How to Fix Democracy

Democracy, citizenship, and dystopian fiction | Margaret Atwood is an award-winning author, who has written numerous best-sellers including the 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. In this episode, she discusses with Andrew Keen her impressions of citizenship and the importance of fiction writers in a democracy. Dystopias, Atwood says, show us the future if we do not correct the mistakes of the present, and so writers of dystopian fiction aid democracies by showing the consequences of inaction.

Can America lead again? | Tom Malinowski is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 7th congressional district and was formerly the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama administration. He and host Andrew Keen discuss the stature of American democracy today in light of the Biden administration’s proposed global Summit for Democracy. Representative Malinowski also discusses his personal story of immigration to America and what it means to be an American citizen.

Smart cities, smart citizens? | Bianca Wylie is co-founder of Digital Public, co-founder of Tech Reset Canada, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. In this episode, she discusses with Andrew Keen the architecture and geography of citizenship from our countries and cities to cyberspace. She argues that digital technology has blurred the lines between public and private spheres with adverse effects for citizenship and democracy. The solution lies with the state, Wylie says, which needs to take responsibility for understanding and shaping technology’s impact on society.

Active, equal, and collective | Richard Bellamy is Professor of Political Science at University College London and the author of Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction. For him, being a citizen today is being an “active and equal participant in sustaining cooperative and collective goods in your political community.” However, the current idea of citizenship contains paradoxes, faces challenges, and is in constant flux. Bellamy and host Andrew Keen explore the whole picture of citizenship as it has been and as it is today.

Citizenship and belonging | Adrienne Clarkson is the co-founder of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the former Governor General of Canada. Madame Clarkson tells host Andrew Keen her story of coming to Canada, learning what it was to be Canadian, and her journey to becoming Governor General of the country. Along the way, she formed important ideas of what citizenship and belonging means in Canada and around the world.

The contradictions of human nature | Adam Hochschild is an award-winning author, historian, and journalist. In this interview, hosted by Andrew Keen, he discusses the contradictions within the history of democracy in Europe and America. Hochschild points out that capability of democracies to wage war, torture, and enslave people abroad, while aspiring to uphold enlightened values at home. Beyond historical examples, Hochschild and Keen examine how capitalism and inequality contribute to unfulfilled democratic aspirations today.

Human capital-ism | Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he explains how the accumulation of human capital--the skills and education that enable advanced economies--has been captured by the elites. But, he argues, because these skilled workers in fields like law and finance are also laborers, they find themselves alienated in the Marxist sense, despite also achieving higher and higher incomes. To help fix democracy, Markovits says, this concentration of human capital can be addressed with education and labor reform.

No nostalgia | Jan Sowa is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. In this interview, he explains the Marxist view of capitalism as more than an economic system. The social and cultural aspects of a capitalist system are just as important and have shaped democracy in the modern era. In Sowa’s view, democracy must continue to develop beyond its current structures and practices to incorporate new ideas for better representation.

Laboratories of democracy | Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America, a think tank in Washington, DC. In this interview, she discusses with host Andrew Keen possible structural changes to American democracy, including adopting ranked-choice voting and re-thinking campaign finance. She argues that capitalism--it’s ethos and influence--has infected the political process. American politicians have taken on capitalist forces before, Slaughter argues, but it will take major political cooperation to do it again.

Crisis of confidence | Ian Bassin is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy, a non-profit created to fight threats to democracy in America. Bassin explains some of the factors eroding liberal democracy in the United States, including economic causes. From tackling voter suppression and checks and balances in the federal government, this interview covers a wide range of challenges to healthy democracy in the United States.

Mark Blyth is William R. Rhodes Professor of International Economics at Brown University. In this interview, he discusses how our economics are rife with anger and frustration. Blyth’s “angry-nomics” emerged from financial crises and a decline in social institutions, like unions, that give people feelings of stability and control. In this frank discussion of the conflicts between our economics and politics, Blyth offers several concrete recommendations to get capitalism to work for democracy instead of against it.

Political power without capital? | Peniel Joseph, Professor of Public Affairs and Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the University of Texas at Austin, explains the critical views of capitalism that emerged in the American Civil Rights movement. Major figures in this movement, like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael, explored social democratic and socialist political ideas when trying to find a path to equal rights in America. Moving beyond these early critics of capitalism’s influence on democracy, Peniel Joseph and host Andrew Keen explore the legacy of these ideas on the Black Lives Matter movement in contemporary America due to persistent political and economic inequality.

Listening to others | Arlie Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent work deals with the rise of the American far-right. Her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, was built on interviews with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana. For Hochschild, it is important to understand the feelings behind political views, though listening and feeling empathy does not imply agreement. If Americans are to reconcile their differences, she argues, more people must learn how to listen to views they might not agree with.

Winner take all | Robert H. Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management Emeritus at Cornell University’s SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. What does a winner take all ethos in capitalism mean for democracy? Robert Frank discusses with Andrew Keen what the concentration of wealth amongst the best of the best and the sinking top tax rates means for conceptions of equality and fairness in America. Understanding this is essential to understanding the disconnect between politics and people today.

Four horsemen of leveling | Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and the Catherine R. Kennedy and Daniel L. Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. Scheidel specializes in the history of economic inequality, and his book The Great Leveler examines what forces have reduced economic inequality throughout history. Politicians and governments are often tasked with dealing with economic inequality today, but in reality, Scheidel says, societal collapse, epidemics, war, and communist revolutions do it much better. Listen to hear what this means today for a route to economic fairness in America and Europe, and what impact the coronavirus pandemic could have.

This is when you want deficits | Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and an expert on budget, tax, and economic policy. In this interview, hosted by Andrew Keen, they discuss the economic threats to democracy in America, in particular the loss of trust in our institutions and in the very system of capitalism. At the core of this loss of trust is growing economic inequality. Can capitalism be reformed to reduce economic inequalities and restore trust in institutions and capitalism?

System attrition | Adam Tooze is Director of the European Institute & Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he discusses the past relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy and how the development of the two went hand-in-hand in the modern era towards a high-point, in large part due to the wars of the 20th century. Our crises today are also formative, but not in the same way as back then, Tooze argues. It is yet to be seen, he says, how crises of our time, such as COVID-19 and economic inequality, will shape our societies in this century, but the system that has combined capitalism and liberal democracy is facing serious attrition.

Describing the deficit | Stephanie Kelton is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University focusing on monetary policy and public finance. In this interview, she explains modern monetary theory (MMT) and clarifies some of the myths surrounding spending deficits, especially concerning the U.S. federal government’s massive debt. MMT is a change in the way the government explains its deficit, Kelton says, and is important for politically justifying big expenditures. When it comes to the health of democracy, Kelton argues, fear of contributing to the deficit means the U.S. has not been able to enact the big policies to help those left behind.

Us later, not me now | Rebecca Henderson is the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University Business School. In this interview, hosted by Andrew Keen, she explains how she has been re-imagining capitalism. Free markets, Professor Henderson argues, need to be balanced with free politics, mirroring what many others in How to Fix Democracy Season 2 have identified as a core linkage between unhealthy capitalism and damaging politics. There’s an immediacy and selfishness in politics and business now, she says, which reflects more of a “me now” instead of an “us later” mentality.

All about taxes | Gabriel Zucman is an Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the University of California, Berkeley. In this interview, hosted by Andrew Keen, Professor Zucman discusses issues of taxation and tax havens. According to Professor Zucman, a major problem within free market capitalism is tax avoidance. He argues that in a globalized economy there should be new tools to ensure companies pay taxes where they make their profits.