Is Democracy Failing?

In his 2009 book, The Next 100 Years, GPF Chairman George Friedman forecasted that Turkey would become the major power in the Middle East. As Trump draws down on US involvement abroad, Putin gets bogged down in Russia, and Israel is distracted in Gaza, Turkey is spying opportunit ... Show More

Over the weekend, the leaders of countries like China, Russia, India and Pakistan arrived in Tianjin, China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping was joined by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un for a victory parade cele ... Show More

The impending 25 per cent tariffs on India over its purchase of Russian oil appears bold. While the US said its primary motivation was to hit Putin where it hurts, it understandably prompted a strong reaction from the government in New Delhi. So why is the US government willing t ... Show More

David Runciman is author of "How Democracy Ends" and host of the Talking Politics podcast. We spoke about what the function of democracy is, the significance of the generational divide when voting, the relationship between corporations and government, anarcho-syndacalism & the ri ... Show More

Quinn Slobodian, Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas at Wellesley College joins the podcast to discuss his book "Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy." 

We’re taking a week off as school starts back up, but we wanted to reshare this episode with you this week. For a show about economics, we talk about democracy a lot. But there’s an important reason for that. Without a strong democracy to build capitalism on top of, it’ll always ... Show More

History professor John Keane argues we need to harness the radical potential of democracy or the despots and demagogues will win. 

Some analysts argue that capitalism would work better without democracy, while others believe that democracy would be better off without capitalism – so what’s the solution? In his new book “The crisis of democratic capitalism”, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Fin ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was i ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was i ... Show More

If you think democracy is some kind of inevitable, default setting for the world, then you aren't going to have it for very long, says historian and author Timothy Snyder. From World War I to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Snyder dives into the structures that uplift and tear d ... Show More

Our democracy is an evolving machine. The machine was built by a small group of people who were all men and looked the same. Over time the strength of American society is that it has grown and become more diverse and become very different. Our democracy has in an inefficient, epi ... Show More