Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

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• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

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DiQ S6 EP4

Ken Opalo on the Prospects of Democracy in Africa

Glossary

What is the African Union?

(31:02 or p.8 in the transcript)

African Union (AU), formerly (1963–2002) Organization of African Unity, is an intergovernmental organization, established in 2002, to promote unity and solidarity of African states, to spur economic development, and to promote international cooperation. The African Union (AU) replaced the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The AU’s headquarters are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The OAU was established on May 25, 1963, and its activities included diplomacy (especially in support of African liberation movements), mediation of boundary conflicts and regional and civil wars, and research in economics and communications. The OAU maintained the “Africa group” at the United Nations (UN) through which many of its efforts at international coordination were channeled. The OAU was instrumental in bringing about the joint cooperation of African states in the work of the Group of 77, which acts as a caucus of developing nations within the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The principal organ of the OAU was the annual assembly of heads of state and government. In 2000, in a move spearheaded by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, it was proposed that the OAU be replaced by a new body, the African Union. The African Union was to be more economic in nature, similar to the European Union, and would contain a central bank, a court of justice, and an all-Africa parliament. A Constitutive Act, which provided for the establishment of the African Union, was ratified by two-thirds of the OAU’s members and came into force on May 26, 2001. After a transition period, the African Union replaced the OAU in July 2002. In 2004 the AU’s Pan-African Parliament was inaugurated, and the organization agreed to create a peacekeeping force, the African Standby Force, of about 15,000 soldiers. source

What is the Sahel Crisis?

(33:18 or p.9 in the transcript)

The central Sahel region, which includes the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, is facing one of the fastest growing displacement crises in the world. More than 2.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes and at least 13.4 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. People began fleeing the central Sahel region in 2011 after an outbreak of violence in Northern Mali. Poverty, unemployment, and the presence of armed groups in rural areas of Northern Mali all contributed to an increase in forced displacement. Armed groups have rapidly expanded, spreading violence to central parts of the country and to neighboring countries, such as Burkina Faso and Niger. As a result of the conflict, millions of families have been displaced across the region, including 650,000 people uprooted in 2019 alone. Approximately 1.8 million people have been internally displaced. In Burkina Faso, at least 1 million people – approximately 5 percent of the country’s population- have fled violence inside the country in the past year, many seeking refuge in areas that are also affected by violence and poverty. Armed conflict, economic insecurity, and the adverse effects of climate change are some of the biggest challenges affecting the region. Indiscriminate attacks against civilians and public infrastructure – including schools and health facilities – have threatened the lives of millions of people and their livelihoods. The conflict has claimed more than 6,500 lives in the last year and threatens to leave at least 7.4 million people suffering from acute malnutrition. source

Guests featured in this episode:

Ronald Daniels, the President of Johns Hopkins University, as well as a board member of the Central European University. His numerous accomplishments include the Order of Canada awarded to him in 2016 and his election as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his tenure as President, Johns Hopkins University has consistently ranked at the top for its interdisciplinary research and innovation, enhanced student access, as well as community engagement. It thus serves as a true model for a research university in the 21st century.

Last year, Ron Daniels published an agenda-setting book, "What Universities Owe Democracy." It makes a compelling and a passionate case for universities to be engaged in preserving and strengthening democratic achievements that are under threat, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. 

Glossary:

What is the Pell Grant program?
(11:34 or p.4 in the transcript)

The Pell Grant is a form of need-based federal financial aid awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to help eligible low-income students pay for college costs, including tuition, fees, room and board, and other educational expenses. The Pell Grant is the largest grant program offered by the Department of Education to undergraduate students. Created in 1972, the federal Pell Grant program has been awarding grants to students since the 1973-1974 school year. It was named after Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, the chief sponsor of the program. To be eligible, students must demonstrate exceptional financial need, be a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen and have not yet received a bachelor's, graduate or professional degree. While graduate students are not typically eligible for Pell Grant aid, in some cases students seeking a post-baccalaureate teacher certification may be eligible. The Pell Grant generally does not need to be repaid, but there are some exceptions, such as in case of withdrawing from courses or changing enrollment status after a Pell Grant award has been disbursed. Students may lose Pell Grant eligibility entirely if they withdraw from courses, do not maintain enrollment status or fail to continue making academic progress, which can include GPA requirements set by individual institutions. source

