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:
• What are the critical factors that have led to the degradation or destruction of democracy in other times and places?
• Could these factors conspire to have the same effect in the United States today?

CONFERENCE 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
• Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, 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