UpFront

Is the ‘global strongman’ movement killing democracy?

We debate whether democracy is in peril across the world.

The rise in recent years of right wing, so-called strongmen leaders – from Donald Trump in the United States, to Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India – has fuelled fears that liberal values are under attack around the world.

Now as millions of Americans head to the polls, many worry a second term for Trump would put democracy under serious threat in the US.

But are those fears overblown? And what are the signs of a democracy dying out?

We debate on this UpFront special with guests Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University; Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC; and Ashley Farmer, a historian and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.