What is the K-12 education?
(14:43 or p.4 in the transcript)

The K-12 system stands for ‘from kindergarten to 12th grade’. This equates roughly to a school starting age of around five through to Grade 12 at around the age of 18. The system is broken down into three stages: elementary school (Grades K–5), middle school (Grades 6–8) and high school (Grades 9–12). In the United States, education is primarily the responsibility of state and local government. Every state has its own department of education and laws regarding finance, the hiring of school personnel, student attendance and curriculum. States also determine the number of years of compulsory education – in some states, education is only compulsory until the age of 16. In December 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which pledged to offer the same standard of education to every child in the US “regardless of race, income, background, the zip code, or where they live”. The act replaced the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and, among other things, is an attempt to bring back some element of control with the recommendation for having fewer tests. source

Guests featured in this episode:

Shaharzad Akbar, one of the most prominent among the Afghan democratic opposition voices in exile. She was born in Afghanistan, lived with her family as a refugee in Pakistan during the first Taliban regime for some years and she's the first Afghan woman to earn a postgraduate degree at Oxford University in 2011.

She was later Country Director for the Open Society Afghanistan, a nonprofit organization supporting civil society and media, focusing on human rights and peace building. Shaharzad also worked as Senior Advisor to the Afghan President on high development councils and was Chair of the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, a position that she held until early 2022.

In 2021, she was awarded the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. Most recently, she was an Open Society Network Academic Fellow in Human Rights at Chatham House and is currently at Wolfson College, Oxford building a new international NGO to support human rights in Afghanistan.

Glossary:

What is the Taliban?

(00:47 or p.1 in the transcript)

Taliban, Pashto Ṭālebān (“Students”), also spelled Taleban is a political and religious faction and militia that came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Following the Soviet Union’s 1989 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban — whose name refers to the Islamic religious students who formed the group’s main recruits — arose as a popular reaction to the chaos that gripped the country. In 1994–95, under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban extended its control in Afghanistan from a single city to more than half the country, and in 1996 it captured Kabul and instituted a strict Islamic regime. By 1999, the

Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan but failed to win international recognition of its regime because of its harsh social policies — which included the almost complete removal of women from public life — and its role as a haven for Islamic extremists. Among these extremists was Osama bin Laden, the expatriate Saudi Arabian leader of Al-Qaeda, a network of Islamic militants that had engaged in numerous acts of terrorism. The Taliban’s refusal to extradite bin Laden to the U.S. following the September 11 attacks in 2001 prompted the U.S. to attack Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, driving the former from power and sending the leaders of both groups into hiding. source

What is Loya Jirga?

(9:13 or p.3 in the transcript)

The term “Loya Jirga” is a combination of two words from one of Afghanistan's national languages, Pashto, "Loya" meaning grand or big, and "Jirga" meaning council, assembly, or meeting. The institution of Loya Jirga evolved from the institution of Jirga, which is usually a council of elders in Afghanistan's tribal groups - particularly the Pashtuns - to settle disputes and deal with other day-to-day problems of living. Loya Jirga is a political institution unique to Afghanistan. It was the highest consultative body with broad representation and has been used to decide upon the matters of national importance, such as declarations of war or adopting treaties of peace, selection of a new ruler or adopting a new constitution, approving reforms and all important foreign policy decisions since the mid-18th century. In short, the forum represents the general will of the Afghan people. source

Who are the Mujahideen?

(11:49 or p.3 in the transcript)

Mujahideen or Mujahidin is the plural form of the Arabic term mujahid, who is a person who wages jihad. According to doctrinal and historical applications of Islamic law, jihad indicates military action for the defense or expansion of Islam. While in the course of Islamic history the term mujahidin has been used by different groups to identify their struggles to defend Islam, the term gained global currency in the latter decades of the twentieth century after the leftist coup d'état in Afghanistan on 27 April 1978. The resistance groups first opposed the Afghan communist regime, declaring it atheist. They then turned their attention to the Soviet Union when it invaded Afghanistan on 27 December 1979. Fighting the Soviet Red Army, they collectively referred to themselves as mujahidin waging jihad against a communist power occupying an Islamic land. The Afghan mujahidin were divided into two main groups: (1) those based in and backed by Pakistan with substantial financial and military assistance from Saudi Arabia and the United States, who mainly represented the Sunni majority; and (2) those based in and supported by Iran, representing the Shiite minority. source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a

review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

Guests featured in this episode:

Thomas Carothers, is the Harvey V Feinberg Chair for Democracy Studies and Co-director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Trained as a lawyer, he served in the office of the legal advisor of the U.S. State Department before joining The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

He is an expert on democracy and international support for democracy promotion abroad for human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. Tom has published several critically acclaimed books, including  Funding Virtue: Civil Society and Democracy Promotion, Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad, and most recently Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization.

