Lectures

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is among the world's most influential political theorists and public intellectuals. He is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, where he previously served as President and Chief Executive. Drawing on both comparative theory and the Indian experience, Mehta has developed a distinctive account of how democracies decay not only through coups or formal ruptures, but through the gradual normalization of intolerance, institutional capture, and moral panic. His recent writings trace how these dynamics reshape constitutional cultures, public institutions, and the everyday lives of citizens. In this seminar on democratic backsliding, Mehta brings together his analytical work on constitutional democracy with his experience as a close observer, and sometimes embattled participant, in contemporary struggles over liberalism and dissent.