Democratic institutions worldwide have reached a unique and precarious turning point, said Larry Diamond on a recent episode of the World Class podcast by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

After the Cold War, the world became dominated by liberal values and a prevailing consensus for freedom, democracy and human rights, Diamond told World Class host and FSI Director Michael McFaul. During this time, the percentage of democratic states rose from making up about a quarter to more than half of all of the independent states in the world — which had never happened before in history. However, explained Diamond, who is senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, this trend may come to an end soon.

“It’s under severe challenge from Russia, China, Iran and from many other countries that were until recently democracies or are in danger of no longer being democracies soon,” Diamond said. “We are in a new and urgent situation.”

In 2018, Freedom House — a non-governmental organization that conducts research on democracy and political freedom — reported a decline in global freedom for the 13th consecutive year, reversing the post-Cold War trend between 1991 and 2006.
        
“We could be on the cusp of a democratic depression,” said Diamond. In his view, here are the four main causes of this worldwide shift. 

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Incremental Authoritarianism
The first cause, according to Diamond, is what he calls “incremental authoritarianism,” which usually occurs when elected populist rulers — such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, for example — begin to spread conservative, anti-immigrant or anti-pluralist values in an attempt to “save” the nation from corruption or threatening international illiberal values.

“Of course, the corrupting influences are human rights, accountability, pluralism, the rule of law and anything that would constrain their power and eliminate all potential rivals,” Diamond explained.

Russian Rage
The second cause has to do with Russia’s status as what Diamond describes as a “fallen superpower.”. Russia has begun to intervene in the politics of European democracies, meddle with the politics of the U.S. electoral democracy, spread confusion and promote division — all actions that stem from “Russian rage.”

“I think Putin has become unleashed,” he said. “He’s much more aggressive and ambitious now that he has found a cost-effective way of inflicting damage on democracy through disinformation and the penetration of the electoral space of democracies that we thought was sacred and secure.”

Chinese Ambition
Since coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has tried to cultivate ties with “sympathetic actors” abroad — whether it be by sending Chinese citizens to U.S. graduate programs or to think tanks — but this effort has been ramped up and extended under Xi Jinping to a degree that hasn’t been seen before, according to Diamond.

“Chinese influence is extending into universities, corporations, Chinese-language media overseas, and certainly into aggressive — and I’d say illegal — technology practices that are boldly trying to create a new world of Chinese influence and even domination by the People’s Republic of China,” he explained.

American Complacency
Finally, Americans have become complacent about the security of their democracy, and many think that it doesn’t require their attention or participation in order to be upheld, said Diamond. In addition, some Americans have also become comfortable about the slow deterioration of their democracy through the polarization of U.S. politics. 

“People are becoming so intense in their feelings about parties and politicians that they won’t even talk to people from the other side at the Thanksgiving dinner table,” Diamond said. “Some of the statements of our own president are not consistent with democratic values…in which everyone is recognized as having the right to speak and in which violence can never be encouraged.”

Read more about Diamond’s thoughts on the state of global democracy in his new book, “Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency.”

Americans have witnessed repeated mass shootings. The carnage in Texas and Ohio last weekend claimed another 31 lives and has left the nation stunned and angry.

Many are demanding that members of Congress pass tougher gun-control laws; others blame mental health and violent video games for the rampant shootings.

Stanford Health Policy’s David Studdert — an expert on the public health epidemic of firearms violence — acknowledges that mass shootings are on the rise in the United States.

“It’s been a horrific weekend,” said Studdert, a professor of law at Stanford Law School and professor of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine. “Experts now generally agree that mass shootings are becoming more common — and that a common thread is disaffected young men who have access to high-caliber, high-capacity weapons.”

Both suspects in the Dayton and El Paso shootings fit this profile.

Studdert notes, however, that while mass shootings have become the public face of gun violence, they account for less than 1% of the 40,000 firearm deaths each year.

“So as a public health researcher, I do care about mass shootings and I am interested in understanding and their causes — but the focus of my ongoing research is the other 99 percent.”

Largest investment in firearms research in two decades

It’s that focus the Studdert will be pursuing in a recently-awarded $668,000 grant from the National Collaboration on Gun Violence Research. The private collaborative’s mission is to fund nonpartisan, scientific research that offers the public and policymakers a factual basis for developing fair and effective gun policies.

Studdert, Yifan Zhang, a statistician with Stanford Health Policy, and Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden are working with colleagues at UC Davis, Northeastern University and Erasmus University Rotterdam on the Study of Handgun Ownership and Transfer, or LongSHOT.

The team is following several million Californians over a 12-year period to better understand the causal relationship between firearm ownership and mortality. They launched in 2016 with the initial goal of assessing the risks and benefits of ownership for firearm owners.

“The implications of firearm ownership for owners is important because they usually are the ones making the decision to purchase and own,” Studdert said. “But we knew from the beginning that this was only part of the picture. The presence of a firearm in the home may also have health implications for the owners’ family members.”

In the new study, the researchers will identify the cohort of adults in California who live with firearm owners but are not themselves gun owners, and then compare their risks of mortality to a group who neither own weapons, nor live with others who do.

Surprisingly little is known about the “secondhand” effects of having guns in the home.

