Is the world sliding into a new Cold War, or is something stranger taking shape? From Moscow to Beijing, autocratic governments are not just consolidating power at home but promoting competing visions of how the world should be run. This talk brings together two leading scholars to ask what these ideologies actually offer, how they challenge the liberal order, and how that order should respond.
Jennifer Gandhi is the Howard Wang ‘95 Professor of Global Affairs and Political Science and Deputy Dean of the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. Her award-winning book Political Institutions under Dictatorship changed how scholars understand the way authoritarian regimes use elections, legislatures, and parties to survive, and her research examines transitions to and from democracy.
Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia. He served in the Obama administration for five years and is the author of From Cold War to Hot Peace and, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder.