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 St ... Show More
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 Europ ... Show More
44m 51s
Aug 2023
China's Road to Ruin, with Michael Bennon
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 fin ... Show More
45m 35s
Oct 2019
Larry Diamond, "Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency" (Penguin, 2019)
Larry Diamond joins us this week to talk about the threat China’s model of authoritarian capitalism poses to liberal democracy in the United States and around the world. Economics drives politics, and it’s easy to admire China’s growth while looking past things like increasing su ... Show More
40m 46s
May 2023
If you don’t have multiracial democracy, you have no democracy at all
The history of American democracy has always been fraught when it comes to race. Yet no matter how elusive it may be, Harvard Kennedy School professors Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung say true multiracial democracy not only remains a worthy goal, but achieving it is critic ... Show More
45m 54s
Nov 2019
How to Reverse the Global Drift Toward Authoritarianism
Autocrats and populists are on the march around the world, including in European countries that were seen until recently as firmly in the democratic camp. The phenomenon, coupled with the deepening of authoritarian tendencies in already-repressive Russia and China, has prompted w ... Show More
31m 11s
Dec 2023
Devrim Adam Yavuz, "Democracy and Capitalism in Turkey: The State, Power, and Big Business" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
While a positive correlation between capitalism and democracy has existed in Western Europe and North America, the example of late-industrializing nations such as Turkey has demonstrated that the two need not always go hand in hand, and sometimes the interests of business coincid ... Show More
1h 1m
Feb 2018
Episode 181: Djibouti Democracy Activist Daher Ahmed Farah
Djibouti is the only country in the world that hosts military bases for both the United States and China. The US base, Camp Lemmonier, hosts US special forces and its only a few kilometers from China's only military base outside of Asia. France, the former colonial ruler, also ha ... Show More
42m 33s