He's also been a visiting member at the CEU, and is a member of the advisory board of our Democracy Institute in Budapest.

GLOSSARY:

What are the United States midterm elections?

(02:27 or p.1 in the transcript)

United States midterm elections are general elections that occur every four years in the middle of the U.S. presidential term. The election process mandated by Article I of the United States Constitution, by which all members of the United States House of Representatives and roughly a third of the members of the U.S. Senate are on the ballot, occurs every two years. (Currently, the House of Representatives has 435 members, and the Senate has 100.) Midterm elections get their name because they occur halfway through a president’s four-year term. In addition to elections for members of Congress, 36 states hold their gubernatorial elections during the midterm cycle. Many local races and citizen-generated initiatives also can appear on midterm ballots. In general, fewer Americans vote in midterm elections than in presidential elections. Whereas about 60 percent of eligible voters typically cast ballots in presidential election years, that percentage falls to about 40 percent for midterms. (Voter turnout in the 2018 midterm elections was 50 percent, the highest since 1914. Turnout for the 2022 midterms was estimated at 47 percent.) source

What is the OECD?

(07:26 or p.3 in the transcript)

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, international organization founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. Member countries produce two-thirds of the world’s goods and services. The convention establishing the OECD was signed on Dec. 14, 1960, by 18 European countries, the United States, and Canada and went into effect on Sept. 30, 1961. It represented an extension of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), set up in 1948 to coordinate efforts in restoring Europe’s economy under the Marshall Plan. One of the fundamental purposes of the OECD is to achieve the highest possible economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in member countries; at the same time, it emphasizes maintaining financial stability. The organization has attempted to reach this goal by liberalizing international trade and the movement of capital between countries. A further major goal is the coordination of economic aid to developing countries. Current OECD members are Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. source.

What was the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol?

(15:32 or p.5 in the transcript)

January 6 insurrection or January 6 U.S. Capitol attack was the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters of Republican Pres. Donald J. Trump. The attack disrupted a joint session of Congress convened to certify the results of the presidential election of 2020, which Trump had lost to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. Because its object was to prevent a legitimate president-elect from assuming office, the attack was widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d’état. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law-enforcement agencies also considered it an act of domestic terrorism. For having given a speech before the attack in which he encouraged a large crowd of his supporters near the White House to march to the Capitol and violently resist Congress’s certification of Biden’s victory—which many in the crowd then did—Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection” (he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate). source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a

review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

Guests featured in this episode:

Azadeh Moaveni, the Iranian-American writer and journalist who has been covering the Middle East for more than two decades. A renowned expert on Iran, the Islamic State, as well as Middle East Politics and Islamic society in general, she has focused her work on how women are impacted by political conflicts, and how their social and political rights are affected by militarism and Islamism. 

 In 2005, she published the international bestseller Lipstick Jihad, a memoir recounting her experience of the Iranian reform and women’s rights movements. The following year saw the publication of Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, co-authored with the Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi. 

GLOSSARY:

What are Iran’s morality police?
(02:33 or p.1 in the transcript)

"Gasht-e-Ershad," which translates as "guidance patrols," and is widely known as the "morality police," is a unit of Iran’s police force established under former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wearing the hijab became mandatory in Iran in 1983. It was not until 2006 that the unit began patrolling the streets, tasked with enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public. According to Iranian law, all women above the age of puberty must wear a head covering and loose clothing in public, although the exact age is not clearly defined. In school, girls typically have to wear the hijab from the age of seven, but that does not mean they need to necessarily wear it in other public places. 

