Genevieve Shea on How Poland and Hungary are rebuilding their democracy

Democracy has been losing ground around the world for 20 years in a row. But in two countries the trend has recently started to turn around, and part of the story is about what people believed was possible.

In this episode, we talk with Genevieve Shea, a democracy practitioner who has spent years helping Poland and Hungary strengthen civil society and prepare for elections, and who now focuses on AI safety. We look at how those two countries have started to reverse democratic backsliding.

Genevieve also explains how researchers measure how democratic a country really is, and which institutions a government goes after first as it drifts toward autocracy. Finally, she makes the case that people working on AI safety have a lot to learn from democracy movements.