Yascha Mounk on democracy at risk
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An extended interview with the political theorist who argues that liberal democracy is in grave danger. Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School at Oxford, speaks to Harvard scholar Yascha Mounk. He says that across a wide sample of countries in North America and Western Europe, citizens of mature democracies have become markedly less satisfied with their form of government and surprisingly open to nondemocratic alternatives. "A serious democratic disconnect has emerged. If it widens even further, it may begin to challenge the stability of seemingly consolidated democracies." Producer: Jim Frank (Image: Yascha Mounk. Credit: Steffen Jaenicke).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Thanks for downloading analysis. |
| 0:42.0 | This week we feature the work of a thinker whose ideas have obsessed me for quite a while. |
| 0:47.0 | See what you think. Over to Oxford now and Nary Woods. |
| 0:52.0 | Hello, I'm Nary Woods and welcome to the Blavartnik School of Government at Oxford University |
| 0:57.1 | and to this special edition of Analysis. |
| 1:00.8 | Let me start in good democratic tradition by asking all of you, the audience here, students, |
| 1:06.1 | professors, members of the public, whether democracy is working for each of you. |
| 1:11.0 | So let me ask, all those of you who think democracy is working for you, yell yes. |
| 1:16.0 | Yes. Yes. And those of you who are not so sure, I'd like you to yell no. |
| 1:21.0 | No. |
| 1:22.0 | No. Ooh, so we seem to be either the naysayers are more vocal or we've got |
| 1:28.0 | more people that think democracy is not working for them. We'll come back to that later for questions and comments from you but I'd like to turn now to someone |
| 1:37.0 | who thinks that liberal democracy could soon be a thing of the past. He's Yashamunk, a lecturer at Harvard University and host of the |
| 1:45.5 | podcast The Good Fight. And over the next half hour we're going to hear why he thinks that |
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