Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

With the attack on Ukraine well underway, political thinker Yascha Mounk recently admitted in The Atlantic that, “We stand at the beginning of a new era of naked power politics.” The Russian invasion is not simply an assault on a neighboring country motivated by strained ethnic relations or security concerns, but it is an assault on the democratic values and political system espoused by Ukraine. It is the latest setback in a “democratic recession” now entering its 16th consecutive year, according to Freedom House. “In 2021, the number of countries moving away from democracy once again exceeded the number of countries moving toward it by a big margin.” Why is this happening and what can be done to reverse this global trend? Yascha Mounk argues that democracy has long struggled to embody both equality and diversity, and despite the challenges past and present facing democratic institutions, he believes that with ambition and vision, there is still reason to be hopeful. Yascha Mounk is a German-American politica