Annual Eckstein Lecture: Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat
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About the talk:
With the global advance of populism, many scholars fear that democracy is facing a
grave threat. The lecture, however, highlights and documents the resilience of democracy,
even in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where many countries suffer from institutional
weaknesses. Democracy stands on even firmer ground in advanced indus trialized countries
with entrenched checks and balances, such as the US.
About the speaker:
Kurt Weyland is a professor of government and the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts
at the University of Texas at Austin. Based on research conducted in Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela, he has published many journal articles
and book chapters, as well as seven books, most recently Assault on Democracy: Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism during the Interwar
Years (Cambridge, 2021); and Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat (Cambridge, 2024).
About the series:
Established in 1999, the annual Eckstein Lecture recognizes Harry Eckstein for his
scholarly contributions to the study of democracy and his role in cofounding the UCI
Center for the Study of Democracy. Eckstein was a fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences (1970-99), fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford (1958-59), Guggenheim fellow (1974), American Political Science
Association vice president (1981-82), editor (1960-63) and member of the editorial
board of World Politics (1960-80), a founding member of the editorial board of Comparative
Political Studies (1966-99), IBM Professor of International Studies at Princeton University
(1969-80), UC Irvine's first Distinguished Professor (1980-93) and then Distinguished
Research Professor (1993-99) of political science at UC Irvine.
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