Join CIC Victoria and the Victoria Forum!

This CIC public panel event is part of the three-day Victoria Forum that will be held at the University of Victoria.

To register: Registration – Victoria Forum

The panel event features CIC Victoria members: Dr. Chris Kilford (MC), Dr. Alan Siaroff, Dr. Reeta Tremblay and Jonathan Manthorpe (journalist and author).

Looking to the future, surmounting the deep roots of democracy’s global woes will require a sustained effort to prove that democracy can and will deliver. And democracy has undoubtedly been in retreat for over a decade now, typified most recently with a renewed invasion of a democratic European country by an authoritarian regime in 2022 and the election of autocratic regimes in many countries. At a global level there has also been an erosion of trust in international institutions and their capacity to address issues of international concern. Indeed, we have all watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies.

This session, led by Dr. Chris Kilford, will discuss the state of global democracy and the rules-based order, along with the troublesome international trends that are increasingly becoming evident.

Our speakers…

Dr. Alan Siaroff is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge, where he taught comparative politics. His scholarly focus is on political regimes and democratization, political institutions and comparative democracies, electoral systems, and party systems. He is the author of Comparing Political Regimes (now in its fourth edition) and Comparative European Party Systems (now in its second edition), plus many articles in European and North American journals. In addition, Alan is the author of a series of articles for CIC’s Open Canada that have delved into election outcomes in Australia, the European Union, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dr. Reeta Tremblay is Professor Emerita of Comparative Politics and former Provost and Vice-President Academic at the University of Victoria. She is also Past President of the Canadian Political Science Association and Canadian Asian Studies. Her major areas of research are secessionist movements (Kashmir) in South Asia, the politics of subaltern resistance and accommodation in post-colonial societies, democracy and governance, and comparative federalism. She has authored or co-authored several books, articles, and reviews. Her work has been widely reviewed and cited. In particular, she is widely considered as the leading North American expert on Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations in that region. Two of her recent books are: Religion and Politics in Jammu and Kashmir (2020) and Modi’s Foreign Policy (2017).

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of the national bestseller and Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of 2019, Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada. His other books include On Canadian Democracy, Restoring Democracy in an age of Populists and Pestilence, Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan and The Power and the Tories: Ontario Politics 1943 to the Present. Over his fifty-year career as a journalist, he has been the foreign correspondent in Asia, Africa, and Europe for Southam News, the European Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star, and the national reporter for The Globe and Mail. In 1981 and 1982, he was an advisor in London to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau on the patriation of the Canadian constitution.

Image: PanggihSeptaPerwira via Pixabay.