Ideas - How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Today's Authoritarians

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

The 21st century is witness to resurgent global authoritarianism, driven by leaders who answer to no law other than their own. Nahlah Ayed and panelists consider the rise of today’s authoritarians ��� Trump, Putin, Orban, Duterte and beyond — and what we can learn from history about how authoritarianism can be challenged, and ultimately defeated. This final episode in How to Defeat Authoritarianism examines our present moment, identifying the ways in which authoritarian politics has returned — and the tools to resist them.Listen to other episodes in this series:How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's ItalyHow to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's UgandaHow to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's SyriaHow to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's ChileGuests on this podcast:Marie-Joelle Zahar is a professor of political science at the University de Montréal. She is a 2023-26 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow, and has served multiple terms as a mediation expert for the United Nations, including a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017.Miram Mufti is an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. She’s the author of Pathways to Power, Recruitment and Regime Stability in Pakistan.Lucan Ahmad-Way is the distinguished professor of democracy in the political science department at the University of Toronto, and is the co-author of Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism.

Albertans are voting on their future in Canada on October 19th. Wondering how we got here, CBC podcast has you covered. Start Referendum Day with front burner host Jamie Poisson. She'll bring you her story from Edmonton about the final pitches from the unity and independence camps. Then tune in to Power and Politics live for their Referendum Day coverage from Calgary. The morning after, West of Center is your destination for a behind-the-scenes look at the initial results and what they mean for Alberta and Canada. Find front burner, power and politics, and west of center, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast.

Thank you all for being here yet again for our fifth and final installment of ideas at Stratford Week, the 2026 edition. I always get a bit modeling when these things are coming to an end. But I hope this session will leave us with a bit of hope that makes up for that. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayy. And yes, this is the final installment in our series, How to Defeet Authoritarianism. And as you all know, of course, sadly, this is not a theoretical conversation. As we stand today, we are watching as one expansionist authoritarian leader attempts to annihilate a neighboring country

while repressing opinions about that war and its cost at home. And closer to home, we watch as another leader with authoritarian tendencies fighting his own war of choice, while attempting to persuade his fellow citizens that the very electoral system that brought him to power is actually irretrievably flawed on the eve of elections. Throughout the series, we've looked at authoritarian leaders

from Mussolini to Pino to Pinochet to Amin to al-Assad and tried to zero in on insights that could help navigate our present fraught moment. We look at this moment and the authoritarian's already past the government. with one overarching question. What lessons can we learn from past experiences that might help us in confronting today's authoritarians?

With us, our three scholars with the knowledge and experience to help us come up with some answers at least today. Marie Joel Zahar is a professor of political science at the University of Moriart, a 23-26 Pierre-Eliate Trudeau Foundation Fellow. She has served multiple terms as a mediation expert for the United Nations. nations, including as senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017. Marie-Jowel-Zahar was first to offer an illustration that she believes best captures the 21st century brand of authoritarianism.

I'm going to take cases from Africa that we don't discuss much, and I will choose Mali. I will choose Mali for a number of reasons. First of all, because this is a country that has, for the longest time, actually, been considered as a paragon of democracy in Africa, and which when it started breaking down in 2012, was presumably a surprise to the world, but not to people who watched what was happening internally. I'll also choose Mali because in Mali, authoritarianism did not start with a military coup of 2022. There were premises prior to that in democratically elected governments who had authoritarian tendencies and practices, and I think that's going to be a recurring theme.

I will also choose Mali because in Mali, the role of social media in actually dividing citizens, isolating them, and basically paving the way for authoritarianism was extremely important. And I think underestimated by the international community when the United Nations were still in country trying to help the Malians pick up the pieces. There are other reasons, but I think we can get to those later. Absolutely, we will. Thank you for that. Merriam. I focus a lot on Pakistan and predominantly because Pakistan compared to its neighboring country, India, has struggled to transition to democracy and consolidate any form of democracy in the country. And one of the reasons I think that it's a compelling case of 21st century authoritarianism is because, well, the democratic institutions are functioning. And yet, politics is the domain of an unelected actor. In the case of Pakistan, that unelected actor is the military.

Maryam Mufti is an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Now, what's changed in Pakistan, I think, from the 20th century to the 21st century, is that previously the military chose to carry out a number of coups and impose martial law in 1958, in 69, in 77, in 1999. The last one, the last military dictator was ousted only in 2008. So instead of concentrating power in the hands of a military, dictator, which would be the chief of army staff. Instead, what the military is choosing to do now is exercise control from behind the scenes. So you have a functioning judiciary. You have a civilian government in existence. You have elections every four or five years. And so on the face of it,

it looks like democratic institutions are functioning just fine, but the military controls everything. They determine the foreign policy. They control the security narrative of the country. Very recently, you would have seen the chief of armed staff, who is now promoted himself to the rank of Marshal, Sayyad Dasemunir, being the one who gets high-level diplomatic audience with presidents around the world instead of the elected prime minister. You will see that he had an outsized role in the negotiation between the United States and Iran very recently as well. So the military is very much in control of the narrative. And one of the ways in which they're controlling the narrative, which also, I think, is a hallmark of what's going on in the 24th century in authoritarian

regime is that it frames the issue of criticism of the military as a national security threat to the country and also the way that it has gone about persecuting the supporters of ex-prime Minister Imran Khan who is still in prison right now. So while there are certain tactics being used by the military, which are old school, like, you know, from the older toolkit, things have somewhat changed. Instead of Sayyad Asimeneer being in control, all right, it's now an interconnected network of elites. And I'll speak more about this as we go on. That's a great introduction. Thank you very much. Luken. The person who bents that's exemplarized 21st century authoritarianism, I think, is definitely

