How Do Democracies Fall Apart (And Could it Happen Here)?

Event time: 
Friday, October 6, 2017 - 8:30am to 4:30pm
Location: 
Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE ), 101 (Auditorium) See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
American democracy seems more endangered than at any time in living memory. Partisan polarization, both in Congress and the electorate, is at a historical high. During the 2016 presidential campaign, implicit rules of political discourse and conduct were violated, one after another. Ethnic, national, and religious groups were attacked as criminal enemies and calls were made to remove the citizenship of some native-born groups. Opposing candidates were threatened with criminal prosecution. Campaigns conjured imaginary threats to the electoral process while real threats were ignored or minimized.

After the election, the sense of danger to our institutions and norms has only increased. The Yale Program on Democracy and Bright Line Watch have convened a conference that draws on the knowledge and perspectives of world-renowned scholars and journalists, with the goal of answering two basic questions:
1. What are the critical factors that have led to the degradation or destruction of democracy in other times and places?
2. Could these factors conspire to have the same effect in the United States today?

SCHEDULE
8:30-9:00 Welcome: Assessing the Erosion of Democracy in the United States
John Carey, Dartmouth College
Joe Goldman, President, Democracy Fund
Gretchen Helmke, University of Rochester
Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College
Susan Stokes, Yale University

9:00-10:45 Session One: How Democracies Die?
Moderator: Arturo Valenzuela, Former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Timur Kuran, Duke University
Margaret Levi, Stanford University
Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University
Adam Przeworski, New York University

11:00-1:00 Session Two: Signs and Instances of Democratic Erosion
Moderator: Susan Stokes, Yale University
Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, Oxford
Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University
Susan Hyde, University of California, Berkeley
Timothy Snyder, Yale University
Steve Levitsky, Harvard University
Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard University

1:15-2:30 Break

2:30-4:30 Session Three: Can it happen here? And what can we do about it?
Moderator: Ian Shapiro, Director, Macmillan Center at Yale
Julia Azari, Marquette University
Emily Bazelon, New York Times, Yale University
David Frum, The Atlantic
Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School
Aziz Huq, University of Chicago Law School
Frances Lee, University of Maryland
Yascha Mounk, Harvard University

INVITED PARTICIPANTS
Hannah Baron, Brown University
Robert Blair, Brown University
Javier Corrales, Amherst College
Sara Doskow, Cambridge University Press
Ross Douthat, The New York Times
Max Fisher, New York Times
Elaine Kamarck, Brookings Institute
Özge Kemahlioğlu, Sabanci University
Rachel Kleinfeld, Carnegie Endowment
Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University
Adriana Mendoza, Scholars Strategy Network
Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University
Michael Miller, George Washington University
Anibal Perez-Linon, University of Pittsburgh
Steve Pincus, Yale University
Mitch Sanders, Meliora Research
Daniel Stid, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Milan Svolik, Yale University
Amanda Taub, New York Times
Steven Wilkinson, Yale University
Liz Zechmeister, Vanderbilt University

Open to: 
undergraduate