logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2023
36m 38s

How US and European Populisms Differ: A ...

Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
About this episode

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. 

Up next
Feb 2024
How Mongolia Became a Democracy, with Elbegdorj Tsakhia
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 Pres ... Show More
39m 39s
Jan 2024
Year-End Review of Global Democracy with Larry Diamond
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 ... Show More
53m 37s
Oct 2023
Homelands: A Conversation with Timothy Garton Ash
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 Euro ... Show More
44m 51s
Recommended Episodes
May 2021
Left in crisis: why European social democracy is in decline
Jeremy Cliffe and Emily Tamkin are joined by political scientist Tarik Abou-Chadi to explore the plight of social democratic parties in Europe. In You Ask Us, they take listener questions on overlooked social democratic successes in Europe. Read more: Jeremy Cliffe: the British L ... Show More
35m 26s
Dec 2020
The logic of chaos: The pattern of dictatorships
Ece Temelkuran, author of How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship (2019) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar series. Chaired by Dr Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College, Oxford). A certain political and moral insanity seems to be tak ... Show More
54m 4s
Nov 2022
A Powerful Theory of Why the Far Right Is Thriving Across the Globe
As we approach the 2022 midterms, the outlook for American democracy doesn’t appear promising. An increasingly Trumpist, anti-democratic Republican Party is poised to take over at least one chamber of Congress. And the Democratic Party, facing an inflationary economy and with an ... Show More
1h 30m
May 2024
[Europa 2024] De quelle Europe les extrêmes gauches rêvent-elles?
Plus petit groupe du Parlement européen avec seulement trente-sept eurodéputés, la gauche européenne milite pour ce qu'elle appelle une autre Europe et s'oppose à une Union qu'elle décrit dans ses discours comme antidémocratique et trop libérale. Alors, quel projet politique port ... Show More
31m 14s
Oct 2020
TURNOUT Episode 1: ‘Democracy is a group sport’
The right to vote can sometimes be described as a “struggle,” a “fight,” even a “war.”But how did this come to be and who has been fighting to make every generation’s path to the ballot a little less arduous? On this episode of Turnout, Katie Couric goes back to the beginning, to ... Show More
34m 22s
Feb 2024
Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on t ... Show More
1h 7m
Mar 2022
Democracy in Crisis: Putin’s Assault (with Anne Applebaum & Michael McFaul)
Over the course of this season of the podcast, Hillary has been examining the challenges our democracy faces. Today, she looks abroad to Russia’s brutal, unprovoked attack on Ukraine, and considers what led to this moment and what’s at stake in this war–for Ukraine, Russia, the U ... Show More
1h 10m
Sep 2023
The Civic Bargain: A Conversation with Josiah Ober on Ancients and Moderns
Amidst increasing acrimony and political strain, many worry that democratic governance has an expiration date. To answer these concerns, Josiah Ober looks to the ancients. Here, he discusses his recent book (co-authored with Brook Manville), The Civic Bargain: How Democracies Sur ... Show More
1h 3m