Across the globe, many people see democracy retreating and authoritarianism on the rise. In places as diverse as India, Hungry, Niger, El Salvador, and even right here in the United States, people of all political background are concerned about the state of their democracy, even if their reasons for worry differ. From attacks on courts, to the accumulation of executive power, and the takeover of institutions, many countries have see their democracies weaken, while many others have seen their democracies completely overthrown (at least 32 coup d'état's since 2010, and many more attempts, around the world).  Freedom House has marked overall democratic decline for the past 19 years based on their global metrics, while countless articles have been written about democratic backsliding around the world.

In this month's episode, we discuss the state of democracy around the world with Dr. Henry Thomson of Arizona State University. Throughout this conversation, we cover the pathways to democratic decline and dive into the trends that the world is currently experiencing, while putting this discussion in historical context. In addition, we talk about what lessons pro-democracy forces can learn from the transitions that other countries have made away from authoritarian styles of government. It is important to remember that at one point in time, all countries were under authoritarian forms of government.

Dr. Henry Thomson is an Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. He is a political economist with a research focus on economic development, authoritarian rule, and transitions to democracy.

He is the author of two books, Watching the Watchers: Communist Elites, the Secret Police and Social Order in Cold War Europe(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Food and Power: Regime Type, Agricultural Policy and Political Stability(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Before joining ASU, Thomson was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His doctoral dissertation won the 2015 Juan Linz Prize for the Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democratization from the American Political Science Association. He has been a visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, at Australian National University, and at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Berlin.

Professor Thomson teaches classes on Democratization, Political Economy, International Political Economy, and social science research design.