Larry Diamond joins the Democracy Works podcast 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.
Jenna Spinelle articles
Jenna Spinelle is the communications specialist for the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and host of the podcasts When the People Decide and Democracy Works.
Podcast: One state’s fight for fair maps
Pennsylvania is one of several states trying to ensure fair congressional maps are drawn after the 2020 Census. As we say in the episode, redistricting is one of democracy’s thorniest problems.
Podcast: How Conspiracies Are Damaging Democracy
Democracy scholars Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum call it “conspiracy without the theory” and unpack the concept in their book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.
Podcast: Defending the First Amendment and the Fourth Estate
The First Amendment and a strong Fourth Estate are essential to a healthy democracy. David McCraw, deputy general counsel of the New York Times, joins us to discuss how he helps journalists do their work,
Podcast: The Past, Present, and Future of Protests
L.A. Kauffman is a longtime organizer and author of the book How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance. She traces the history of the modern protest movement since the March on Washington in 1963.
Podcast: A Conversation About Conversation
Why is it so hard for people to talk to each other? There are a lot of easy answers we can point to, like social media and political polarization, but there’s another explanation that goes a bit deeper.
Podcast: How Democracies Die Author Daniel Ziblatt on the “Grinding Work” of Democracy
Listen to the episode on the Democracy Works podcast Daniel Ziblatt has done a lot of interviews since the release of How Democracies Die, the bestselling book he co-wrote with Steven Levitsky. But we asked him a question he’d never gotten before — about a line toward the end of the book when he refers to democracy as “grinding […]
Podcast: A Democracy Summer Reading List
The hosts of the Democracy Works podcast review current books on democracy in this week’s podcast episode.
Podcast: Congressional Oversight and Making America Pragmatic Again
We tend to think about congressional oversight in very academic terms — checks and balances, the Framers, etc. But what does it actually look like on the ground in Congress? To find out, we’re talking this week with Charlie Dent.
Podcast: Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Democracy?
Some political scientists and democracy scholars think that it might. Inequality will rise as jobs continue to be automated, which will cause distrust in the government and create fertile ground for authoritarianism.