A major part of Iran’s social regulations are based on the state's interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, which requires both men and women to dress modestly. However, in practice, the "morality police" have in the past primarily targeted women. There are no clear guidelines or details on what types of clothing qualify as inappropriate, leaving a lot of room for interpretation and sparking accusations that the "morality" enforcers arbitrarily detain women.  Morality police squads have in the past been made up of men wearing green uniforms and women in black chadors, garments which cover the head and upper body. Those detained by the "morality police" are given a notice or, in some cases, are taken to a so-called education and advice center or a police station, where they are required to attend a mandatory lecture on the hijab and Islamic values. They then have to call someone to bring them "appropriate clothes" in order to be released. source

What is the Iran nuclear deal?
(20:06 or p.5 in the transcript)

The Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is a landmark accord reached between Iran and several world powers, including the United States, in July 2015. 

Under its terms, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more extensive international inspections in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions relief. Proponents of the deal said that it would help prevent a revival of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and thereby reduce the prospects for conflict between Iran and its regional rivals, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, the deal has been in jeopardy since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018. In retaliation for the U.S. departure and for deadly attacks on prominent Iranians in 2020, including one by the United States, Iran has resumed some of its nuclear activities. In 2021, President Joe Biden said the United States would return to the deal if Iran came back into compliance. Renewed diplomacy initially seemed promising, but after stop-and-go talks, it remains unclear if the parties can come to an agreement. source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Guests featured in this episode:

Ricardo Regatieri, professor of sociology at the University of Bahia, Brazil. He also teaches in the Graduate Program in Social Sciences and is one of the leaders of PERIFERICAS – Research Group on Social Theories, Modernities and Colonialities at the same university. Ricardo was a visiting professor at the University of Cape Verde, as well as a research professor at Korea University and a lecturer at Hankuk University, both in Seoul, South Korea. 

Ricardo has published widely on critical social theory, modernity and coloniality, and democracy and authoritarian politics, and his latest research project investigates the challenges of dependency and coloniality to democracy and political stability in Brazil within the capitalist world-system.

GLOSSARY

What is the Workers Party (PT)?
(02:14 or p.1 in the transcript)

During the late 1970s, while Brazil was still under military rule, workers in the metallurgical industries (especially in automobile factories) located in São Paulo's industrial suburb of São Bernardo do Campo organized through factory commissions to push for increased wages and improved working conditions. The strike waves that these workers launched in 1978 and 1979 ushered in a form of organizing known as the new unionism and eventually led to the founding of the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) in 1979 and 1980.These workers founded their own party—under new political guidelines set out in 1979 by the dictatorship—because they saw the main opposition party (the Brazilian Democratic Movement, later the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), the reconstituted Brazilian Labor Party, and the Brazilian Communist Party as too alienated from the concerns of rank-and-file workers. Thus, on May Day 1979, a group of labor leaders from the metalworkers' unions (who referred to themselves as labor's "authentic" leaders) issued a set of goals. The "authentics," led by Luís Inácio da Silva (popularly known as Lula), formed the Central Workers' Union (CUT) in 1983 to coordinate national labor practices for the unions associated with the PT. source

What was the military dictatorship in Brazil?
(13:42 or p.4 in the transcript)

After overthrowing the reformist center-left government of João Goulart on March 31, 1964 in a coup d’état, the military installed a tutelary authoritarian regime to control civil society and the political system, serving as a political model for similar regimes in Latin America during the Cold War. The military passed arbitrary laws and severely repressed left-wing political groups and social movements while also seeking to accelerate capitalist development and the “national integration” of Brazil’s vast territory. They intended to modernize Brazilian industry and carry out bold infrastructure projects. On the other hand, they faced strong opposition from civil society, led by political groups, artists, intellectuals, and press outlets of diverse ideological backgrounds (Marxists, liberals, socialists, and progressive Catholics). These groups were divided between total refusal to negotiate with the military and critical adherence to the policies of the generals’ governments, composing a complex relationship between society and the state. source

What is the Latin American populism?
(15:05 or p.4 in the transcript)

