Daniel Ziblatt: Democracy Under Threat — A Transatlantic Perspective
Political scientist Daniel Ziblatt examines democratic backsliding in the US and Europe, and what history reveals about the path forward.
Why we picked this
Ziblatt co-wrote the book that gave everyone the vocabulary for democratic erosion — this talk updates that framework with what's happened since on both sides of the Atlantic.
Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die and director of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, brings a comparative lens to the question dominating political conversation: is democracy actually failing, or is it transforming into something we don’t yet recognize? His transatlantic framing — looking at the US and Europe side by side — cuts through the parochialism that often limits these discussions.
Ziblatt’s scholarship focuses on how democracies have historically survived and collapsed, drawing on deep archival work in European political history. He’s one of the few scholars whose academic framework has genuinely entered mainstream conversation, making this a chance to hear the latest thinking directly rather than filtered through op-ed summaries.
Free and open to the public at the CUNY Graduate Center.