Bruce Cain, professor of Political Science at Stanford and Director of the University's Bill Lane Center for the American West, joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about the new book he is writing on the political challenges of adapting to a changing climate in California and other western states.Bruce Cain is an expert in U.S. politics, particularly the politics of California and the American West. A pioneer in computer-assisted redistricting, he is a prominent scholar of elections, political regulation and the relationships between lobbyists and elected officials. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Cain was director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley from 1990-2007 and executive director of the UC Washington Center from 2005-2012. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and has won awards for his research (Richard F. Fenno Prize, 1988), teaching (Caltech, 1988 and UC Berkeley, 2003) and public service (Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service, 2000). He is currently working on state regulatory processes and stakeholder involvement in the areas of water, energy and the environment. Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Political sociologist Andrew G. Walder, the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, is a specialist on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. Walder joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss China's economic slowdown, why it suffers from high inequality, and whether the country has peaked and is now facing long-term stagnation.Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research has focused on the social impact of revolutions, particularly the sources of stability and change in communist regimes and their successor states, with a special emphasis on China. His book on Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (1986) examined the way that Communist Party organization and reward structures created patron-client forms of authority in post-revolution urban China. Professor Walder's subsequent work examined the evolution of property rights and economics organization under the impact of market reform and the consequences for social stratification, career and intergenerational mobility, and political conflict. He is the author of Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009), which analyzed the origins of political factionalism during the Cultural Revolution and explored how this phenomenon altered the direction of the student movement and its social impact. At Stanford, he has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology; Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; and Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies. Professor Walder is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books have received awards from the American Sociological Association and the Association for Asian Studies.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

To kick off our second season, Francis Fukuyama is once again joined by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer. The two discuss the prospects for negotiation in Ukraine, the origins of the Russian invasion, and how the war may evolve this winter.Steven Pifer is a nonresident senior fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, and the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, and an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. His research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security.Brookings articleVideo of this conversationDemocracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

As 2022 comes to a close, Francis Fukuyama sits down with his CDDRL colleague and democracy expert Larry Diamond for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of global democracy and the year's dramatic political developments in China, Iran, and the United States.Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also a professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His latest edited book (with Orville Schell), China's Influence and American Interests (Hoover Press, 2019), urges a posture of constructive vigilance toward China’s global projection of “sharp power,” which it sees as a rising threat to democratic norms and institutions. He offers a massive open online course (MOOC) on Comparative Democratic Development through the edX platform and is now writing a textbook to accompany it.Diamond’s book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999),  Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has also edited or coedited more than forty books on democratic development around the world, most recently, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Peidong Sun is a Distinguished Associate Professor of Arts and Science in China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the History Department at Cornell University. Previously, she was a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and has written extensively on social issues in China. Professor Sun joins Francis Fukuyama to discuss the protests that have taken place across many cities in China over the past several weeks. Prompted by anger over the country's prolonged COVID lockdowns, these protests have also questioned the legitimacy of the Communist Party regime.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Saeid Golkar has been writing and teaching about Iranian politics for the last decade since he was forced to leave the country. A 2009 alumnus of CDDRL's Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, Saeid is an expert on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their Basij auxiliaries. Last month he joined Francis Fukuyama to discuss the nature and implications of the anti-regime protests that have rocked Iran since the killing of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.Saeid Golkar is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science & Public Service at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Previously an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Middle East and North African Studies Program and a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, he was also a  postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Golkar was a lecturer from 2004 to 2009 in the Department of Social Sciences at Azad University, Iran, where he taught undergraduate courses on the political sociology of Iran and the sociology of war and military forces.Golkar received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Tehran University in June 2008. His recent work can be found in publications such as Middle East Journal; Armed Forces & Society; Politics, Religion & Ideology; and Middle East Policy. Captive Society, his book on the Basij paramilitary force and the securitization of Iranian society, was copublished by Columbia University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press in June 2015.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Eve Fairbanks, a journalist and author of "The Inheritors," shares her incredible insights from a decade spent in South Africa. She dives into the struggles of both Black South Africans and white liberals in post-apartheid society, highlighting disillusionment and evolving identities. The discussion draws powerful parallels to the U.S., addressing themes of victimhood within American conservatism and the quest for trust amid political chaos. Fairbanks challenges the notion of American exceptionalism, advocating for a deeper understanding through global perspectives.

Yascha Mounk, Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and founder of Persuasion joins Francis Fukuyama to talk about his new book, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, which deals with ethnic and religious diversity in a democracy.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, co-founder and board chair of Afrobarometer — the pan-African survey research network and global reference point for high-quality data on African democracy, governance, and quality of life — joins us to discuss the worsening crisis of democracy in West Africa, including that which is enveloping the region's largest country, Nigeria. He also points to some rays of hope as democracy advocates push back against this trend.E. Gyimah-Boadi is co-founder and board chair of Afrobarometer, the pan-African survey research network and global reference point for high-quality data on African democracy, governance, and quality of life. He is also co-founder and former executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, a leading independent democracy and good-governance think tank. In June 2022 he was appointed president of the board of directors of the Institute for Integrated Transitions.A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, he has also held faculty positions at several universities in the United States, including the American University’s School of International Service, as well as fellowships at Queen Mary University; the Center for Democracy, Rule of Law and Development at Stanford University; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.A graduate of the University of California (Davis) and University of Ghana (Legon), Gyimah-Boadi is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his contributions to research and policy advocacy on democracy, accountable governance, and human rights, he has won a myriad of awards, including the Distinguished Africanist of the Year Award of the African Studies Association (2018); the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice (2017); and one of the Republic of Ghana’s highest honors, the Order of Volta (2008). He was named one of New African Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Africans of 2021.”Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.

In the second installment of our series on policy and infrastructure, Michael Bennon returns to chat with Francis Fukuyama about China's Belt and Road Initiative and projects that have gone south.Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael's research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships, and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Thailand.Democracy IRL is produced by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.To learn more, visit our website or follow us on social media.