RevDem Podcast · Review of Democracy

2025 in Perspective: Daron Acemoğlu on Democracy, Delivery, and the Crisis Within

·25 min·1 clip

Acemoglu says Donald Trump’s 2025 impact exceeded even his dire predictions.

1. RevDem Podcast uses 2025 in Perspective to ask how democracy, delivery, and the crisis within fit into the wider arc of political change. 2. Host Ece Özbay interviews Daron Acemoglu, the MIT institute professor and 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient whose work with James Robinson and Simon Johnson shapes debates on institutions. 3. The episode asks whether 2025 marks stabilization or turbulence, and Acemoglu answers by treating the year as one step in a longer 20- to 25-year democratic crisis. 4. He says democracy is in turmoil “everywhere around the world,” naming the Philippines, Brazil, Turkey, the Netherlands, Sweden, the U.S., Poland, and Mexico. 5. Acemoglu argues that the threat is not military coups with “tanks and jackboots” but liberal democracy “self-destructing” from inside. 6. He identifies Donald Trump’s election and accession to power as the development historians may single out, but he ties Trump to deeper failures in liberal democracies. 7. He says support for democracy among American youth on both the left and the right is at an all-time low in the data. 8. He links that decline to economic inequality, polarization, job loss, immigration, and the failures of the Biden administration and other establishment parties. 9. Acemoglu compares the democratic crisis to the Roman Empire, saying the “barbarians” are not uniquely strong when the empire is already rotten. 10. He says Trump’s damage to U.S. democracy has exceeded even his earlier predictions and that Trump encourages worse behavior abroad, including in Turkey. 11. Acemoglu rejects an overly personalized reading of politics, saying Trump, Erdogan, Duterte, AMLO, Chavez, and Maduro are symptoms of institutional weakness. 12. He warns that opposition leaders such as Mamdani and Polanski are not solutions if they further polarize and destroy institutions. 13. His alternative is a delivery-centered politics: mayors and politicians should provide public services, clamp down on corruption, and make realistic promises. 14. He says democracy gains support when it delivers on its promises and when people can recognize those outcomes as success. 15. On a global delivery scorecard, he says Germany’s coalition government botched core problems, the UK Labour government has not fixed productivity, and Latin America has not advanced on corruption or informality. 16. He adds that center-left parties have not come to grips with immigration, and that banning reactions such as the AfD is the wrong answer. 17. In tone, the interview is direct and analytical, with Özbay pressing broad comparative questions and Acemoglu answering in framework-heavy, verdict-style statements. 18. The format stays conversational but policy-focused, moving from democracy to AI to midterms and local politics without breaking the comparative lens. 19. Readers interested in democracy, institutions, and political economy. 20. Listeners wanting light entertainment or audio drama.

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