Democracy IRL

Latest Episodes:

The Islamic Republic and Protests in Iran, with Political Scientist Saeid Golkar Nov 23, 2022

Saeid Golkar has been writing and teaching about Iranian politics for the last decade since he was forced to leave the country. A 2009 alumnus of CDDRL's Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, Saeid is an expert on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their Basij auxiliaries. Last month he joined Francis Fukuyama to discuss the nature and implications of the anti-regime protests that have rocked Iran since the killing of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
Saeid Golkar is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science & Public Service at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Previously an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Middle East and North African Studies Program and a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, he was also a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Golkar was a lecturer from 2004 to 2009 in the Department of Social Sciences at Azad University, Iran, where he taught undergraduate courses on the political sociology of Iran and the sociology of war and military forces.
Golkar received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Tehran University in June 2008. His recent work can be found in publications such as Middle East Journal; Armed Forces & Society; Politics, Religion & Ideology; and Middle East Policy. Captive Society, his book on the Basij paramilitary force and the securitization of Iranian society, was copublished by Columbia University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press in June 2015.

The Inheritors: A Conversation with Eve Fairbanks Sep 15, 2022

Eve Fairbanks is a brilliant journalist who has lived in South Africa for the past decade. Francis Fukuyama speaks to her about her new book, The Inheritors, in which she provides a fascinating account of the way that both blacks and whites in that country have adjusted—or not—to democracy over the past generation. South Africa has undergone a transformation much like that of the US since the Civil War, only compressed into a much shorter time period, and Fairbanks points to the enduring difficulties of racial reconciliation and historical memory with implications for the United States.

Diversity and Democracy, with Yascha Mounk Jul 07, 2022

Yascha Mounk, Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and founder of Persuasion joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about his new book, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, which deals with ethnic and religious diversity in a democracy.

The Crisis of Democracy in West Africa, with Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi Jun 15, 2022

Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, co-founder and board chair of Afrobarometer — the pan-African survey research network and global reference point for high-quality data on African democracy, governance, and quality of life — joins us to discuss the worsening crisis of democracy in West Africa, including that which is enveloping the region's largest country, Nigeria. He also points to some rays of hope as democracy advocates push back against this trend.
E. Gyimah-Boadi is co-founder and board chair of Afrobarometer, the pan-African survey research network and global reference point for high-quality data on African democracy, governance, and quality of life. He is also co-founder and former executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, a leading independent democracy and good-governance think tank. In June 2022 he was appointed president of the board of directors of the Institute for Integrated Transitions.
A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, he has also held faculty positions at several universities in the United States, including the American University’s School of International Service, as well as fellowships at Queen Mary University; the Center for Democracy, Rule of Law and Development at Stanford University; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.

A graduate of the University of California (Davis) and University of Ghana (Legon), Gyimah-Boadi is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his contributions to research and policy advocacy on democracy, accountable governance, and human rights, he has won a myriad of awards, including the Distinguished Africanist of the Year Award of the African Studies Association (2018); the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice (2017); and one of the Republic of Ghana’s highest honors, the Order of Volta (2008). He was named one of New African Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Africans of 2021.”

Examining China's Belt and Road Initiative, with Michael Bennon May 31, 2022

In the second installment of our series on policy and infrastructure, Michael Bennon returns to chat with Francis Fukuyama about China's Belt and Road Initiative and projects that have gone south.
Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships, and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Thailand.

The Difficulty of Reforming CEQA, with Michael Bennon May 19, 2022

In the first of a two-part series on policy and infrastructure, Michael Bennon joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), its impacts, and how to overcome some of the challenges it creates. In a forthcoming report for California 100 — an ambitious statewide initiative to envision and shape the long-term success of the state — Fukuyama and Bennon use CEQA as a case study of California’s governance in an evolving media ecosystem.
Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships, and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Thailand.
ABOUT CALIFORNIA 100
California 100 is a transformative statewide initiative focused on inspiring a vision and strategy for California’s next century that is innovative, sustainable, and equitable. The initiative is incubated at the University of California and Stanford, and is guided by an expert and intergenerational Commission.

Liberalism and Its Discontents, with Francis Fukuyama May 10, 2022

Liberalism is neither the progressive politics of the American left, nor the center-right orientation of European parties like the German Free Democrats, nor libertarianism built around hostility to the state. In this special episode, Francis Fukuyama explains his use of the term and discusses his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents.
The book focuses on doctrine that first emerged in the middle of the 17th century that prized individuals over collectivities, accorded equal dignity to all human beings, was allied to modern natural science, and protected a sphere of individual autonomy through a rule of law and constitutional checks and balances. Liberalism is a close ally of democracy but not the same thing as it, and today is under severe threat from critics on both the right and the left.
Click here to purchase Liberalism and Its Discontents.

