Book Talk: The Role of Citizens in Democratic Backsliding—and Resilience

Is democracy as a system of government and a social principle under threat? Seventy percent of the global population now lives either in non-democratic countries, or in countries that are experiencing democratic backsliding. In this final episode in Talking Policy’s spring 2023 series on the future of democracy, host Lindsay Morgan talks with Sara Wallace Goodman about how ordinary people respond when their democracy is under threat. Sara, a professor of political science at UC Irvine and member of IGCC’s Future of Democracy Initiative, shares findings from her book Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat. This interview was recorded on May 26, 2023.