![]() They said: This is proof that this academic at Harvard (I was teaching there at the time) and Angela Merkel (who was the German chancellor) are experimenting on the German people. ![]() When I first used the word “experiment” in a live television interview in Germany, parts of the far right claimed I had admitted to a conspiracy. So this was not a planned experiment, but do you think these countries could have or should have been quicker to understand the consequences of diversification? You argue that many developed societies - particularly in Europe - stumbled into this experiment when they began to invite and attract foreign workers and refugees. As we can see in the politics of many democracies today, that fear is a big motivating factor for a lot of people. And if I am a member of an ethnic and religious group that used to be in the majority, and now your group is growing more quickly than mine, I can start to fear that I’ll lose power and other forms of advantage. In a democracy, there is always a need to search for a majority. Neither of us has any power, so long as we both trust the monarch it doesn’t matter if you have more kids than me. In monarchies, the size of your group doesn’t matter. The third difficulty has to do with the basic mechanisms of democracy. Some of the most violent and terrible conflicts in history have pitted different ethnic, religious, racial or national groups against each other that’s probably no coincidence. Second, we know from the history of humanity that certain distinctions between groups contain an especially high potential for conflict. When I ask my students whether a hot dog is a sandwich, for example, those who think that it is quickly start to discriminate against those who think that it isn’t. Humans are “groupish.” They are quick to form groups and even quicker to favor members of their own group. There are three basic reasons why making diverse democracies work is a difficult thing to do. Why do you think diversity can be dangerous for democracies? There is not much precedent for highly diverse democracies that treat everyone equally. Others have always had clear ethnic or religious hierarchies, which allowed one group to dominate the others. Most democracies have historically been relatively monoethnic and monocultural, with most of their citizens sharing common cultural origins. What the United States and many other democracies are experiencing is unprecedented. What has happened to make democracies particularly fragile? The following conversation has been edited and condensed. His latest book is “The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.” He was a speaker at the Athens Democracy Forum last week in association with The New York Times. ![]() He is an associate professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University a contributing editor at The Atlantic a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations the founder of Persuasion, a publication and intellectual community and the host of the podcast The Good Fight. He is the author of four books that have been translated into more than 10 languages. Yascha Mounk is a widely recognized expert on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism. This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which concluded last week in the Greek capital. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |