Yascha Mounk: How Diverse Democracies Can Endure
Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being diverse, equal and fair to all its citizens.
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.
Is this inevitable? Or can we craft deeply diverse democracies, genuinely committed to fairness, equality and solidarity, in the twenty-first century?
The critically acclaimed public intellectual Yascha Mounk explores these questions in conversation with Sanjay Ruparelia.
About the speaker
Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the crisis of democracy and the defense of philosophically liberal values. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Yascha received his BA in History from Trinity College Cambridge and his PhD in Government from Harvard University. He is an Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds appointments in both the School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. Yascha is also a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Persuasion. He is the author of four books: Stranger in My Own Country - A Jewish Family in Modern Germany, a memoir about Germany’s fraught attempts to deal with its past; The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, which argues that a growing obsession with the concept of individual responsibility has transformed western welfare states; The People versus Democracy – Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, which explains the causes of the populist rise and investigates how to renew liberal democracy; and The Great Experiment - Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, which argues that anybody who seeks to help ethnically and religiously diverse democracies thrive has reason to embrace a more ambitious vision for their future than is now fashionable. He frequently contributes to major international publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, El País, l'Express and Folha de São Paolo, among others.
About the discussant
Sanjay Ruparelia is the Jarislowsky Democracy Chair, and an associate professor of politics, at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India, editor of The Indian Ideology: Three Responses to Perry Anderson, and co-editor of Understanding India's New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? Sanjay is a co-chair of the Participedia network (participedia.net), associate editor of Pacific Affairs and country expert for V-Dem: the Varieties of Democracy Project (Sweden). He periodically writes popular essays and op-eds in various media, such as Dissent, Global Policy, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Open Canada, Policy Options, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. He previously taught at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, served as a consultant to the Asia Foundation (Kabul), United Nations Development Programme (New York) and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (Geneva), and was a fellow at Notre Dame, Princeton and Yale. He earned his B.A. from McGill University, and M.Phil and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Connect with him on Twitter @SVRuparelia.