SPOTLIGHT: The Year of the Ballot
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
01/11/24
•10m
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During 2024 more than 50 countries, including seven of the world’s most populous nations, will vote in national elections. While many thousands of names will appear on ballots, what’s really at stake is the future of democracy itself.
Can democracy cope with the centrifugal forces of the radical right and radical left? Will “strong man” leaders continue to triumph with their often simplistic, sometimes hateful policy ideas? Will extreme partisanship continue to undermine national consensus?
Although not one of the countries holding elections this year, Chile potentially offers some insights into what might happen in other places where democracy is on the line. After violent political instability in 2019, Chileans tried to address underlying causes through a highly participatory process of constitutional reform. They failed: two different proposals were voted down in national referendums. What lessons for the rest of us?
Isabel Aninat is a Chilean jurist who was in the thick of the search for a new constitution. In this thought piece for New Thinking for a New World she offers her reflections on the implications of what happened on her country’s search for a more perfect democracy.
Previous Episode
Best New Thinking: What’s Wrong with America?
January 4, 2024
•34m
The United States seems to be on the verge of some kind of Judgement Day. Extreme partisanship, a past (and future?) president facing seemingly endless indictments and legal entanglements, a profound loss of trust in institutions and leaders, citizens who tell pollsters that their country is heading in the wrong direction and they fear the future—despite objective economic conditions that are better than almost anywhere else. What’s wrong? Why the deep unhappiness, even depression? Is the American dream becoming a nightmare?
Sometimes the best insights come from the outside. Our guest on New Thinking for a New World is an inside outsider with almost unique insight into how the United States works. Lars Trägårdh is a Swedish historian who has lived in the United States on and off for decades and has spent much of that time observing and thinking about the social contract between Americans and their government. Today he's a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, but continues to spend considerable time traveling across the United States.
Listen as he does a deep dive into the social and political challenges confronting America.
Is the United States headed in the wrong direction?
This episode was originally published on Sep 28, 2023
Next Episode
Knocking on Europe’s Door
January 18, 2024
•37m
European politicians talk endlessly about the rule of law, justice, human dignity and freedom of movement. But those words fade fast when the issue of migration pops up, replaced by endless efforts to stop migrants and refugees at the border or, failing that, strand them in border countries or imagine ways to push them back across the EU borders.
Of course, this same dynamic exists in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other destination countries where concerns about migration are being weaponized by politicians who recognize political opportunity when they see it. In a year when Europeans will choose a new EU Parliament, the Americans a new president, and scores of other countries new leaders, migration seems to be on the ballot as much as democracy itself.
How should migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers be treated? How to balance political forces and legal commitments. Can the obvious competition to harden borders, be reversed? And from where will the leadership come for better policy?
Sergio Carrera, a migration expert at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, thinks that much of what passes for European migration policy is deeply flawed not only because it violates basic European values, but also because it is ineffective.
What do you think: should Europe welcome more migrants and refugees?
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