The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a searing light on the fraught relationship between science, politics and democracy. On the one hand, scientists and public health specialists have developed novel vaccines and effective safety protocols with astonishing speed, saving the lives of millions in many western democracies.

The retreat of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century is impossible to ignore. From Wisconsin to Warsaw, Budapest to Bangalore, many citizens are turning against the values of pluralism and capacity of traditional liberal institutions to secure their demands.

Over the past century, Asia has been transformed by rapid economic growth, industrialization and urbanization–a spectacular record of development that turned one of the world’s poorest regions into one of its richest. Many believed that such powerful socioeconomic transformations would encourage a transition to democracy.

Modern representative democracies have struggled to accommodate deep social differences. Some embraced an ethnic conception of the nation-state to protect specific communities and relatively homogenous societies. Others constitutionally espoused civic patriotism. Yet in practice they reveal structures of hierarchy, fragmentation and exclusion.

How does the politics of race work in Canada and the United States? What can we learn by comparing their respective norms, institutions and practices? How do we expand genuine freedom and political belonging in the face of these historical legacies and contemporary realities?

Despite the expansion of laws protecting formal equality and important recent strides, women continue to face many barriers to equal political representation in most democracies around the world. Men continue to comprise the majority of elected representatives, cabinet ministers and heads of government. Persistent male bias among many voters, unequal patterns of recruitment and promotion within party organizations, and media representations that promote the voices and perspectives of men are just some of the reasons.

Liberalism faces a serious crisis. Developed in the wake of Europe’s wars over religion and nationalism, grounded in fundamental principles of equality and the rule of law, classical liberalism emphasized the rights of individuals to pursue their values and interests free from encroachment by government.

The rapid fall of Kabul in the summer of 2021, following the United States’ withdrawal of its military forces, stunned observers across the world. The establishment of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2004 expanded personal freedoms, social development and basic infrastructure in many urban areas. Yet disputed elections and endemic corruption undermined the promise of democracy and the rule of law.

The Covid-19 pandemic has posed the greatest test of international solidarity in many decades. At the outset, the political leaders of many western democracies pledged, ‘we are all in this together’. Yet the pandemic has imposed a severely unequal toll within societies and across the world. In advanced industrialized democracies, Covid-19 has exposed the special vulnerability of the elderly, frontline workers with precarious contracts and inadequate social protection, and ethnic and racial minorities.

The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a searing light on the fraught relationship between science, politics and democracy. On the one hand, scientists and public health specialists have developed novel vaccines and effective safety protocols with astonishing speed, saving the lives of millions in many western democracies.

India has long stood out as the most unlikely democracy in the world. Two centuries of British colonial rule had deepened absolute poverty, social inequalities and religious conflicts. Yet the secular 1950 Constitution granted universal adult suffrage, codified a wide range of civil liberties and political rights, and institutionalized many checks across a sprawling federal parliamentary democracy.

The existential threat of catastrophic climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity today. Surveys indicate broad public support for major policy changes exists in many countries around the world. Yet the political incentives, ideological divisions and time horizons of democratic politics also pose obstacles. Politicians remain wary of imposing short-term costs on their constituents, despite the destructive long-term ramifications of the status quo.

Democracy represents a political ideal: popular self-rule. It envisions a political community of citizens empowered to participate in public life, choose their representatives and determine a common future. Yet the real history of modern democracies involves bitter struggles to extend civil liberties, political rights and social equality, and to expand the boundaries of nations, to realize this ancient ideal.

Around the world, constitutional democracies face mounting challenges. In many countries, the resurgence of nationalism and populism threatens civil liberties and political rights, especially of minorities. An exclusive conception of the people, and a growing belief that political majorities can act as they wish, tests the checks and balances that constrain executive power and the rule of law more broadly.

Starting in the 1970s, many autocratic regimes in the world suffered mounting crises, inaugurating democratic transitions across Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The Middle East and North Africa remained a regional anomaly, however, despite promising experiments in constitutional reform in the early twentieth century and parliamentary government in several countries after WWII.

The rise of populism in recent years, amid worsening economic inequalities, raised profound questions about the resilience of western liberal democracies. Brexit, the inauguration of Trump and growing political turmoil across Europe demonstrated their vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally exposed the failings of their underlying social contracts.

One of the most influential labour advocates in modern history, Leo’s career as a strong voice for working people began on the shop floor of the Inco nickel smelter in Sudbury and recently concluded with his retirement as the long-time International President of the United Steelworkers, the largest private sector union in North America. He also held a number of significant positions in the international labour movement including Vice President of the AFL-CIO and as Co-Founder of Workers Uniting – The Global Union.

The last decade has catalyzed a growing debate over the prospects of democracy. Following the Great Financial Crash of 2008, a variety of countries have experienced signs of democratic backsliding. In particular, the rise of populism, majoritarianism and nationalism has led to the erosion of civil liberties, political transparency and the rule of law in many longstanding democracies, from Britain and India to the United States.