Michael Ignatieff on the Future of Democracy
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2020
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A special live edition recorded in front of an audience in Cambridge: David talks to writer, broadcaster, academic and politician Michael Ignatieff about his personal experiences of democratic politics. From his bruising time as Liberal party leader in Canada to his recent confrontations with the Orban government in Hungary, from climate change to populism, from Johnson to Trump, we discuss what's happened to democracy and where he sees the grounds for hope. A wide-ranging conversation about the good and the bad of contemporary politics.
Mentioned in this Episode:
- Michael’s book, Fire and Ashes, Success and Failure in Politics
- Our episode with Roberto Foa on his new report on global satisfaction with democracy
- Max Weber’s essay, “Politics as a Vocation”
- Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History
Further Learning:
- More on Orban and the Central European University
- More on the Centre for the Future of Democracy
- David’s book on political hypocrisy
- How wealthy countries export their waste
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Today's extra episode |
| 0:09.2 | is a conversation we recorded about 10 days ago with Michael Ignatiyev, talking about |
| 0:14.4 | his experiences as a democratic politician and his hopes and his fears for democracy. |
| 0:24.8 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books and the LRB |
| 0:30.0 | now has a beautiful new website to mark its 40th anniversary. Just go to lrb.co.uk and you |
| 0:38.4 | will discover a treasure trove of articles from the last 40 years and all the latest writing, |
| 0:44.7 | including Adam Schatz on the death of Solomani. If you take out a subscription you will get |
| 0:50.6 | all this and so much more. The Print Magazine, the LRB app and unlimited access to that archive |
| 0:57.8 | all for just £1 an issue. To subscribe visit lrb.me-flwd-talk. |
| 1:13.3 | Michael Ignatiyev has been many things. He is an academic, he is a broadcaster, he is a novelist, |
| 1:19.6 | he was the leader of the Canadian Liberal Party and he fought unsuccessfully a general election |
| 1:25.2 | in an attempt to become Canadian Prime Minister. We are going to talk about that. He is currently |
| 1:30.7 | the President and Rector of the Central European University which has been involved in a very different |
| 1:35.5 | kind of democratic struggle for intellectual freedom and that is in context with the all-bound regime |
| 1:42.3 | in Hungary. We are going to talk about that too. He is the author of one of the really great books |
| 1:48.8 | about the experience of democratic politics from the inside and at the top. The book is called |
| 1:54.5 | Fire and Ashes and it is his account of his time as Liberal leader in Canada and of that brutal |
| 2:01.6 | election that he fought and lost. We started our conversation with some reflections on that book |
| 2:08.4 | and I began by asking him given his experiences. Does he still think of himself as a politician? |
| 2:15.6 | Truth and advertising requires me to say, especially because one of my colleagues, John McCollum, |
| 2:21.3 | a very distinguished Canadian politician is in the room so I am bound to be honest here. |
| 2:27.2 | My career ended in complete failure. It is extremely important that everybody understands that, |
... |
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