Democracy IRL

Elbegdorj Tsakhia was president of Mongolia from 2009-2017 and played a key role in the country's transition from Communism to democracy after 1989. In this episode, he talks to Francis Fukuyama about the current challenges to democratic institutions in Mongolia. Former President of Mongolia Elbegdorj joined the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in 2023 as Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow, after a career in public service to Mongolia as a Member of Parliament, Prime Minister, and President. Currently, Mr. Elbegdorj is continuing his work to improve public policy, governance, and democracy through the Elbegdorj Institute, a think tank he founded in 2008. Mr. Elbegdorj holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government (2002) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from Land Forces Military Academy of Lviv of former USSR (1988). While at Stanford, his focus included democracy, disarmament, and governance across Asia. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Larry Diamond once again joins Francis Fukuyama for a year-end review to discuss the state of global democracy as 2023 draws to a close. Diamond also recounts his Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture, the 20th iteration of the annual lecture series named in honor of the famed political scientist and sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Munk School at the University of Toronto, and the Canadian Embassy. Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton 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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Historian and author Timothy Garton Ash joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about his new book, "Homelands: A Personal History of Europe," covering a period from 1945 to the present. Bookended by World War II and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ash discusses the efforts made by Europeans to contain the demons of the early 20th century and measures the degree of success they have had. Timothy Garton Ash is the author of eleven books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half-century. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian, which is widely syndicated. His latest book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, was published in English in Spring 2023 and has appeared or will soon be appearing in at least nineteen other languages. For full details, visit his website. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

This episode of Democracy IRL is a companion piece to Michael Bennon and Francis Fukuyama's essay, "China's Road to Ruin," published in the September/October 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs. Here, Bennon and Fukuyama discuss how bad Chinese Belt and Road projects are, leading to financial crises in developing countries, and how international financial institutions like the IMF and EBRD are being asked to bail out dodgy Chinese loans. Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at 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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Jerry Kaplan is a renowned Silicon Valley veteran, computer scientist, and serial entrepreneur who has previously authored two books on AI, with a new one on generative AI forthcoming from Oxford University Press. In this episode, he joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss why he has suddenly decided that GAI is a genuinely big deal and a technology that will fundamentally change the ways we work and live. An artificial intelligence expert and innovator, Jerry Kaplan founded several Silicon Valley start-ups. He is the author of Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure. Kaplan currently teaches at Stanford University. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

On its 75th anniversary since independence, Israel's democracy has been both resilient and troubled over issues of national identity. Joining Francis Fukuyama in this episode to discuss is Professor Amichai Magen, a professor at the Lauder School of Government at Reichman University in Israel, currently in residence at Stanford University as a visiting scholar at CDDRL and the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies at FSI. Amichai Magen is a Senior Lecturer (US Associate Professor), Head of the MA Program in Diplomacy & Conflict Studies, and Director of the Program on Democratic Resilience and Development (PDRD) at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Reichman University. His research and teaching interests address democracy, the rule of law, liberal orders, risk, and political violence. Magen received the Yitzhak Rabin Fulbright Award (2003), served as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2016 he was named Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy, an award that recognizes outstanding thought-leaders around the world. Between 2018 and 2022, he was Principal Investigator in two European Union Horizon 2020 research consortia, EU-LISTCO and RECONNECT. Amichai Magen served on the Executive Committee of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and is a Board Member of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations (ICFR) and the International Coalition for Democratic Renewal (ICDR). In 2023 he joined the Freeman Spogli Institute as its inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Political scientist Anna Gryzmala-Busse's new book disputes the scholarly consensus that war drove European state formation. She located the beginning of the state much earlier in Medieval history, with respect to institutions like law, parliaments, bureaucracy, and the like. In this episode, she joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss her new book on the religious origins of the European state. Anna Grzymała-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. In her first book, Redeeming the Communist Past, she examined the paradox of the communist successor parties in East Central Europe: incompetent as authoritarian rulers of the communist party-state, several then succeeded as democratic competitors after the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989. Rebuilding Leviathan, her second book project, investigated the role of political parties and party competition in the reconstruction of the post-communist state. Unless checked by a robust competition, democratic governing parties simultaneously rebuilt the state and ensured their own survival by building in enormous discretion into new state institutions. Anna's third book, Nations Under God, examines why some churches have been able to wield enormous policy influence. Others have failed to do so, even in very religious countries. Where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gained great moral authority, and subsequently covert and direct access to state institutions. It was this institutional access, rather than either partisan coalitions or electoral mobilization, that allowed some churches to become so powerful. Anna's most recent book, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation. Other areas of interest include informal institutions, the impact of European Union membership on politics in newer member countries, and the role of temporality and causal mechanisms in social science explanations. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

