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Democracy Works: Between Democracy and Autocracy
New research shows that civil wars are mostly likely to begin neither in autocracies nor democracies, but in countries that fall somewhere in the middle.
EPISODE NOTES
Between democracy and autocracy is an anocracy, defined by political scientists as a country that has elements of both forms of government — usually one that’s on the way up to becoming a full democracy or on the way down to full autocracy. This messy middle is the state when civil wars are most likely to start, and the one that requires the most diligence from that country’s citizens to prevent a civil war from breaking out.
This week we're featuring an interview from our friends at Democracy Works, a podcast about what it means to live in a democracy from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Host Jenna Spinelle speaks with Barbara F. Walter, political scientist and author of the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them. Walter has spent decades studying civil wars around the world and working with other political scientists to quantify how strong democracy is in a given country. The interview covers those findings, how the democratic health of the United States has shifted over the past decade, and more.
Barbara F. Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and completed post docs at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and the War and Peace Institute at Columbia University.
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How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them
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Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions