RevDem Podcast · Review of Democracy

End of the Year Podcast 2025 – Part I: Reflections and Reckonings

·45 min·3 clips

Latin American support for radical right-wing parties is now “spread across all social, socioeconomic, and cultural background and ages and religions.”

The panel looks back at 2025 through democracy. It opens with Christophe describing his political-economy work, his Berlin base, and his interest in China and AI, while Alexandra lays out her work in the history of ideas, political theory, and international relations from Budapest. Gavia adds a wider regional perspective. The conversation quickly settles into 2025 as a year of political acceleration, when choices feel heavier and familiar routes look less available. The United States sits at the center of that reading. The speakers connect the present to the first Trump presidency and to a broader retreat from international engagement and soft power. Europe feels that pressure too. The discussion suggests that people across the European Union and beyond are being pushed to rethink what the United States is doing and what that means for their own assumptions. Latin America becomes another major reference point. Christophe describes the region as one where the United States is coming back with political symbols, military force, and financial and economic pressure. The others treat that return as part of a wider realignment, not a single isolated move. The word limbo comes up more than once. The guests dwell on the discomfort of knowing that change is underway without knowing where it leads, and on how uncertainty deepens dissatisfaction with democratic life. Historical comparison sharpens the point. Alexandra invokes pre-revolutionary Russia to show how sources can capture a feeling of accelerated time, narrowing possibilities, and sudden openness to paths that once seemed unimaginable. The show keeps returning to democracy and the pressures around democratic life. China and AI stay in the background and foreground at once. Christophe's interests there sit alongside the broader discussion of global change, while Alexandra notes the overlap in their intellectual concerns. The conversation stays measured throughout and gives the guests room to develop their ideas. The closing movement turns toward the social foundations of change. Gavia emphasizes feminist ideas and feminist civil society work across Latin America as a fresh current inside social movements, one that pushes against structural power and reshapes the distribution of political and socioeconomic goods. That final note leaves the discussion with a modest but real sense of hope.

As heard by us

A patient year-end map of democracy under pressure, from U.S. retreat to feminist resistance.

RevDem's year-end roundtable treats 2025 as a democracy story shaped by realignment: U.S. retrenchment, pressure on Europe, China's place in the global frame, Latin America's shifting balance, and a broader sense of politics moving through a strange, accelerated limbo.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a sober year-end read on democracy's shifting ground, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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