Pranab Bardhan, an Indian economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, joins host Sanjay Ruparelia to talk about the global shift toward electing right-wing regimes. They also tackle themes pertaining to the growing social and political divide around the world. Pranab Bardhan argues that the driving force of polarization is cultural insecurity. With policy solutions like universal basic income and stronger labour unions, he believes the rise of right-wing extremism can be tamed.

Yascha Mounk, political scientist and associate professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, sits down with Sanjay Ruparelia to discuss the challenges facing diverse democracies. In this episode, Mounk explains why being overly optimistic about ethnically and religiously diverse democracies might explain our disappointment when challenges arise. Instead, Mounk acknowledges that building a diverse society is difficult, but with the right policies in place, it’s far from impossible.

Debra Thompson, a McGill professor and political scholar on the comparative politics of race, joins host Sanjay Ruparelia for a conversation on racism and democracy in Canada and the U.S. In this episode, Thompson discusses the way racist policies and systems of oppression operate differently in the two countries, resulting in a complicated relationship between Black citizens and their national identity.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early ‘90s, political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that humankind had reached its ideological end as more countries embraced liberal democracy. Today, this theory has come under greater scrutiny, and people across the political spectrum are dissatisfied with this system. In this episode of On the Frontlines of Democracy, Francis Fukuyama and Sanjay Ruparelia discuss the pitfalls of liberalism, and whether or not its merits outweigh its shortcomings.

This is On The Frontlines of Democracy, a podcast about the challenges facing democracies around the world.