Renovating Democracy: A Book Talk with Nathan Gardels & Nicolas Berggruen

On Monday, May 13th at 12pm as Nathan Gardels and Nicolas Berggruen, co-founders of the Berggruen Institute, discussed their new book, Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism (University of California Press; April, 2019), with Laura Tyson, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business & Faculty Director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact.

Democracy is in crisis. The populist uprisings in the US and throughout Europe are not the cause of the West’s crisis of governance, but, rather, have exposed the ways in which liberal democracies have failed their citizens by failing to address the dislocations of globalization and the disruptions of rapid technological change. Neither establishment nor populist leaders have proposed any systemic solutions, so governments have become further polarized and paralyzed, compounding the problem.

In Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism, Gardels and Berggruen argue that the rise of populism in the West, of China in the East, and the spread of social media, has prompted a deep rethink of how democracy works—or doesn’t. Gardels and Berggruen have researched, field-tested, and explored these recommendations through their work at the Berggruen Institute, a think tank designed to develop and promote long-term answers to the biggest challenges of the 21st Century. Their first book, Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century, was named one of the best books of 2012 by the Financial Times.