In Latin America, populism emerged in the 1930s and 1940s with the crisis of the oligarchical social order that combined liberal-inspired constitutions (division of powers, and elections) with patrimonial practices and values in predominantly rural societies. These estate-based societies had relations of domination and subordination characterized by unequal reciprocity. Institutional and everyday practices of domination excluded the majority of the population from politics and from the public sphere, which were kept in the hands of elites. Processes of urbanization, industrialization, and a generalized crisis of paternal authority allowed populist leaders to emerge. Classical populist leaders of the 1930s and 1940s such as Juan Perón and José María Velasco Ibarra fought against electoral fraud, expanded the franchise, and were exalted as the embodiment of the nation’s true, uncorrupted traditions and values against those of foreign-oriented elites. In more economically developed nations such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, populist presidents pursued nationalist and redistributive social policies that coincided with the period of import substitution industrialization. Populism also emerged in agrarian contexts. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, populism was not linked to industrialization, even though, as in the industrializing republics, it led to the political inclusion of previously excluded electors. source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Guests featured in this episode: 

Charles Taylor, one of the most preeminent contemporary philosophers of our times. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal. He was Fellow of All Souls College and Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University. His remarkably vast oeuvre includes landmark monographs on Hegel, social theory, religion, language, and multiculturalism. Among his books let me mention Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989), Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (1992), or A Secular Age (2007) which have decisively shaped contemporary debates in their respective fields. His latest book, co-authored with Craig Calhoun and Dilip Gaonkar is called Degenerations of Democracy.

Glossary

What is the murder of George Floyd?
(08:51 or p.3 in the transcript)

On May 25, 2020, white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck for almost 10 minutes. The death, recorded by bystanders, touched off what may have been the largest protest movement in U.S. history and a nationwide reckoning on race and policing. After video of the incident was posted on Facebook, protests began almost immediately in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the nation. Demonstrators chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” took to the streets from coast to coast, and police departments around the country responded at times with riot-control tactics. By early June, protests were so widespread that over 200 American cities had imposed curfews and half of the United States had activated the National Guard. Marches continued and spread throughout June, despite the restrictions on gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic and militarized resistance from federal and local law enforcement. More than 2,000 cities and towns in all 50 states saw some form of demonstration in the weeks after Floyd’s death, as well as major cities across the globe: source

What is the Hungarian Revolution of 1956?
(13:06 or p.4 in the transcript)

Hungarian Revolution was a popular uprising in Hungary in 1956, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Encouraged by the new freedom of debate and criticism, a rising tide of unrest and discontent in Hungary broke out into active fighting in October 1956. Rebels won the first phase of the revolution, and Imre Nagy became premier, agreeing to establish a multiparty system. On November 1, 1956, he declared Hungarian neutrality and appealed to the United Nations for support, but Western powers were reluctant to risk a global confrontation. On November 4 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the revolution, and Nagy was executed for treason in 1958. Nevertheless, Stalinist-type domination and exploitation did not return, and Hungary thereafter experienced a slow evolution toward some internal autonomy: source

What is the Ukrainian refugee crisis?
(15:16 or p.4 in the transcript)

The ongoing Ukrainian refugee crisis began in February 2022 immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At present, around 8 million of Ukrainians fled the country as Russia indiscriminately targeted civilian populations with rockets and artillery strikes. By late March some four million Ukrainians had fled the fighting; this represented Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The overwhelming majority would find safety in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. 90% of the refugees are women and children as Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country: source

What is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
(18:13 or p.5 in the transcript)

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), foundational document of international human rights law. It has been referred to as humanity’s Magna Carta by Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights that was responsible for the drafting of the document. After minor changes it was adopted unanimously—though with abstentions from the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian SSR, and Yugoslavia—by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948 (now celebrated annually as Human Rights Day), as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” The French jurist René Cassin was originally recognized as the principal author of the UDHR. It is now well established, however, that, although no individual can claim ownership of this document, John Humphrey, a Canadian professor of law and the UN Secretariat’s Human Rights Director, authored its first draft. Also instrumental in the drafting of the UDHR were Roosevelt; Chang Peng-chun, a Chinese playwright, philosopher, and diplomat; and Charles Habib Malik, a Lebanese philosopher and diplomat: source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Guests featured on this episode:

Craig Calhoun, University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has written on the struggle by students for democracy in China, a book titled "Neither Gods nor Emperors." He has co-authored the volume, "Does Capitalism Have a Future?" with Immanuel Wallerstein and others. His latest book, "Degenerations of Democracy," written with Charles Taylor and Dilip Gaonkar, notes the signs that  U.S. American democracy exhibits symptoms of decline or even of degeneration, and inspires our conversation in this episode.