Victor Orban at Hungary. So it used to be, in the old days, that if an autocrat suppressed opposition, they would jail them, they would kill them, they would ban parties, all that stuff. Lucan Ahmed Wea is the distinguished professor of democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Victor Orban was the brilliant genius who discovered that you don't have to engage in violence against opposition to suppress it. Instead, he manipulates the law. He engages in a variety of backroom deals to essentially accomplish the same thing. I just want to give you a short example of Irigo. It's a website, news site, that used to be the most, in 2014, was the most popular news site in Hungary. It had did all sorts of embarrassing investigations of the government and the

like. In the old days, you could have shut it down. You could have turned off the internet, blah, blah, blah. Instead, Orban did this. First of all, he used control over licensing to convince Magriard Telecom that owned Orgo to sell it to one of Orban's allies. And what's interesting is the sale of Orgo was to completely open tender. It was totally legal. But in order to ensure that his ally was able to buy the new site, he used illicit bank loans. So they were able to outbid anybody. else. So you look at that, the amazing thing is effectively he has shut down this new site. But you look at it, and it's really hard to see the authoritarianism in there, even though there has been really important levels of weaponization of the state. And this is very much emblematic of 21st century authoritarianism. Thank you, Lucan, for kind of providing the first salvo in what I want to get to next, which is just, you know, we spent the week talking about effectively 20, 20th century authoritarians or ones that were at least born in that time. And I'm curious when you look at authoritarianism writ large today, how it's evolved from 20th century versions. So you've

just given us an example. Marie Joelle, what's another? What else? How else has it evolved? I think that to Lucan and Maryam's point, one of the ways in which it has evolved is that it has now become masterful at using practices which are not openly coercive to maintain itself in control and to actually weaken opposition. It has also learned to use tools that we use to associate with democracy. The media information flows, controlling them instead of shutting them down, but also liberalism and liberal market tools that are used basically to create an elite beholden to the authoritarian's, but which has an interest in maintaining them in power. And that's why in many of these 21st century authoritarian countries, one of the things we can see

is that the economy is not going so bad. in fact, it might be improving while control is tightening. And therefore, I think one of the challenges for us as scholars, but also for people who want to actually think about this from an activist point of view, is to go beyond contrasting terms. Because today, democracy can coexist with authoritarianism, coercion can coexist with smoother practices, and the lines are blurred,

which to a point that Miami made actually during our earlier, little discussion makes it much more difficult to see the early premises of authoritarianism as it emerges. Kind of this idea of hybrid authoritarianism democracies, Miniam. Yeah, so not only is authoritarianism figured out how to work within the language and the institutions of democracy, certainly. I mean, that's the point that both Lucan and Marie-Marie Joelle have already made. I think I want to touch on how digital technologies have shaped the way we're consuming information

So in the 20th century, it was important for the leader to establish a cult of personality. There was centralized propaganda. There was state-led narratives. And the whole point was to make citizens believe a single truth. And now that's not what they're trying to do. Now what they want to do is sow seeds of confusion and to erode trust in democratic institutions. And so the tools that they're using now are being used at a scale in a speed that we have never seen before. And what we're seeing is censorship, surveillance, they can flood the zone with disinformation to create that confusion and to prevent people from understanding exactly what is happening or to be able to interpret what exactly is happening.

So the point is not so much preference falsification on behalf of the citizens, as was the case in the 20th century. Now it's more about, okay, let's confuse and distort and re-shape reality. Just kind of building on that, Lucan, when you look at how some of these now, what we would call it, authoritarian regimes come into power, or we could call them millennial autocrats. But when they come into power, what is the main trend in how they come into power? Well, I mean, the most obvious trend is that it's overwhelmingly through election. So right after World War II, there were about 10% of autocracies had some form of national multi-party election.

Now it's over two-thirds. So that's really the modal form of authoritarianism. And in fact, you know, the most dominant form of authoritarianism, which currently is the United States is competitive authoritarianism. It's a term that Stephen Levitsky and I came up with, which describes cases in which, you know, there are elections and they're the main means of getting power. They're real elections. They're not facade elections.

