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Dan Slater Says Authoritarian Ideologies Still Matter

June 10, 2026 · 47 min

Show notes

We think of World War II as this global democratizing event, but what it really did was strengthen left-wing authoritarianism.

Dan Slater

Dan Slater is the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center of Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan. He is the coauthor (with Joseph Wong) of the book From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia. More recently, he authored the article "The Authoritarian Origins of the Third Wave" in the Journal of Democracy.

The Democracy Paradox is made in partnership with the Kellogg Institute of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

Read the full transcript here.

Key Highlights

  • Introduction - 0:20
  • Why Scholars Stopped Taking Ideology Seriously - 3:02
  • The Difference Between Authoritarian Left and Right - 5:31
  • Why the Third Wave Narrative Gets the History Wrong - 20:45
  • Can Democracy Survive Ideological Extremes - 33:43

Links

Learn more about Dan Slater.

Read his article in the Journal of Democracy, "The Authoritarian Origins of the Third Wave."

Learn more about the Center for Emerging Democracies.

Learn more about the Kellogg Institute.

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