Welcome to the End of Democracy
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
02/24/22
•32m
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"We may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the noisiest of dictatorships.”
Those words were written by Joel Kotkin in a recently published essay on democracy’s demise. Donald Trump is not the villain of the piece, as most pundits want us to believe, nor other populists outside the United States. Rather, Kotkin argues that the withering of democratic process and institutions reflects the deeper transformation of American and European societies: the emergence of a ruling technocracy; the use of the pandemic and the environmental crisis to constrain individual rights; the new concentration of power in governments, and the growing distance between the governing and the governed. All of it made worse by the mind-boggling concentration of economic wealth, which is as much an issue in China as it is in the United States.
Kotkin’s analysis deserves our attention. What do you think—not about Trump, but about democracy? Who can do what to bend the arc away from the dystopian end game that he and others describe?
Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California and Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, as well as the author of the Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.
Previous Episode
What’s Next for the Climate: A Post Glasgow Perspective
February 17, 2022
•35m
Climate change is the ultimate example of a problem that can only meaningfully be addressed at the global level. Dramatic action in a few countries may be interesting, maybe even important depending on the countries, but actually reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere requires many countries moving rapidly in the same direction.
Last November, more than 100 countries sent delegations—many including presidents and prime ministers—to Glasgow for the 26th United Nations High Level Meeting on Climate. It was supposed to an inflection point, not only to deepen national commitments, but to force the transformational changes in how energy is produced and consumed in order to hold the rise in global warming to one and a half degrees or less.
The results were mixed. Many new commitments were made, but not enough to meet the 1.5 degrees goal. And that was the easy part; delivering policies that actually bend the arc of global climate change is quite another. How likely is that? Is the UN process working? And, since China was notable for its failure to engage in Glasgow, does any of it really matter if the country responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions is effectively sitting on the sidelines?
No one is better positioned to answer those questions than Ambassador Tomas Anker Christensen, Denmark's Climate Ambassador. Tomas was deeply engaged in the European and global run up to Glasgow, in the negotiations in Scotland, and in the effort since then to translate words into action. Ambassador Christensen recently served as a juror for the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.
Next Episode
Talking about Talking
March 3, 2022
•32m
Wars have cycles: sooner or later, the fighting ends and the negotiations begin. As hard as it is to imagine amidst the unfolding tragedy of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the diplomats and politicians will eventually gather to define new borders, behaviors, and rules. The Russian attack shattered the European security structure that had evolved after the Cold War ended; something must replace it.
Of course how the fighting ends will shape whatever negotiations ensue. But it is never too early to think about the future contours of the map of Europe.
This podcast with Emma Ashford, Washington-based Atlantic Council geopolitical expert, was recorded before Russia attacked Ukraine. Nonetheless, Emma's thoughts and speculation about a new security structure for Europe are even more important now than when we discussed them before President Putin chose to go to war.
Please let us know what you think about this episode of ‘New Thinking for a New World.”
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