Opposition can sometimes win, as in Hungary in 2026. But there's sort of vast amounts of abuse of civil liberties, weaponization of the state, that really make it no longer a democracy. So I think that's by far the biggest difference. But if I just want to point, yes. The other point I want to make is that the other difference is, authoritarianism is that there's actually a lot less of it than in the 20th century. I know this seems like counterintuitive where in this sort of intensely pessimistic zeitgeist,

especially in my home country, the United States, it's become authoritarian. I never imagined that. But if you look at global trends, because not everything is the United States, right? Am I right? The number of authoritarian regimes has gone down by 60, 70 percent, the number of democracy. democracy is doubled. We are in fact still, despite as bad things are, in the most democratic period in human history. I'm going to challenge you on that, Luke. Okay. Because perhaps we may not have pure authoritarian regimes around every index that I've looked at that I've consulted over. I mean,

you're the scholar. I'm just asking questions. But every index that I've looked at, the Freedom House index, the democracy index, reporters without borders all say that freedoms are on the way and have been for 20 years, that the Democratic index is the lowest it's been in 20 years, that even democratic countries have also slipped on the Democratic index. I guess my contention, and I would love to hear your thought on this, is that it actually feels like we perhaps live in the most authoritarian era, but it looks different. And maybe it's just a matter of degree of authoritarianism. Well, first of all, it depends on the baseline. So if you take 10 years ago, you're right, it has gone down.

If you take not that long ago, the 1980s, we were all around in the 1980s, remember, like Reagan and all that stuff. We're still like way more democratic than the 1980s. There was a apartheid South Africa, military rule in South Korea. All of Eastern Europe was a totalitarian dictatorship, right? You just have to remember, you have to think back. So right now, I mean, as bad as Hungary was under Orban, it was infinitely better than it was under communist rule. So, in general, I think, I mean, it doesn't mean that we should be complacent, but we also have to be realistic, right?

We can't get fatalistic to think that this is, you know, it's worse than it actually is. Miriam, do you want to, wait? I just want to say that authoritarianism is just more adaptive, but it's also a lot less visible, right? It's the point that Lucan made right in the beginning, which was that Orban did not go out and, like, shoot down a bunch of people. All right? Instead, he chose to do it in a very, I would say, strategic and clever way, which was to, like, control the media narrative by, you know, buying off that company or allowing his friend to buy it. So I think it's a lot less visible, visibly repressive. And that is why we might feel like, okay, you know, different type of authoritarianism.

But, you know, the data is the data. But he still lost power. And then he didn't lose power, exactly. Yeah. And there are more democratic countries. So I think all those truths can sit in the same bowl. Merzuel. I think I'd add something else.

And our focus on the countries that have slipped, particularly democratic countries where freedoms have waned, but we also tend to forget that there continue to be very 20th century-style authoritarianism in parts of the world that we don't worry as much about because they're not in our media or because they haven't exploded yet. And one thing which is important in terms of, you know, thinking about the big picture is that in those places, actually, the coercion today is much less controlled and limited by an international system

which has become much more permissive. And so the kind of coercion that we see in countries in Africa or in some countries in the Middle East is actually worsening and it's becoming more unbounded. And that I think is something that we also need to worry about. countries learn from one another, and while the slippage might be minimal in some places, it may have huge consequences on the ability and willingness of leaders to go all the way in others.

I want to pick up on that, Mere Joelle, because I find it fascinating, this concept of the permissiveness in the international sphere. The American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has written about autocracy as kind of like this worldwide, loose franchise of autocrats that, basically stay out of each other's way, but they also are mutually reinforcing, kind of this model in which they all benefit. What is it about this era that allows this kind of autocratic brotherhood to expand? Bergeoiselle, you can answer that, but if you... Maybe I'll start with one element. The one element I see which allows this is the disenchantment of populations, large swath of

populations in democratic and in non-democratic countries with democratic institutions and their performance. There are increasingly people who feel either left out or disappointed by democracy and who therefore become easier to mobilize by leaders who use populism to establish more authoritarian kinds of systems. I think there are other reasons as well, but I'm sure my colleagues will. Yeah. So first of all, I think you're absolutely right. If you look at, the way Orban very much influenced the Republican Party in the United States, and also the way MAGA is basically being imitated by everyone. Like in South Korea, Brazil, they all have their own magas.

That hat is, you know, I was just in South Korea. Like I saw people protesting with the sort of Korean Maga hat. I mean, it's really remarkable. But I think you're, you know, I think you're right. Absolutely that it's the anger, which I don't really understand where it comes from. People are just really angry right now. And I think that's what's really driving a lot of the authorities. authoritarianism. The anger could potentially be coming from the way social media has created

echo chambers within our society and polarized populations, certainly. So there is a lot of rage. But I also think that traditionally the institutions that we would consider as being the ones promoting democracy are no longer doing that. And in fact, I think that double standard has become very clearly evident to the international community. So what is an example of an institution? So for example, I think the double standards of U.S. foreign policy, for example, are now more evident to countries around the world. And I think that has happened because of the digital revolution, certainly, because of social media and the echo chambers that have been created. And I think not speaking to the U.S. case, because I think Luke can speak to it a lot better than I can. But certainly, internationally, I think it is allowed for more blatant but insidious forms of authoritarian control.

