What's the Trade-Off in the Majority of Minority?

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In Israel, when you look at the Jewish population, even on religious matters, the state of the world is reasonably liberal. So there's a liberal democracy in Israel for the majority of a population. And then you have illiberal oppression, and we can argue about the exact description of it, but it's obviously an illiberal form of rule over the non-Jewish minority within the state. I think India, in a way, is similar. You can sort of draw distinctions, but effectively it is a reasonably liberal system for the majority, but then has illiberal treatment of the minority.

Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His latest book is The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Shadi Hamid discuss what happens when liberalism and democracy clash; whether countries with freely elected but highly illiberal governments can remain democratic; and why every consistent democrat has to embrace at least a minimal form of liberalism.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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