Liberal democracy
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Search complete. 294 mentions across 20 episodes found for "Liberal democracy".
Nov 4, 2026
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
I figured there's almost no one better to discuss all of this than Daron Acemoglu.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
He's a Nobel laureate economist at MIT, and he's also just written a remarkable book, What happened to liberal democracy? In it, he argues that the West made the wrong decisions with automation and social media, and that those choices made inequality worse, thus democracy harder.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
He sees that continuing today with the ways we're building and deploying AI.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
I wanted to speak with Darren about all of this and to learn what he thinks we can do to make better choices with AI.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
Thank you, Nick.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
It's my true pleasure to be here with you.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
You've written this fabulous, long book about liberal democracy.
Nicholas ThompsonHOST
Could have
Pete QuiñonesHOST
So, let's go.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Let us begin with what seems obvious, that communism and liberal democracy share a similar perception of history.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Great assumption right out the, right out the gate, right? Societies, as the supporters of the two regimes are never tired of repeating, are not only changing and developing according to a linear pattern, but also improving, and the most convincing evidence of the improvement, they add, is the rise of communism and liberal democracy.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
And even if a society does not become better at each stage and in each place, it should continue improving given the inherent human desire to which both regimes claim to have found the most satisfactory response.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
So these, both of these, democracy, liberal democracy, and communism, of course, have presuppositions.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
The communist view of history is well known.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
The simplest version, the one that circulated among the great unwashed in people's democracies, was that communism is bound to prevail everywhere, even in the capitalist United States, among our distant African comrades, and on any other continent.
14 MINS LATER
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Even if capitalist bourgeois elements were to appear from time to time as necessary concessions in order to save the country from a dramatic disaster, they still had to have a socialist label.
Balder HageraatsHOST
are the outgoing president, you leave a note for the next person taking this job with advice, with good wishes, whatever you want to write, basically respecting the fact that the people have spoken and that now it is time for someone else to take up the mantle.
Balder HageraatsHOST
It is that process, that respect, that is absolutely necessary for liberal democracy to work.
Balder HageraatsHOST
That doesn't mean that you have to agree with each other.
Balder HageraatsHOST
It doesn't mean that you have to be happy that the other side won the election.
10 MINS LATER
Balder HageraatsHOST
We don't engage in anti-Semitism.
Balder HageraatsHOST
We don't engage in racism.
Balder HageraatsHOST
Those kinds of basic norms, that slowly were building up in liberal democracy in the 20th century that we never reached perfection, not at all, but we were moving in a positive direction.
Balder HageraatsHOST
Now in the 21st century are collapsing, not even decaying, but they're disappearing from just go onto any Reddit forum, go onto social media and listen to the politicians speak.
Mishal HusainHOST
But the one that caught my eye and led to this episode is from a new book by a Nobel Prize winning economist who drills right down into the actions he'd like to see politicians take.
Mishal HusainHOST
He is the MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, whose latest book is called What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity.
Mishal HusainHOST
And he tells me from the outset of this conversation that he's from the center left.
Mishal HusainHOST
What he's really interested in is what he calls the left leaning corner of the big tent of liberalism.
6 MINS LATER
Mishal HusainHOST
Completely interwoven.
Mishal HusainHOST
And this...
Mishal HusainHOST
You are a Nobel laureate in economics, but I think this book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy, is a very political book, and its ideas are absolutely relevant for our times.
Mishal HusainHOST
I wanted to ask whether it is a response to right-wing populist politics, because you have Viktor Orban right at the start of the book, and you're charting the fact that in 1989, he's a passionate Democrat, and by 2014, he's talking proudly about wanting an illiberal state.
Samantha Selinger-MorrisHOST
He is arguably the world's most famous political scientist.
Samantha Selinger-MorrisHOST
And, I mean, dare I say he predicted this moment of a trend in the direction of liberal democracy? Because tell us what he stated 34 years ago in his famous book, much maligned book, The End of History and The Last Man, how much Francis Fukuyama was mocked for the prediction he made in the book.
Samantha Selinger-MorrisHOST
And I guess if this moment that we're seeing proves that he was right after all.
Peter HartcherGUEST
Yes, it's been called the most misunderstood and derided book in the post-war era.
Peter HartcherGUEST
They see the phrase the end of history and simply assume that he's meant that historical events have ceased, that there will be no more events.
Peter HartcherGUEST
History has ended.
Peter HartcherGUEST
And his overarching point is that liberal democracy has triumphed.