Since we're talking about kind of how populations are reacting to what is going on or not going on in our democracies, Lucan earlier in this series, we spoke about how the Italian establishment essentially abdicated power to Mussolini and how that helped entrench his hold on power and that this is kind of a repetitive model that we've seen elsewhere. What comes to mind for you when you think about abdication in our own time? I think that's very true. In the Italian case, which I've been studying a little bit, The interesting thing is that Mussolini came to power. He was pretty weak, but the liberal establishment in Italy basically opened the door for him and actually voted overwhelmingly to give him emergency powers when they were not in any way of course to do that.

And I think you've seen something very similar in the United States in early 2025 when, you know, the Congress has not presented any pushback on Trump when you've seen, you know, people like Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post sort of, you know, basically taking the knee. And basically, I mean, what's interesting about the American case is that from an objective social science perspective, the society is incredibly well-resourced to resist authoritarianism. So in Russia, in 2001 or 2002, they arrest one rich guy, Mikhail Khodokovsky. The opposition has no source of financing after that. That is simply not possible in the United States. There are like 1.5 million NGOs in the United States.

There's an incredibly robust civil society. And yet, in early 2025, Trump just imposed authoritarianism with astonishing speed. So in Hungary, it took about a year for Orban to establish authoritarianism in 2010. In Turkey, it took about seven years. I done the calculation. In the United States, it took literally 45 days. I can give more detail. But, you know, it's a snapshot.

How do you calculate that? Okay. Well, I'm glad you asked. Do you have a couple hours? No, I'm joking. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. One minute version.

So the date of the beginning of competitive authoritarianism began, I forget the date, in early March when he issued these executive orders against law firms. And their only sin was that they had represented members of the Democratic Party. This was clear weaponization of the state in an authoritarian manner in an effort to dissuade opposition. So that is the beginning of. very soft but still clear competitive authoritarianism. I want to pick up on something you said, Miriam.

We're sort of getting into the discussion of the tools that are at the disposal of authoritarian regimes right now. But it used to be the radio Uganda was enough to give someone like Ediamine control of the masses and a way to communicate directly to them. How has that evolved in today's media landscape? Right. So as I mentioned earlier, the point is not to control the media. or to just have a state narrative that's being put out there. So yes, Eidemi needed Radio Uganda, right?

And Putin, of course, controls the Internet. China has a great firewall. Of course, there are these state-led initiatives as well. But the more important thing right now is to distort reality by creating confusion. So flood the information space with so much disinformation that folks can't figure out what is the truth and what is not. What is reality? What is not?

what is correct, what is not, right? Donald Trump's United States does that remarkably well. The entire right-wing media space in the U.S. is putting out so much misinformation and it is being consumed by the population. And that's the goal. The goal is not the 20th century goal, which was to present a state narrative. The goal is confusion and distrust in democratic institutions. Please look at it. Yeah, so I just want to actually make a quick point about the media. So I've just been looking back to the Nixon era when there were all sorts of attacks in the media. at that point, the media television was incredibly profitable and powerful. So people like Catherine Graham, the head of the Washington Post, who made a decent amount of money, she was able to push back.

But right now, as we all know, the media is much more vulnerable to manipulation. So, you know, one of the ways that in Hungary that they controlled the media was simply through selective distribution of state advertising. Right. And because, you know, no newspaper can get normal advertising. through private sector, they relied entirely. And so even that very subtle move, like, no normal, like, doesn't look authoritarian to me, right? But in fact, it was a way of exercising authoritarian control.

And it's really because the media is much weaker than it has been in past Euras. Yeah, and a much more fractured environment, of course. And the media, the funding model for most, but, you know, almost public broadcasters are really struggling. I kind of want to touch a little bit on this idea of resistance to autocratic tendencies, if not in fully, full-blown authoritarian countries. Of course, every single context is different, as you've already all kind of highlighted.

But could you each provide an example of what effective resistance looks like in the 21st century, starting with Marie Joelle? I would have difficulty talking about extremely effective resistance, because the parts of the world that I'm interested in are the parts of the world where 21st century and 20th century styles of authoritarianism actually merge into a very lethal combination. So if you look, for example, at many of the countries that have gone through military coups in Africa or the ones where there have been constitutional amendments that have given basically lifelong power to sitting presidents. In those countries, political parties have been defund. And many of them, NGOs have been limited.

And therefore, what remains is often either activism in the diaspora, which has its own set of problems because diasporas are often associated with the West. And therefore, there are issues of sovereignty that are very deftly used by authoritarian leaders. And they're not plugged in on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. actually economic interests, but to Mariam's point, those leaders have also now made it very clear that strategic sectors, such as mining or whatever, are going to be under their control.

