Public Conversations
The Irony of Democracy – Amalinda Savirani, activist, scholar, and Professor of Politics at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia discusses the state of democracy in Indonesia.
November 7, 2025
Democracy as a ‘Modern Utopia’ – Mexican historian and essayist Enrique Krauze covers fifty years of Mexican history and presents a personal account of what democracy means to him.
August 29, 2025
Toda Feature Organisation – Colombina Schaeffer from Ciudadania Inteligente (CI) discusses what democracy means to CI.
16 July 2025
In Conversation – A public conversation on current challenges to democracy, and in particular challenges to democracy in America, with Professors Stephan Haggard and Bob Kaufman. The primary focus of the conversation is what’s happening to democracy in America under the second Trump administration.
India Roundtable – five India experts discuss the positive and negative consequences of the 2024 India election result.
July 24, 2024
Launch Event – The launch of the Democracy Lighthouse. The website was launched by Toda Peace Institute Director, Kevin Clements, and Professor John Keane, principal designer of the new site. The online platform is the result of collaboration between Toda Peace Institute and the University of Sydney. It aims to be an independent beacon and distributor of information on the renewal of democracy around the globe.
May 31, 2024
In Conversation – Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane, authors of To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism discuss their views of India under Prime Minister Modi, and the prospects for Indian democracy. Download the transcript here.
March 4, 2024
Lecture – Olivia Stokes Dreier discusses the state of democracy in the year 2024, a critical year with more elections than ever before. What are the driving factors in the global shift towards autocratic governments and reasons for the decline in democracy? What leads to the rise of populist leaders? How do they then control media and how does social media contribute to that? How do those divisions create more ground for autocracy?
February 20, 2024
Lecture – Olivia Stokes Dreier presents a lecture at the invitation of the Women’s Peace Committee of SGI in Hiroshima (February 2024).
February 13, 2024
In Conversation – Ed Garcia (teacher, a nonviolence advocate and social movement leader from the Philippines), discusses his life’s work as an advocate for public participation in decision making processes and his radical commitment to the poor, the weakest and most vulnerable.
November 2, 2023
In Conversation – Gina Gustavsson (Uppsala University and Nuffield College), author of Liberal Nationalism and Its Critics: Normative and Empirical Questions, discusses the recent electoral success of the Sweden Democratic Party, and what this means for Swedish social democracy and its welfare state.
November 13, 2022
In Conversation – Lydia Khalil (Lowy Institute), author of Rise of the Extreme Right: The New Global Extremism and the Threat to Democracy, explains the term right-wing extremism and its salient features. She discusses the structural factors which have led to a huge increase in right-wing extremism since 2016.
September 26, 2022
In Conversation – In this four-part series Timothy Snyder (Yale University) and Nora Krug (Parsons School of Design) explain the inspiration behind the illustrated edition of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. They discuss factors that contribute to the rise of tyranny: a widely felt sense of approaching doom largely caused by climate change, the stupefying inequality of wealth, and social media’s appeal to our lowest instincts. Watch all four parts below.
December 6, 2021
Part Two: Collective Fear, Obedience and Normality
December 6, 2021
Part Three: Creative Disobedience and Belonging
December 6, 2021
Part Four: Building Democracy and Freedom through Community
December 6, 2021
In Conversation – In this five-part series Stephan Haggard (UC San Diego) and Robert R. Kaufman (Rutgers) introduce their book Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Modern World, explain the concept of backsliding in relation to democratic government, and the way that they selected the 16 cases studies covered in the book. Watch all five parts below.
Part Two: Norm entrepreneurs and polarisation
Part Three: Backsliding and the politics of fear
Part Four: The cosmopolitan ideal and hopefulness
Part Five: Prospects for democracy