Anti-democratic politics is a global phenomenon. Apart from the United States, countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa have seen the rise of populism, polarization, and illiberal politics. This event is an informal conversation among Einaudi Center faculty Mabel Berezin (IES), Ken Roberts (DTR and LACS), and Rachel Beatty Riedl (Einaudi Center director and DTR) and renowned Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, AD White Professor-at-Large, on American democracy’s place among global challenges to democracy.

This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies in collaboration with the Einaudi Center's Democratic Threats and Resilience research priority.

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. The author of twelve books, twelve edited collections, and more than seven dozen articles, Skocpol is recognized as one of the most cited and widely influential scholars in the modern social sciences. Her work has contributed to the study of comparative politics, American politics, comparative and historical sociology, U.S. history, and the study of public policy. Her first book, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (1979), won the 1979 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1980 American Sociological Association Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. Skocpol edited Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (1984) and co-edited the influential Social Science Research Council collection Bringing the State Back In (1985). Since the 1990s, Skocpol’s research has focused on US politics in historical and comparative perspective. Her Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), won five scholarly awards. Her most recent book is Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance (edited with Caroline Tervo, 2020). Skocpol is an elected member of all three major U.S. interdisciplinary honor societies: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, she co-founded, and currently directs, the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), whose mission is to improve public policy and strengthen democracy by encouraging nonpartisan public engagement by university-based scholars. SSN has grown into a national organization of over 900 scholars from 200+ universities, focused on bringing evidenced-based policy research to the public discourse.