The Cynical Dance of Leadership in Modern Autocracies

By launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has started the first war in Europe for a generation, defying the post-Cold War international rules-based order and inflicting great suffering on millions of civilians in the process. Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times and his latest book is The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World. The book focuses on how we have arrived in an era in which figures such as Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro, and, of course, Vladimir Putin, have managed to ascend to power and stay there. Hosting this discussion is Carl Miller, Research Director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank, Demos.

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