Glossary 

Who is Peter Thiel?
(14:55 or p.4 in the transcript)

Peter Thiel is a German American entrepreneur and business executive who helped found PayPal, an e-commerce company, and Palantir Technologies, a software firm involved in data analysis. He also invested in several notable ventures, including Facebook. Critics questioned involvement of Palantir Technologies with the CIA and other government agencies, especially given Thiel’s libertarianism. However, he argued that Palantir’s technology allowed for focused data retrieval, preventing overreaching searches and more draconian measures. The company was also used by banks to detect fraud and handle other cybersecurity efforts. In 2005 Thiel established Founders Fund, a venture capital firm. It invested in such companies as Airbnb, Lyft, and SpaceX. Thiel garnered attention in 2016 when he became a vocal supporter of Republican presidential nominee—and eventual winner of the election—Donald Trump, donating money and even speaking at the party’s convention: source

What is Silicon Valley?
(15:07 or p.4 in the transcript)

Silicon Valley is an industrial region around the southern shores of San Francisco Bay, California, U.S., with its intellectual center at Palo Alto, home of Stanford University. Its name is derived from the dense concentration of electronics and computer companies that sprang up there since the mid-20th century, silicon being the base material of the semiconductors employed in computer circuits. The economic emphasis in Silicon Valley has now partly switched from computer manufacturing to research, development, and marketing of computer products and software: source

What is the ‘Roe v. Wade’ case?
(25:36 or p.6 in the transcript)

Roe v. Wade is a legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (“…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”). Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022: source

What is the ACT UP movement?
(30:50 or p.7 in the transcript)

ACT UP, in full AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, is an international organization founded in the United States in 1987 to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic. It was the first group officially created to do so. ACT UP has dozens of chapters in the United States and around the world whose purpose is to find a cure for AIDS, while at the same time providing accurate information, help, and awareness about the disease by means of education and radical, nonviolent protest. The organization was founded in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in Manhattan, New York, in response to what was seen as the U.S. government’s lack of action on the growing number of deaths from HIV infection and AIDS: source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Guests featured in this episode:

Lenny Benardo, Executive Vice President of the Open Society Foundations, and  the founding director of the Open Society Fellowship Program. Lenny also sits on the boards of Bard College, the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, the European Humanities University in Lithuania, and my very own institution, CEU. He has published numerous articles in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the International Herald Tribune, Bookforum, American Prospect, and Prospect magazines. Having worked in Russia, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary earlier in his career with the Open Society Foundations, he has witnessed first hand the exhilarating atmosphere of the democratic transition in eastern Europe.

GLOSSARY

What are the Open Society Foundations?
(00:35 or p.1 in the transcript)

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve this mission, the Foundations seek to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, the Open Society Foundations implement a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. The Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

Investor and philanthropist George Soros established the Open Society Foundations, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. Their activities have grown to encompass the United States and more than 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities: source

What are the Revolutions of 1989?
(04:48 or p.2 in the transcript)

Revolutions of 1989: collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the end of the period of the Cold War and the removal of the Iron Curtain between Eastern and Western Europe. Primarily, it was the disavowal of Communism by all of the Eastern European states that were in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War II.

The seeds of the revolution were present from the very beginning, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia were pre-cursors to the Revolutions of 1989, which were the final cataclysm that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself just two years later.

The revolution began in Poland with the creation of Solidarity, the worker's movement that challenged the Communist government (the supposed representatives of the "workers' paradise) for authority. This was the first movement in the Eastern bloc that had not been brutally suppressed. This de-legitimized the Communist claim as representatives of the people's will. It continued when the Hungarian authorities decided to no longer interdict those seeking to leave the state by crossing the boundary between Hungary and Austria. This led to a flood of refugees from Eastern Europe streaming into Hungary to escape to the West. The defining event was then the collapse of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. With the exception of Romania, the revolutions were largely peaceful as the governments put up only token resistant to the clear will of the people for the end of Communist rule and democratic reform: source

What is the Black Lives Matter?
(16:28 or p.4 in the transcript)

Black Lives Matter (BLM): international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality. The name Black Lives Matter signals condemnation of the unjust killings of Black people by police (Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.

