Authors:

  • Kenneth Roth

Summary

Ken RothKenneth Roth, a Senior Fellow at the Carr Center and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, gave a talk at Harvard Law School last Thursday titled, “Global Contest Between Democracy and Autocracy: Less Dire than it Seems.” Roth spoke alongside Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law, and discussed how as autocrats consolidate power, they tend to become isolated and make poorer decisions that start to weaken them.

Roth also said even though autocracies have been faltering lately doesn’t mean democracy is without its own weaknesses – “We do have a problem with democracy, and I think we have to recognize that and try to address it in order to prevail over the long term in promoting democracy,” he said. “The problem is that democratic government is not serving significant sectors of our societies.

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