China has promised to reincorporate Taiwan, and the Chinese military, which has been growing very rapidly, is preparing for such a military contingency. Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about what such an invasion might look like and what US and Japanese responses to this threat should be. Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She was previously an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found at www.orianaskylarmastro.com and on Twitter @osmastro. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

On March 21, 2023, Francis Fukuyama delivered the prestigious Donald C. Stone Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), the leading academic association focusing on the study of the public sector. This special episode is a recording of his talk, “Valuing the Deep State,” in which he defends the importance of having a nonpartisan, expert, professional civil service for democratic governance. Using examples from the COVID pandemic and recent Supreme Court cases, Fukuyama argues that there needs to be a balance between autonomous bureaucracies shielded from excessive political interference, and accountability to democratic publics. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Sheri Berman, author of Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day, is a professor of political science at Barnard College and a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. In this episode, she joins Francis Fukuyama to explain why populism is more threatening to American democracy than it is in Europe, and why parties of the Left have been in long-term decline. Sheri Berman is a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests include the development of democracy and dictatorship, European politics, populism and fascism, and the history of the left. Her latest book is Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day. In addition to her scholarly work, she has published in a wide variety of non-scholarly publications, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, VOX, The Guardian, and Dissent. She is on the boards of The Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Dissent, and Persuasion. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Bruce Cain, professor of Political Science at Stanford and Director of the University's Bill Lane Center for the American West, joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about the new book he is writing on the political challenges of adapting to a changing climate in California and other western states. Bruce Cain is an expert in U.S. politics, particularly the politics of California and the American West. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting, he is a prominent scholar of elections, political regulation and the relationships between lobbyists and elected officials. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Cain was director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and executive director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech, 1988 and UC Berkeley, 2003) and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000). He is currently working on state regulatory processes and stakeholder involvement in the areas of water, energy and the environment. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Political sociologist Andrew G. Walder, the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, is a specialist on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. Walder joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss China's economic slowdown, why it suffers from high inequality, and whether the country has peaked and is now facing long-term stagnation. Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research has focused on the social impact of revolutions, particularly the sources of stability and change in communist regimes and their successor states, with a special emphasis on China. His book on Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (1986) examined the way that Communist Party organization and reward structures created patron-client forms of authority in post-revolution urban China. Professor Walder's subsequent work examined the evolution of property rights and economics organization under the impact of market reform and the consequences for social stratification, career and intergenerational mobility, and political conflict. He is the author of Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009), which analyzed the origins of political factionalism during the Cultural Revolution and explored how this phenomenon altered the direction of the student movement and its social impact. At Stanford, he has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology; Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; and Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies. Professor Walder is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books have received awards from the American Sociological Association and the Association for Asian Studies. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

To kick off our second season, Francis Fukuyama is once again joined by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer. The two discuss the prospects for negotiation in Ukraine, the origins of the Russian invasion, and how the war may evolve this winter. Steven Pifer is a nonresident senior fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, and the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, and an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. His research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security. Brookings articleVideo of this conversationDemocracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

As 2022 comes to a close, Francis Fukuyama sits down with his CDDRL colleague and democracy expert Larry Diamond for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of global democracy and the year's dramatic political developments in China, Iran, and the United States. 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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Peidong Sun is a Distinguished Associate Professor of Arts and Science in China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the History Department at Cornell University. Previously, she was a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and has written extensively on social issues in China. Professor Sun joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss the protests that have taken place across many cities in China over the past several weeks. Prompted by anger over the country's prolonged COVID lockdowns, these protests have also questioned the legitimacy of the Communist Party regime. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

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.” Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

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. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.