Charles Taylor: How Democracies Degenerate

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. And since our societies create new hierarchies over time, the struggle to empower ordinary citizens against various elites never really ends. Years of progress are often followed by periods of regression. The ideal of democracy can slip away.

What are the sources of degeneration in our democracies today? How are they similar and different from earlier decades? And what can we do to reverse the slide?

The eminent philosopher Charles Taylor, one of Canada’s foremost public intellectuals, explores these questions in conversation with Sanjay Ruparelia.