Now, it's much more open in the countries of the Sahel than it is in Pakistan, and that basically any foreign investor has to go through them, which limits the range of options. So I would say that in many of these countries, if I think about the Middle East arts and artistic communities remain one of the places where there is effective resistance, the problem is how to amp up the impact of individual acts of resistance into something more sustainable. Marie Joelle Zahar, professor of political science at the University of Montreal. She has served multiple terms as a mediation expert for the United States. nations. This is the final episode in our five-part series How to Defeet Authoritarianism, recorded in July at the 26 Stratford Festival in Ontario. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. What if I told you that most of history's underwear wasn't remotely close to the underwear

you're wearing right now? Hi, I'm Greg Jenner, host of the Your Dead to Me podcast, and we're back with a brand new season. And if you're a fan of fashion trends of the past, you're love our newest episode on the history of underwear. We explore how our underwear has changed throughout history and whether TV depictions of Regency era ladies in their lacy underwear are truly accurate. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the course of our series, we heard case studies from around the world where authoritarian leaders rose and then fell. You can listen to each of those episodes by finding ideas on your favorite podcast app. This final episode examines our present moment, identifying the ways

authoritarian politics has returned in the 21st century and the tools to resist them. Mariam Moufty is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Miriam, you brought up Pakistan at the very beginning. What are some examples of what's happening there to resist autocratic tendencies? Not very much. Yeah. Not very much, right? So in a country like Pakistan, I mean, one of the things that's changed also is that outrage doesn't express itself in the same way as it used to. So in the 20th century, the most successful cases of democratization that we would have seen would be South Korea and Taiwan, right? Where in both cases, there was mass democratic movements, pro-democracy movements that brought about the end of dictatorship. There are also classic examples of modernization, but that's not the point that I'm making.

In the 21st century where you have a pro-democracy movement, say, the Arab Spring. Okay? You know, Hussim Mubarak steps down. Okay, success, all right. Tunisia, which was seen as the most successful case, ended up not being the most successful case, because just a few years later, Parliament is shut down and political parties are persecuted,

and that's the end of that. But I will say where we have had some success, okay? Take the example of Brazil or Bolsonaro, where electoral management institutions and the judiciary have clapped back on executive action. Now, that is success. Another example of success would be where countries have been able, where opposition elites have been able to overlook their differences in political ideology and actually come together and form a broad coalition to hit back at a dictatorial government. I'm going to let Lucan talk about Hungary.

Because that to me, I think, is the most successful in the most recent case. So actually, I'm going to talk about South Korea. Okay. Sorry. No fair. No short examples. Gotcha. So the important thing to remember is that the vast majority of authoritarian regimes are not imposed at gunpoint.

They succeed. They emerge because people with the power to resist the judges, the politicians choose not to. Under Biden, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, slow-walked prosecution of Trump. That was a huge mistake. South Korea, they've developed something, and in Brazil as well, that we, you know, it could be called Democratic Hardball, which is you respond to existential threats to democracy in a manner that is rapid, forceful, and legal. So in December 3rd of 2024, President Union at 10.30 at night, declares martial law and

prepares to arrest hundreds of opposition leaders. He's going to shut down the legislature. Within an hour, within an hour, you had politicians, opposition members of the Democratic Party out there protesting. You had hundreds of thousands of people in the street. And literally, that dictatorship, it's got to be the shortest in history, lasted six hours. Okay? But they didn't stop there.

A week later, they impeached Yun and in a fair trial, they sentenced him to life to make sure it does not happen again. And I think that rapid, forceful, and legal is what we, Democratic hardball, we need to sort of think about that. Wonderful example. Marie Joelle, you want to say something. Yeah. I can tell. I can tell. I wanted to add something to what Lucan said, which I think is very important. It's not just that those who could resist chose not to resist or adopted the wrong strategies. It's also something else that I think that we need to pay more attention to. Authoritarian leaders do have bases of support.

And we need to interrogate why it is that people would prefer them to their democratic opponents. What is it that makes people vote, for example, for Putin? Initially, it was economic uncertainty, fear of disorder that got a lot of Russians slightly backward-looking and thinking about the good old days of the Soviet Union. So we need to understand that. I'm no specialist of Russia.

I think, you know, Lergen can say much more interesting things about that. But we need to think about what it is. in the parts of the world where I work, there is a lot of anti-colonial ideology and rhetoric, which is based on real hard historical experiences. It doesn't grow out of nowhere, but it's being used very successfully for these authoritarian leaders to actually muster support. So much so that when the military coups happened in the Sahel, a number of people actually wanted to argue that these were, democratic coups because they were restoring national sovereignty. I do think that we need to think about that and we should not be fooled into thinking that these regimes only come to power

with the support of the few. It's a really, really good point. Yeah. Mediam and Luchin, too, just harkening back to the idea of what happened in South Korea, should we take comfort then from that example, six hours, as you say, that the presence of a robust court system, the presence of a robust legal system and journalism, that that is protection enough for us from the next authoritarian-minded leader? I mean, certainly resilient democratic institutions. I mean, that is what we're looking for, that democratic institutions are actually going to hold their own when they're going to be threatened by an authoritarian-minded leader, certainly, right? I mean, that's what we've seen happen in Brazil, for example. But that's the insidiousness of authoritarianism