“Existing studies don’t differentiate between owners and non-owners within households, and that is something we have the ability to look at,” Studdert said. “And a very large proportion of non-gun-owners who are living in homes with guns are women — so this is a group that has really been understudied.”

There is already substantial evidence that a gun in the home is associated with increased risks of suicide. But it is not clear how particular subgroups, such as women who don’t own guns, are affected.

“Because our cohort is so large,” Studdert said, “we will also be able to explore whether gun ownership confers certain benefits, as gun-rights advocates often claim, such as enhanced safety in dangerous neighborhoods.”

Studdert said a better accounting of the risks and benefits that firearm ownership poses for non-owners could help inform decisions regarding gun ownership and storage, as well as policies aimed at improving gun safety.

The politics of federal funding for firearms research

The National Collaboration on Gun Violence Research is funded through private philanthropic donations. It was seeded with a $20 million gift from Arnold Ventures and intends to raise another $30 million in private funding for firearms research.

“It’s the biggest investment in firearms research since the late 1990s,” Studdert said.

Research on the impact and causes of firearm violence was dealt a huge blow in 1996 when the so-called Dickey Amendment was passed by Congress. The law has been interpreted as prohibiting the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting firearms research.

Studdert said that the growth of research funding from philanthropies like the Arnold Foundation and Joyce Foundation is a welcome development, but that it will take a large and sustained investment to move the science of firearm violence forward.  

“The core funder of large-scale research essentially vacated the space for 20 years,” he said.  “It’s going to take some time to recover. Developing a generation of researchers with expertise will take give to 10 years. But it has to be done — the size of the social problem demands it.”

Every summer, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program brings together international leaders who are pioneering new approaches to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. The fellows spend three weeks living and taking classes on the Stanford campus, visiting Silicon Valley tech companies and building a network.

Representing business, government and the nonprofit sector, fellows are working on the frontlines of democratic change to combat the global rise of authoritarianism and populism. The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies spoke to five of the fellows about the impact of the Draper Hills program on their work and activism. These are their stories.

Shaili Chopra, India

Shaili Chopra, founder of SheThePeopleTv. Photo: Alice Wenner

Wiem Zarrouk, Tunisia

Wiem Zarrouk, senior advisor to the Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation in Tunisia. Photo: Alice Wenner

“I’ve been working for the Tunisian government for three years as an advisor to the Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation. I am leading the government reforms to improve Tunisia's ranking in the World Bank Competitiveness Report - Doing Business.

“In Tunisia, we’ve set up most of our democratic institutions, and now we want to improve the business environment to attract more investment in local businesses. Eight years ago, the people went into the streets demanding more jobs. The challenge in Tunisia right now is economic, that’s why economic reforms are important to our government.

“I think the impact of the Draper Hills program will be immediate. I’ve learned a lot here about the link between development and democracies, so it really covers the scope of my work. And it's been great to learn about the theoretical side — the professors are really speaking about things that impact our daily work.” 

Ujwal Thapa, Nepal

Ujwal Thapa, president of the BibekSheel Nepali youth movement. Photo: Alice Wenner

“Bibeksheel Nepali is basically a political startup. It’s a youth-led movement, and we’re focused on changing the norms and mindsets of the culture in Nepal. We work a lot with citizens to instill the values of transparency, empathy and humility because we think democracy needs to be more emotional instead of just logical. I think liberal democracy needs to be understood more in the context of humanity. So it’s an experiment that we're doing in Nepal.

“When we started with the experiment, we decided not to focus only on the state, but thought about a few more components: one is our citizens, another is the society and the third is the government. Nepal recently came out of a violent civil war, and we just built a new constitution that is much more tolerant. Transparency is another value that we want to instill, because of the long isolationist and autocratic dictatorship that has existed in the past.

“Draper Hills is bringing all of these practitioners together who are experimental and innovative. And the world needs better collaboration from people who really believe in the ideals of the 21st century, which are liberal, democratic and more humanistic. That’s one of the strongest aspects of the Draper Hills program.”

N.S. Nappinai, India

N.S. Nappinai, senior practitioner in the Supreme Court of India and Bombay High Court. Photo: Alice Wenner

“Some of the social media platforms had very good reporting mechanisms, whereas it was more hidden on other platforms. So we ensured that this issue was brought to the forefront so that people know that these are things that can be reported and some action can be taken. The whole idea was that as long as you identify such content at the earliest possible time, then you help the victim that much more.

“For me, balancing victims' rights with free speech is very important. This was a big dilemma that I faced, in terms of ‘How much of what I am doing is likely to stifle free speech?’ A lot of discussions at Draper Hills have helped formulate and structure my thoughts, and it's very nice to get the perspective from people from 26 other countries.”

Hinda Bouddane, Morocco

Hinda Bouddane, the first vice president of the elected provincial council of the city of Fez. Photo: Alice Wenner

“Education for girls is really important in fighting discrimination against women. Education empowers women to become financially independent, say no to violence, and to get engaged in the public sphere. Through that, women can be a part of the democratic process not only by voting, but also by taking part from within and running for office.

At Draper Hills, we're deepening our knowledge about topics like the rule of law, democracy and human rights, and hearing many different perspectives. And importantly, we are building a great network to connect many intelligent people from around the world, and we will work together to foster democratic values.”