Peter HartcherGUEST
And he wrote this around the time of the demise of the Soviet Union.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
But under Trump, you're seeing the full on attempt to destroy the system altogether.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
Now, a liberal when I talk about a liberal democracy.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
The word liberal there is really important.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
It's a word that comes out of the 1600s anyway, and it argues for the importance of the individual, the freedom of the individual.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
You didn't want the government in your face.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
You wanted to keep the government away from you so that you could live your life freely.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
And in the United States, that idea of a liberal democracy, the idea of keeping the government away, you can see that in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, where those rights, if you read them and they have been really misinterpreted by people like Antonin Scalia, if you read them, what they're really saying is keep the government off me like the government isn't allowed to interfere in my free speech.
Heather Cox RichardsonHOST
They don't say an individual has free speech.
Brett HendrieHOST
For decades, liberal democracy made a compelling promise.
Brett HendrieHOST
Economic progress could improve life for ordinary people.
Brett HendrieHOST
But what happens when people stop believing that promise? Over the past century, technology and globalization have given us enormous new opportunities.
Brett HendrieHOST
And now, artificial intelligence could accelerate these changes even further.
Brett HendrieHOST
Our guest today, Daron Acemoglu, argues that this is not inevitable, but getting things right requires us to think differently about work, about technology, and even what prosperity looks like when it comes to putting good jobs, human ingenuity, and a greater sense of urgency back at the center.
Brett HendrieHOST
His new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy, asks the question directly.
Brett HendrieHOST
And maybe even more importantly, it also explores what it would take to revitalize it.
Brett HendrieHOST
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rockman School podcast for lifelong learners exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers, and leaders featured in our acclaimed speaker series.
Adam FaganGUEST
So let's begin.
Adam FaganGUEST
Building the house, rebuilding the house, is liberal democracy in Europe really broken? And do citizens no longer trust democracy and its institutions? They're the two questions that I pose in this lecture and hopefully will answer in the next 45, 50 minutes.
Adam FaganGUEST
Okay, first slide here.
Adam FaganGUEST
Democracy runs on trust.
5 MINS LATER
Adam FaganGUEST
And this quote is worth pondering on for a few moments.
Adam FaganGUEST
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history as such.
Adam FaganGUEST
That is the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
Adam FaganGUEST
I was an undergraduate contemplating postgraduate study at the time of Fukuyama's book, just a bit after actually.
Oliver Webb CarterHOST
Now, he carried out that violence on behalf of the state, which is probably why he said it.
Oliver Webb CarterHOST
But, I mean, it's an interesting question because with regard to sort of the state carrying out terrorist acts, in that, is there a principle that in theory you would only really want a liberal democracy to have that monopoly? I mean, is that the right way to think about it, I suppose?
Richard EnglishGUEST
I think the Weberian definition of the state as an organisation which successfully maintains a monopoly on legitimate violence is a perfectly fair one, as long as that state is behaving in ways which are appropriate.
Richard EnglishGUEST
So in our book, we have a chapter on states and terrorism, as you know, and we say, well, what would philosophical understandings suggest the state should do? And the main orientation of the state, we argue, should be towards the welfare and flourishing of its citizens rather than their harm.
Oliver Webb CarterHOST
the West and countries, liberal democracies in the West need a single voice on how to find a way forward.
Oliver Webb CarterHOST
I mean, maybe the answer is economic.
Richard EnglishGUEST
I think a lot of the disquiet there is in Western liberal democracy at the moment is exactly about that.
Richard EnglishGUEST
It's about people's day to day lives.
Belinda SmithADVERTISER
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David RutledgeHOST
Hello from David Rutledge, welcome to The Philosopher's Zone and the fourth episode in our five-part series, The Unsteady State, where we're looking at the various crises that liberal democracies around the world are facing and asking if the ideas, the concepts on which liberal democracy is founded might be in need of re-examination, even radical change.
David RutledgeHOST
There are certain questions that political philosophers have been chewing over for centuries.
David RutledgeHOST
Questions like, what is freedom? What makes political authority legitimate? What rights does the individual have? And what kinds of limits should the state put on those rights? And so on.
Sor-hoon TanGUEST
So much so that there are more social and economic divides.
Sor-hoon TanGUEST
Think of neoliberal capitalism, for example, the schisms that has opened up.
Sor-hoon TanGUEST
And I think this has made liberal democracy a lot more problematic.
David RutledgeHOST
And a lot of this has to do with the failure of institutions or the way in which institutions become sort of rigid and fail to adapt to new circumstances.
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