today. It's the erosion of democratic institutions in ways that make it less appealing for your general population to resist in ways that we've seen before. So I do like the South Korean example because I think legal, for me, that's the most important word. It's legal, it's legitimate in the eyes of the people, and therefore it actually holds weight. I want to just be honest here and just say that there's a part of me that wants to take comfort in just thinking, oh, well, we have a strong media and strong courts and we're going to be okay, but then I look south and I wonder, is that really true? And then the other thing that really haunts me is whether the forms of resistance we're seeing, whether it's like the no-kings protests or the, you know, exceptional journalism that's being

done south of the border is simply a waning establishment, kind of an attempt at pushing back at what is inevitable. I'm looking for some hope here because that sounds very cynical and worried, but how do we know, how do we know that there is actually a status quo that's correct that's going to prevail in the end? Well, because if you look at, think of it from the point of view of the autocrats perspective. If you're in Russia and there's a teeny private sector and you can just jail one rich guy and then the game's up, then it's easy. In the United States, it's very hard to monopolize power in a context in Canada as a, as well as the United States, where resources are so distributed, even in levels of inequality. It's just implausible that opposition could be starved of resources.

This does not prevent an autocrat from being elected. But it does mean that they're going to have a much harder time monopolizing control and staying in power. So, I'm sorry, this is not going to be optimistic, nahla. But I do think that one. of the things that we need to think about, which we don't right now because the lines are drawn so starkly is how to engage with those with whom we differ fundamentally. Talking across difference. Talking across differences, breaking the chambers of echo are, I think, important ways

in which we can build resilience. And that is not happening. That is not happening. And I would like to suggest that as long as, as we don't do that, as long as whether it is politicians on all sides of a divide or, you know, concerned citizens, as long as we dismiss those with whom we disagree, whether it was Hillary Clinton calling some people deplorables, or, you know, us in Quebec, for example, making fun of the people of Eruville when they displayed their ignorance and their fear about, you know, Islam and Muslims in our society, as long as long as as we don't deal with that, we're not going to be able to build the resilience at the societal level. And institutions are fine, but institutions are embedded in the society. Institutions cannot survive if the society is divided.

And to me, a non-specialist, that is one of the lessons of the USA, where institutions were really strong, but the society became so divided that they could not withstand basically the pressure. Yeah. So there is the polarization, which, as you say, is fundamental. to having people being on the same side, you know. But the other one, which we talked about a bit in the hallway, which is anger.

And the anger doesn't come out of nowhere. And it stands in the way of people agreeing on things and opens the way for certain kinds of leaders to build on it and to gain power that way. Miriam, it's a very unique challenge of the 21st century to deal with, but it's a very real one. I mean, can you explain where to begin in terms of dealing with that? I mean, for me, the first step is let's name and recognize the problem.

I think the general struggle for me right now is that people are not willing to come together and actually name the problem and recognize it as being a problem, right? I mean, you've got countries like the United States where, yes, there's folks who can see what the problem is and maybe, like, have the messaging to counter it. In countries like Pakistan, there is no such messaging. primarily because the messaging has been repressed, right? The ex-prime minister or the face of the opposition, Imran Khan, is in jail because, you know,

certain authoritarian practices are still afoot. Okay, but more importantly, I think the problem is that there are some willing authoritarianes who are helping the dictatorial regimes to continue to maintain their informal and tutelary domination of the political system. Marjorieuelle, I want to come back to you one last minute, before we get into kind of this idea of how do we dismantle or combat authoritarianism in our day? And just address the situation here in Canada. You know, we do not have an authoritarian government,

but we can talk about authoritarian tendencies in almost any country. Do you see authoritarian concerns in a place like Canada? Absolutely. Absolutely. Where? All over. I mean, this is not a criticism of our current government, but sometimes conditions are conducive to authoritarian tendencies. I see the way in which we have elevated security issues and basically close the door to discussions about how we address those security issues as something that is very reminiscent of the way in which authoritarianism started elsewhere.

So not to say that we have authoritarian problems in Canada, but I think that if we are not aware, if we let the echo chambers continue, we do have authoritarian tendencies, for example, in the way in which identities being closed off in parts of the country. And if that is not tended to, which is why I think dialogue is so important, I do think that we are at risk of a slippery slope. I do think that we need to be careful and engaged. We started this series by looking at a scholar's work, Robert Paxton, and what he described as the stages of fascism. And we thought we could maybe try to build a mirror image of that list, of stages that are necessary to dismantle autocratic regimes or autocratic tendencies. Again, using your favorite example,

what do you think might be a first stage that to you indicate, a regime could be dismantled or defeated. I think the first stage is obviously are elections, do elections remain competitive? And how do you know that? Are opposition candidates allowed to campaign openly? Is there vast amounts of centrally coordinated electoral fraud? But as long as elections are still the primary means of gaining and keeping power, then we're more or less okay. In Russia, elections are simply, you know, there are elections, but all the, so quote-unquote, opposition candidates support Putin.