BLM activists have held large and influential protests in cities across the United States as well as internationally. A decentralized grassroots movement, Black Lives Matter is led by activists in local chapters who organize their own campaigns and programs. The chapters are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights organization that is active in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom: source

What is the Occupy movement?
(16:32 or p.4 in the transcript)

TheOccupy protests: a series of international demonstrations primarily directed against capitalism and economic inequality, sparked in particular by what are now referred to as austerity measures, official action taken by governments in order to reduce spending in the face of economic problems. Kicking off in Wall Street in New York, the Occupy protests had then spread right across the world, including such prominent locations as Frankfurt, Rome, Sydney, Hong Kong, London and various cities in the United Kingdom. As well as marches involving as many as 10,000 protesters, the demonstrations involved large numbers of people 'camping out', or occupying, key venues in cities across the world. One notable example was around the entrances to St Paul's Cathedral in central London, where over 200 tents formed a ramshackle campsite. This subsequently caused officials to close the cathedral due to health and safety concerns, the first time its doors have been closed to the public since the Second World War Blitz: source

What is the Arab Spring?
(16:34 or p.4 in the transcript)

Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The wave began when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar attempts in other Arab countries. Not every country saw success in the protest movement, however, and demonstrators expressing their political and economic grievances were often met with violent crackdowns by their countries’ security forces: source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Guests featured in this episode: 

Nadia Urbinati, the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. She is also a permanent visiting professor at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa (Italy), and has taught at Bocconi University Milan (Italy), Sciences Po Paris (France) and the UNICAMP University (Brazil). Her main fields of expertise are modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic, as well as anti-democratic traditions.

GLOSSARY

What is the People’s Party?
(13:05 or p.4 in the transcript)

The People's Party: (also known as the Populist Party) was an important political party in the United States of America during the late nineteenth century. The People's Party originated in the early 1890s. It was organized in Kansas, but the party quickly spread across the United States. It drew its members from Farmers' Alliances, the Grange, and the Knights of Labor. Originally, the Populists did not form a national organization, preferring to gain political influence within individual states. The Populist Party consisted primarily of farmers unhappy with the Democratic and Republican Parties. The Populists believed that the federal government needed to play a more active role in the American economy by regulating various businesses, especially the railroads. In particular, the Populists supported women's suffrage the direct election of United States Senators. They hoped that the enactment women's suffrage and the direct election of senators would enable them to elect some of their members to political office. Populists also supported a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, improved working conditions in factories, immigration restrictions, an eight-hour workday, the recognition of unions, and easier access to credit. source

What is the Reconstruction?
(13:10 or p.4 in the transcript)

Reconstruction: in U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. Long portrayed by many historians as a time when vindictiveRadical Republicans fastened Black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has since the late 20th century been viewed more sympathetically as a laudable experiment in interracial democracy. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America’s political life. At the national level, new laws and constitutionalamendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized Black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power, and with it a redefinition of the responsibilities of government. source

What is austerity?
(16:23 or p.4 in the transcript)

Austerity: (also called austerity measures) is a set of economic policies, usually consisting of tax increases, spending cuts, or a combination of the two, used by governments to reduce budget deficits. Austerity measures can in principle be used at any time when there is concern about government expenditures exceeding government revenues. Often, however, governments delay resorting to such measures because they are usually politically unpopular. Instead, governments tend to rely on other means—for example, deficit financing, which involves borrowing from financial markets—to mitigate budget deficits in the short run, a decision that usually necessitates the adoption of harsher austerity measures in the long run. source

What is universal suffrage?
(18:32 or p.5 in the transcript)

Universal suffrage: generally understood as the right to vote for political representatives conferred to almost all adult citizens or residents, regardless of their social status, property, knowledge, religion, race, gender, or other similar qualifications. The principle of universal suffrage, together with principles of equal, free, secret, and direct suffrage, present fundamental principles of elections common to all democracies around the world. Universal suffrage is one of two historically developed concepts of the suffrage—consisting of the right to vote and the right to stand for election. The other one, a concept contrary to universal suffrage, can be denominated as so-called limited suffrage. The concept of limited suffrage, preferred until the nineteenth century, was based on the exclusion of a large number of people from the suffrage. It was done based on social status, property, knowledge, religion, race, or gender. source

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• Central European University: CEU

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Podcast Company: Novel

Follow us on social media!

• Central European University: @CEU

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!