A new generation of authoritarians has risen to power in democracies around the world. Since coming to office, these rulers have manipulated laws and reconfigured state bureaucracies, undermining civil liberties, flouting representative institutions, attacking the free press, and subverting international law. Figures like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Mihály Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Donald Trump in the United States have all attained office by embracing, and in some instances co-opting, conservative populist movements.

Recorded on November 30, 2020, this Matrix On Point panel considered not only the illiberal tactics these right-wing autocrats have used to consolidate power and further their objectives, but also what it will take to undo the damage they have inflicted upon democratic institutions. 

Panelists included Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University; Cihan Tuğal, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley; Lena Lavinas, Professor of Welfare Economics at the Institute of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Senior Researcher at the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPQ); and Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University. The panel was moderated by Paul Pierson (moderator) is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley.

Watch the video above or on YouTube.