
There is no clear demarcation between history and political science. There is an unspoken rule where historians establish an artificial line between current events and the historical past. Yet this line has always been artificial. The real difference between political science and history has been its academic approach. The historian analyzes specific events for their... Continue Reading →
Every true student of political science will find their way to Political Order in Changing Societies. It is possible to escape an undergraduate program without reading this seminal text. I know I did. But I was introduced to some of his earlier articles which formed the basis to the first few chapters. It wasn’t until... Continue Reading →