You know, so it's really, and that's a really dangerous point where it becomes much harder. So I think that's the, I don't know if that's the first stage. A stage. A stage, yeah. Miriam. Yeah, so if we're holding elections, I think opposition political parties have to overcome their political differences and come together and maybe try to defeat, right, which is what we saw happen in Hungary. and that's how Orban suffered his electoral defeat, and I think that's important as well. So I would name that stage as the development or the evolution of a broad-based coalition group

and opposition that can actually carry out its work. It's very difficult, though, to establish that broad-based coalition because there is a lot of identity politics in the context that Marie Joelle and I look at in the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia. Mariam, I know we were chatting earlier that you've sort of come up with more than one possible stage that could kind of lead to the fall of regime. What other things have you thought? So my third stage would then be the resilience of democratic institutions. And then the fourth one for me would be some kind of accountability and transitional justice.

Very often when we talk about authoritarianism, we don't think about transitional justice. So we don't have a conversation about it. But it's so necessary and so important because I think what needs to also happen is the erasure of memory. you know, as such that we don't normalize authoritarian tendencies and we do not normalize authoritarian ways of ruling. And for that, I think, yeah, that would be my fourth stage. Mary Joanne and then Lucan, is that okay? Well, what's one stage that you think would be kind of a harbender of change?

So it's not a stage per se, but I think the ability to develop a unifying narrative, to Merriam's point, identity politics are not just limited to the Middle East. or, you know, there's a lot of very bad identity politics happening south of the border and here as well. But often when we vote, we vote for or against one party. We see that, for example, in France where people vote against the Front Nacional, which is the far right party, but they don't necessarily vote in favor of whoever ends up being the president. It's by default. But that is because there are no narratives that are unifying and provide alternatives to the narratives

that are being provided by the authoritarian leaders. What are these narratives? There are narratives often of order, stability, you know, a certain vision of the we. And I think that one of the challenges is to be able to actually give people another vision of the society worth not just voting for, but also fighting for.

Excellent. I just want to make the point that in established democracies, the real forces on the front lines of democracy is the independent bureaucracy. that are the government career civil servants the bureaucrats we derive as being bureaucrats they are the real they are the ones who are preserving our democracy who are preventing the weaponization of the state so the first if you look at hungry turkey the united states poland the first stage of it towards competitive authoritarianism is the purging and packing of the career civil service and we have to defend our bureaucrats

the so-called derogatorily called the deep state yes and the deep state is actually what what keeps our democracy, you know, makes it so that the prime minister can't simply arrest his, you know, his political enemy. But, you know, we talked about examples of countries that began to weaken the regimes after an adventure in war in a neighboring country. I mean, are we kind of watching that with Russia? Is that a possibility? I think that's too optimistic. I mean, I just, there is no opposition in Russia. That, I mean, it's got, this is really extreme case. It's, you know, it really began in 2000s, and Russia used to be sort of this, you know, you could go there, you know, everything on the internet, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's now become quasi totalitarian. I mean, people are put in jail for five years for the most teeny protest. I just, I mean, that's a case where, you know, the only kind of ray of hope is insane, which is like a military coup. Right. You know, that's, you know, I hope I'll be proven wrong, but I don't think that's why. But the other thing I do think is important. I don't know if this is a stage, is something is democratic solidarity.

So the ways that authoritarian stay in power is they keep the opposition divided. And you see this very much in the United States. So Trump attacks Colombia, Harvard, total silence because they're afraid, right? The law firms, they attack one law firm, the others, total silence. And that's what allows authoritarianism to establish itself. But what you saw in Minnesota was a really big. powerful example of Democratic Solidary, where they were going after, you know, Minnesota is a predominantly white place, right? And Trump was, with his ice, was going after Somalis and Hispanics,

people who were not white. And he fully, he didn't expect, he didn't think it was possible that the white population would empathize with those. And, but in fact, they did, they rose up to an enormous degree in the face of enormous violence, stood their ground. And the game's not up yet, but Greg Bavino and they were forced to resign, so they really kind of pushed ice back. That, to me, is the most inspiring example yet in the United States. Mediam, you wanted to add something? Yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, Paxton reminds us that authoritarianism is a process, right? By thinking in terms of stages, he's reminding us to think in terms of a process.

And so if you're talking about the dismantling of authoritarianism, there has to be an opening for that process to begin already. In contexts like Russia and China, which, I mean, I mean, they're a far cry from competitive. there's certainly closed authoritarian, I would say, closed authoritarian regimes. There is no opening. To even start looking for an opening requires us to think of some kind of exogenous shock, right? Something like a military coup, something completely unbelievable that we can't conceive of right now. But in some of the other regimes that we've talked about, like Hungary, Brazil,

in the case of Bolsonaro, Duterte, in Philippines, Pakistan, and so on, there are openings because these countries have had competitive elections. And so if we're defending bureaucrats, I say let's defend the bureaucrats who manage your electoral system. Your election management offices need to work independently, right? And the second arm of the – I mean, they're not an arm of the bureaucracy. They're an arm of the state. The judiciary needs to remain independent in the case of the United States. I mean, you mentioned Merrick Garland.