Autocracy vs Democracy — From Venezuela to Ukraine and Beyond, with Leopoldo López Mar 21, 2022

How does the Venezuelan crisis of democracy relate to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other international trends? Venezuelan political leader and pro-democracy activist Leopoldo López joins the podcast to discuss with Francis Fukuyama and Marisa Kellam, a visiting scholar at CDDRL who researches the quality of democracy with a focus on Latin America. In this inspiring conversation, López emphasizes idealism, leadership, and his personal commitment to freedom.
Leopoldo López is the founder and national coordinator of the Voluntad Popular political party. He received a Bachelor's degree cum laude in sociology and economics from Kenyon College and a Master's degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was awarded an honoris causa doctorate in Law from Kenyon College in 2007.
López was elected mayor of the municipality of Chacao in Caracas in 2000 and he finished his second term with a 92% approval rate. He also won third place at the World Mayor Awards and the 2007 and 2008 “Premio Transparencia,” awarded by Transparency International.
In 2014 he was unjustly detained by the Maduro regime and was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment. He spent four years in a military prison, a year and a half in house arrest, and another year and a half in the Spanish embassy in Caracas under political asylum. He was recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. Also, in 2015 his detention was declared arbitrary by the UN.
In October 2020, López escaped from Venezuela through Colombia to join his family in Spain. It was the first time in seven years that he was able to be with his family in freedom. In his exile, López continues his fight for Venezuela's democracy and freedom.
López has received several international awards for his fight for democracy and freedom in Venezuela. Among them, he was honored with the 2014 Harvard alumni achievement award, the NED's 2013 Democracy Award, the 2016 Geneva Summit Courage Award, and the 2017 Sakharov Prize for Freedom and Thought.
Marisa Kellam researches the quality of democracy with a focus on Latin America and a growing interest in East Asia. Her research links institutional analysis to various governance outcomes in democracies along three lines of inquiry: political parties and coalitional politics; mass electoral behavior and party system change; and democratic accountability and media freedom. She has published her research in various peer-reviewed journals, including The British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Party Politics, Electoral Studies, and Political Communication.
Originally from Santa Rosa, California, Kellam earned her Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and spent several years as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. Since 2013, she has been an Associate Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, where she also served as Director of the English-based degree programs for the School of Political Science & Economics. Currently, she is a steering committee member for the V-Dem Regional Center for East Asia and a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

German Foreign Policy and European Reactions to Ukraine with Johannes Ludewig Mar 11, 2022

Johannes Ludewig, a current visiting scholar at CDDRL, is a senior German government official who played a major role in German unification. In this episode, he joins Francis Fukuyama to reflect on the European reaction to the current crisis in Ukraine, as well as the leadership qualities that made unification possible almost 30 years ago.
Dr. Johannes Ludewig served as Chairman of the German National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) from 2006-2021, and between 1997 and 2010 was the Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Bahn AG and Executive Director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), Brussels. Previously, he was the Economic and Financial Advisor to the German Federal Chancellor, also responsible for the economic reconstruction of East Germany after Reunification 1990. He earned his PhD at the University of Hamburg in 1975, and MS at Stanford University in 1972.

Larry Diamond on Election Reform: An Existential Issue for American Democracy Feb 22, 2022

"The future health, if not survival, of American democracy is in danger in a way that it hasn't been in our lifetime," warns Larry Diamond, who sat down with Francis Fukuyama to discuss voting rights, the Electoral Count Act, and what reforms are needed to avert a future political catastrophe.
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also a professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His latest edited book (with Orville Schell), China's Influence and American Interests (Hoover Press, 2019), urges a posture of constructive vigilance toward China’s global projection of “sharp power,” which it sees as a rising threat to democratic norms and institutions. He offers a massive open online course (MOOC) on Comparative Democratic Development through the edX platform and is now writing a textbook to accompany it.
Diamond’s book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has also edited or coedited more than forty books on democratic development around the world, most recently, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years.

A Ukrainian Perspective on Ukrainian Politics with Nataliya Gumenyuk Feb 09, 2022

Continuing our discussion on the current situation in Ukraine, Francis Fukuyama speaks with Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian author and journalist specializing in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. She joins the podcast from her home in Kyiv and shares her perspectives on the conflict, the Ukrainian government, and the country's political landscape.
Nataliya Gumenyuk is the CEO and co-founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, which aims at popularizing best practices for public interest journalism in the digital age. From 2015 to 2020 she ran the independent TV channel Hromadske. Since the start of the revolution and later conflict in Ukraine, Nataliya has been reporting from the field in Maidan, Crimea, and Donbas. Gumenyuk is the author of the book The Lost Island: Tales from Occupied Crimea (2020), based on six years of reporting from the annexed peninsula. She is also the author of Maidan Tahrir. In Search Of The Lost Revolution (2015), based on her reporting on the Arab Spring.

Former US Ambassador Steven Pifer on "What is Happening in Ukraine?" Feb 07, 2022

Fresh off the heels of a whirlwind trip to Kyiv with The Atlantic Council, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer sits down with Francis Fukuyama to talk about what he saw and where he believes the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine is headed.
Pifer is a William J. Perry Research Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation as well as a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. From January-May 2021, he was a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. His research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia and European security.

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