As democratically elected populists attack liberalism, seeing it as the ideology of the elite, we ask leading historian Timothy Garton Ash whether democracy and liberalism are in tension or are natural partners.

Has the word “democracy” lost all meaning, and become simply a term we use for any system we approve of, while “undemocratic” has become an insult we hurl at any system we dislike? Is it time to drop the term “democracy” and talk instead about more concrete ideas, like elections and wealth redistribution? Or is democracy still our best weapon against tyranny? Join Indian politician Priyanka Chaturvedi, British historian Timothy Garton Ash, and Hong-Kong-based philosopher Herman Cappelen as they debate the meaning of democracy.

After two World Wars destroyed competing colonial powers, the United States forged a global hegemony of unprecedented size and reach, absorbing the remnants of fallen empires into a single Pax Americana. But Richard Wolff argues that with China’s rise, US military losses in Iran, and the relentless deepening of inequality inside the US, this undemocratic American empire is being undermined, shifting the global order.