A warning for business leaders: Aspiring autocrats tank economies

Masters of Scale

WaitWhat

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Reid Hoffman, Mindset, Diversity & Inclusion, Jeff Berman, Bob Safian, Startups

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does a country sliding toward autocracy affect its economy? Political scientist and author Barbara F Walter offers data-driven insights about why the murky middle ground between democracy and autocracy is bad for business. She talked with host Jeff Berman live on stage at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit.

Walter’s book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-civil-wars-start-and-how-to-stop-them-barbara-f-walter/35f702a0af16f18a

Walter’s Substack: https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. In this episode, we're sharing my conversation with political
0:08.5	scientists and author Barbara F. Walter. Her most recent book is How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop
0:16.6	Them. She joined me at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit for a conversation about the state of
0:22.8	American democracy and the vital role of business leaders in safeguarding stability.
0:29.5	Barbara offers concrete examples from around the globe to inform her perspective on what is likely
0:34.9	next for our economy and for our country.
0:38.4	I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did.
0:47.7	Popularly, I think we think about the United States
0:49.9	as the world's longest-standing democracy, are we?
0:54.2	We are no longer the longest-standing democracy.
0:56.9	Switzerland is, which kind of is good and bad news to me.
1:00.2	I love America.
1:01.3	I'm American, but my mom came over from Switzerland, so I feel like that's okay, maybe.
1:06.4	We lost that title in December of 2020.
1:10.7	I'll give a little bit of background because this task
1:12.8	force that I served on from 2017 to 2021 is something that most Americans don't know about.
1:18.9	And it's been incredibly instrumental in my research and it's going to be incredibly important
1:23.6	to America moving forward. So the political instability task force is run or was run
1:29.9	by the CIA. It existed from 1994 and it shut down in August of 2023. I don't know why they
1:38.1	shut it down. But one of its goals was to help the U.S. government predict what countries around
1:43.2	the world were likely to
1:44.9	experience significant political violence and or significant political instability within the next two
	...

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