S8 Ep1280: Michael McFaul — Multi-Part, Part Two: Michael McFaul, a Stanford professor and former US Ambassador to Russia, continues his discussion of Autocrats Versus Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, shifting to modern Putinism and th

Your book has a theme that I want to pay attention to.

It's so consistent throughout it.

It's where is democracy now? Where is autocracy now? There's a moment you acknowledge that some states have taken the wrong lessons from moves like Putin's in 14, which is that autocracy is to be preferred because you get things done.

Yes.

Is that growing in popularity or shrinking in popularity after the Putin example? around the world? We're generalizing.

Yes.

Oh, no, it's growing for sure.

It's growing because of Putinism.

And Putinism, as I write in the book, I think we underestimated his appeal, especially in Europe and the United States.

He invested a lot to promote his ideas of illiberal populist nationalism.

And he's got lots of followers in Hungary, Italy, the UK, France, and here in the United States.

Likewise, the Chinese model of economic development is popular, especially in the developing world, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East.

And they just say, let the state run things and we get things done.

And as you know, there's a pretty big debate here in the United States about how we're just inefficient.

There's too much bureaucracy.

There's too many veto points.

And I agree with that criticism of how we make policy.

But, you know, here in California, there's too much of that and it stifles growth.

And so this debate between autocrats and Democrats is real.

My solution is not autocracy.

I don't want us to be more like the Chinese to grow.

My solution is more competition, more innovation.

I believe that those are America's strong suits.

But analytically, the data is very clear that those ideas are growing in popularity and democracy as a set of ideas is still popular, but is not as popular as it was 30 years ago.