Episode description

Our first speaker is Moises Naim who is a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the new book entitled Revenge of Power.

Moises will tell us about how populism, polarization, and post-truth undermine the democratic process.  And that there is a global trend in the past few decades away from democracies towards more authoritarian regimes.

Our second speaker will be Julian Waller who is a political scientist at George Washington University, and he has a new paper that was recently published in the magazine American Affairs entitled Authoritarianism here?

Julian will speak about why strong democratic governance in the US makes it unlikely that authoritarianism can take hold in the US because of the diffusion of power within the Federal government and how state and local control through federalism strengthens democracy.