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The Andrea Mitchell Center PodcastAuthor: Matthew Roth
The ANDREA MITCHELL CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF DEMOCRACY aims not just to promote, but to understand, democracy. Global in its outlook, multifaceted in its purposes, the Mitchell Center seeks to contribute to the ongoing quest for democratic values, ideas, and institutions throughout the world. In THE ANDREA MITCHELL CENTER PODCAST, we interview scholars, journalists, and public thinkers grappling with the challenges facing our democracy. Many of the episodes are linked to our other programming, such as our 2018-19 "Democracy in Trouble?" series, our 2019-20 "Reverberations of Inequality" series, and our ongoing "Capitalism / Socialism / Democracy." Other episodes are one-off interviews with scholars associated with the Mitchell Center -- or with thinkers whose work is central to our effort to understand democracy in all of its complexity. Language: en Genres: News, Politics, Science, Social Sciences Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Episode 8.5: Elite Power and the Meaning of Democracy
Episode 5
Friday, 31 July, 2026
Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. In this episode, host Joshua Rose speaks with DR. NATASHA PIANO, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at UCLA, about her book Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science. Together, they revisit early twentieth-century political theorists who challenged conventional understandings of democracy, elections, and elite power. Their conversation explores how concerns about plutocracy, political accountability, and democratic legitimacy shaped twentieth-century political thought, and why these debates remain deeply relevant as contemporary democracies grapple with growing inequality, institutional distrust, and democratic backsliding.