And then the mess that we've seen under Donald Trump, I mean, the Department of Justice serves Donald Trump. does not serve the United States. So if we're talking about like protecting our institutions, that's what's necessary. So if you're thinking about that, then okay, we need to have an opening first. And the opening, I think, is the naming and recognition of the problem. If you're not going to recognize the problem, then we're not even kick-starting the process. I just want to wrap this up with one remark. From someone, one of you who I'm not going to name, but someone who's been here all week told me yesterday that they actually found some hope in the undeniable fact that all the regimes that we spoke about throughout the week are now gone, maybe imperfectly, but gone.

And so I want to end off with each of you a small statement on what advice you would give to ordinary people who may be newly understanding that they too are living in the shadow of authoritarianism. So, look in and then we'll work our way back. So I think the first thing is to stay engaged and neither be too complacent because there's dangers of too much. much overconfidence, complacency on one side and fatalism on the other. It's the middle, you know, there's such a sense of realistic hope and engagement. And it doesn't matter what you do, essentially. There's no magic thing, you know, just do all of the above. Okay. Miriam? Yeah, participate. However that participation looks, I mean, participate,

read, learn, try to access good sources of information, essentially. Marriott. Same thing. I'm going to sound like a broken record here, right? You know? engage. There's no small act and don't just engage with the people that you agree with. Seek out the people that you disagree with and talk. We have lost the art of talking across differences. And that is actually what authoritarian's thrive upon. Before we end at our discussion, we took some rapid fire questions from the audience. Do you observe any strong man tendencies in Mark Carney? Who wants to take that one?

Mary Joelle. Ooh. Being put on the spot for the Canadian questions here. If you'd like, no obligation. I mean, there's definitely a resolve. There's consultation, more limited than I would have liked, but still. So I would say no, because for me, a strong man is also someone who tends to decide rather than, you. you know, consult before he does.

So I would say for the time being no, but yeah. So I think there's a bit of authoritarianism in every Democratic elected leader. I think if you're hubristic enough to think that you can lead a whole country, you're not going to want to give up. I mean, that is simply, and so it's all about the constraints. And the constraints come from institutions. They come from the opposition parties. They come from you.

So, you know, I think we can't rely too much on that sort of democratic-mindedness of leaders. Great. The second part of this question, you know, we don't want to get super political here, but anyway, this question is, where do you see Pierre Polyev on the authoritarian scale? I think, first of all, he is no Trump in the good sense. And the conservative party is a multiracial coalition, which is definitely much better than the sort of Christian white nationalism in the United States. But, you know, his treatment of the media, again, and his dismissiveness of opposition ideas is woke in this sort of derogatory way. So a kind of dehumanizing of the opposition was very kind of American in an uncomfortable way. Given the intensity and lethality of authoritarian regimes, at what point would you say political violence could be justified?

Merriam, is there ever a point at which is justified? No. No. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't make my mind up, but no, no, it isn't. Allows me to add something that I wanted to add. Sure.

Beyond bureaucrats and in places where the military has not been politicized, also maintaining civilian command over the military is one of the important guard rates. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. The status quo isn't working for a lot of people. How do you defend democracy without defending the status quo? We were just discussing that.

You're hired, whoever you are. We were just discussing that. Go ahead. So, yeah, I think the biggest challenge I think we have in defending democracy is that those who want to preserve are really good institutions we have in Canada that we, you know, still, I guess, have in the United States, is that you end up coming across as defending the status quo. And I think that's politically, that's completely toxic. And, you know, it really kind of provides an opening for populist rights.

I think it's really hard to defend the institutions without seem to say that every part of the status quo, the inequality, everything else is okay. There's also a certain self-righteousness that I think needs to be avoided in the preservation. You know, if you don't want to come off as sounding as though you're preserving the status quo, then I think there's a certain amount of self-righteousness that you've got to let go off as well, which I think the Democratic Party in the United States hasn't quite quite figured out. Just yet. And I would say a certain amount of honesty and self-criticism.

So you can defend democracy while acknowledging that there are areas that need to be attention. to end improved upon. So it shouldn't be black or white. Unfortunately, you all know that the way in which, you know, our electoral systems work and whatever, even our debates do not provide the opportunity for the kind of in-depth engagement with the nuance. I want to thank the three people sitting on the stage right now,

Luke Conway, Miriam Mufti, Mary Joelle, Zahar, thank you very, very much for your insights and for all the answers you've provided to us today. Maria Mufti is an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. She's the author of Pathways to Power, Recruitment and Regime Stability in Pakistan. Marie Joelle Zahar is a professor of political science at Universite de Morial. She's served multiple terms as a mediation expert for the United Nations. Ahmed Wei is the Distinguished Professor of Democracy in the Political Science Department at the University of Toronto and co-author of Revolution and Dictatorship,

The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism. This is the final installment in our series How to Defeat authoritarianism. It was produced by Pauline Holesworth. A big thank you to Julie Miles and all our colleagues at the Stratford Festival who support this series. Technical production on-site by Harper-Charlton and post-production by Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, senior producer Nicola Lukshic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.