Larry Diamond joins Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Carisa Nietsche to discuss the health of global democracy and his latest book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, the Center for a New American Security reports. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Diamond* discusses the electoral, institutional, and geopolitical threats to the world’s democracies and what solutions the United States, Europe, and their allies can forward to bolster against authoritarian states’ resurgence.
Whatever the short- or even medium-term benefits, history has shown that governance systems in which citizens are kept subservient to the state risk becoming unsustainable politically over time, argues Dr Robin Niblett CMG, Director of Chatham House, the London-based foreign policy think tank. In contrast, systems in which governments are truly accountable to their citizens – through a separation of powers, the rule of law and a strong civil society – offer greater opportunities for domestic progress over the long term, as well as for constructive international cooperation in an interdependent world, he contends.
*Co-director of the National Endowment for Democracy’s international Forum for Democratic Studies.
