Podcasts /

10 years ago anti-government protests in Tunisia sparked a wave of spontaneous uprisings against authoritarian regime’s in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring was met with repression by governments in the region, but ultimately led to the ousting of rulers such as Ben Ali in Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. But the hope that these changes would usher a new era of democracy in the region has been belied. Michael Wahid Hanna helps us understand the turbulent events of 2010 in Egypt, what changes they led to and why prospects for democracy in the country still appear bleak

Most western academics were skeptical about the future of India, the world’s largest democracy, throughout the 1950s to the 1970s. It succeeded beyond all expectations in mobilizing large-scale electoral participation, especially among poor and illiterate voters, though paradoxically they benefitted the least from it economically. And yet today its very existence seems to hang in balance as the country faces a deep crisis of liberal, secular democratic norms, values and institutional practices. Freedom House even downgraded India from a free democracy to a "partially free democracy" last year. So what ails Indian democracy so suddenly? How deep are the roots of the massive challenges it must overcome? Must it revitalize itself using Indian civilizational ideas instead of, or melded with, western norms of liberalism and secularism?

Yogendra Yadav (a leading political theorist and leader of the Swaraj India party established in 2016) helps us make sense of the past, present and future of democracy in India.

The decline and even death of liberalism has been predicted often. Today it faces challenges not only from populism in Europe and the US but also from China offering an illiberal alternative that may prove attractive to leaders in the global South. In this episode, Professor Timothy Garton Ash (University of Oxford) joins us to analyze the future of liberalism. We discuss what liberalism can learn from its mistakes to emerge stronger.

Covid-19 vaccines have been developed in record time and are being distributed around the world. But issues like vaccine hesitancy, slow production and unequal access between as well as within countries are inhibiting the global vaccination progress needed to combat the pandemic. In this first episode of season 2, we’re joined by Dr. Suerie Moon (Graduate Institute) to explore how vaccine nationalism and patents pose obstacles to increasing vaccine production. She discusses how Covid 19 has exacerbated existing inequalities and how vaccine access could be democratized.

Citizens have a crucial role to play in political life and can have tremendous power, as they come together in associations and social movements. To close this first season, Professor Mary Kaldor (London School of Economics) lends us her experience as both an academic and an activist in the peace and human rights movements to discuss what role civil society plays in keeping democracy alive and healthy, and what real utopias we can build on.

Prior to the Covid 19 pandemic, the issue on everyone’s minds was climate change. Scientists have been raising the alarm for the good part of three decades, but politicians the world over have been slow to react, even as more citizens have been calling for radical action. In this episode, we’re joined by Michael Ignatieff (Central European University) to find out whether liberal democracy is up for the fight against climate change, and whether that fight could affect the political system itself.