Lecture 1: Introduction to Power and Politics in Today’s World
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Key ideas
- Professor Ian Shapiro opens the DeVane Lecture series by contrasting the stability of the 1945–1989 postwar era with the volatile thirty years between 1989 and 2019, an era marked by rapid institutional and political upheaval across advanced democracies. (0:08)
- The course investigates how post-Cold War euphoria and Francis Fukuyama's 'end of history' thesis collapsed into the current politics of fear, resentment, and establishment fragmentation, exemplified by the rise of the AfD in Germany and anti-system parties across Europe. (6:04)
- Shapiro critiques abstract political theory that produces unworkable mandates, such as Thomas Piketty's proposed 4% global wealth tax, advocating instead for marrying normative goals with political feasibility and coalitional strategy. (27:02)
- The course is divided into five thematic phases: the fall of communism, the rise of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, the breakdown of the unipolar order, the post-2008 politics of insecurity, and prospective democratic realignments. (32:38)
Detailed notes
## Background Published by YaleCourses on YouTube on September 17, 2019, this video captures the opening lecture of the DeVane Lecture series course "Power and Politics in Today’s World" taught by Sterling Professor of Political Science Ian Shapiro. According to the page description, the course examines political dynamics and institutions across the tumultuous quarter-century following the Cold War, charting how global politics shifted from post-communist euphoria to contemporary insecurity, authoritarianism, and resentment.
## TL;DR Professor Ian Shapiro opens the course by establishing the historical boundary of 'today's world' as the thirty-year span from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to 2019. Contrasting the post-Cold War era with the relative domestic stability of the preceding four decades, he investigates how the triumphant liberal optimism of the 1990s gave way to contemporary political fragmentation, populist surges, and institutional breakdown across Western democracies. Shapiro outlines a methodological framework combining empirical social science with normative political theory to evaluate major turning points such as NATO expansion, the War on Terror, and the response to the 2008 financial crisis. He then details the five-part structure of the semester—tracing the collapse of communism, the rise of neoliberalism, the end of 'the end of history,' the politics of economic insecurity, and institutional reforms—before concluding with logistical guidelines on readings, exams, and classroom policies.
## Atmosphere & style The session balances academic rigor with dry, approachable humor, creating an engaging atmosphere that bridges the gap between undergraduate students and auditing community members. Shapiro’s delivery is conversational yet authoritative, punctuated by self-deprecating remarks about political theorists, quips about public surveillance via classroom microphones, and vivid historical anecdotes. Watching the lecture evokes a palpable shift in mood—moving from the nostalgic, euphoric archival broadcasts of 1989 Berlin to the somber, anxious reality of modern populist breakthroughs and coalition crises across Europe.
## Bulletin - [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=8s) Professor Ian Shapiro opens the DeVane Lecture series by contrasting the stability of the 1945–1989 postwar era with the volatile thirty years between 1989 and 2019, an era marked by rapid institutional and political upheaval across advanced democracies. - [06:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=364s) The course investigates how post-Cold War euphoria and Francis Fukuyama's 'end of history' thesis collapsed into the current politics of fear, resentment, and establishment fragmentation, exemplified by the rise of the AfD in Germany and anti-system parties across Europe. - [27:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1622s) Shapiro critiques abstract political theory that produces unworkable mandates, such as Thomas Piketty's proposed 4% global wealth tax, advocating instead for marrying normative goals with political feasibility and coalitional strategy. - [32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1958s) The course is divided into five thematic phases: the fall of communism, the rise of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, the breakdown of the unipolar order, the post-2008 politics of insecurity, and prospective democratic realignments.
## Key takeaways - [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=8s) The 1945–1989 postwar era provided advanced capitalist democracies with exceptional domestic stability and predictable economic growth, contrasting sharply with the accelerated political volatility of the post-1989 era. - [02:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=170s) Archival footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 bridges the generational gap between older observers who lived through it and younger students who view it as distant history. - [06:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=364s) The collapse of the Eastern Bloc, coupled with breakthroughs in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the Oslo Accords, solidified Francis Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democratic capitalism was the unchallenged final form of human governance. - [09:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=590s) The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 federal elections shattered German coalition norms, forcing an uneasy grand coalition to prevent snap elections where the far right was projected to surge further. - [15:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=904s) Across Western Europe, traditional center-left and center-right parties are shedding voters to ideological fringes, echoing the parliamentary fragmentation that preceded the collapse of the Weimar Republic. - [17:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1048s) The 2016 Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's presidential victory exposed deep vulnerabilities in establishment politics, matching insurgent trends in Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Sweden. - [21:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1307s) The geopolitical shock of 1989 created an unprecedented natural experiment for political scientists, disproving linear modernization theories through cases like China and Vietnam, which adopted state capitalism without democratizing. - [27:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1622s) Political philosophy frequently resembles 'directions to Dublin' by prescribing ideal solutions without practical pathways, illustrated by Thomas Piketty's ungrounded call for an international wealth tax without an enforcement mechanism. - [29:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1784s) The class examines critical counterfactuals and unchosen historical paths, including François Mitterrand's suggestion to dismantle NATO rather than expand it to Russia's borders, and alternatives to the post-9/11 War on Terror. - [31:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1885s) Effective political analysis must bridge the divide between idealistic policy wonks and descriptive political scientists by studying how to build political coalitions to pass sound measures and block destructive ones. - [32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1958s) The post-Cold War era established a US-led unipolar order accompanied by the Washington Consensus, which promoted worldwide deregulation, privatization, and free trade alongside supranational doctrines like the International Criminal Court and Responsibility to Protect. - [38:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2319s) Military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, coupled with aggressive Russian foreign policy and Chinese state capitalism in Africa, dismantled the assumption of inevitable liberal democratic expansion. - [40:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2404s) The 2008 financial crisis fueled widespread political insecurity not merely due to economic distress, but because governments prioritized elite bailouts while neglecting long-term working-class precarity. - [41:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2481s) Elite political establishments misdiagnosed working-class vulnerability and introduced institutional reforms that intensified political polarization, leaving democratic systems structurally misaligned. - [44:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2680s) Classroom policies include an electronics ban to maintain pedagogical engagement, physical and digital reading reserves accommodating community auditors, and filmed office-hour recaps to synthesize recurring student questions.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=8s) The DeVane Lectures: Thirty Years of Tumultuous Change
Professor Ian Shapiro opens the DeVane Lecture series by welcoming both matriculated Yale students taking the course for credit and members of the general public. Setting the chronological scope of the course, he defines “today’s world” as the thirty years spanning from 1989 to 2019. This three-decade stretch, Shapiro stresses, has been an extraordinarily volatile and tumultuous epoch, representing a sharp break from the historical rhythm that came before it.
To illustrate how unusual the post-1989 era is, Shapiro contrasts it with the four decades following World War II. For the advanced capitalist democracies, that postwar window was marked by remarkable domestic and economic stability. Rebuilding devastated European nations with Marshall Plan assistance ushered in widespread prosperity, bolstered by demographic factors that reinforced political predictability. On the geopolitical stage, the Cold War created a tense yet stable bipolar order. While flashpoints like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War broke through the surface, the ideological struggle was primarily waged through distant proxy conflicts. For ordinary citizens living inside Western democracies, daily life remained broadly insulated from seismic geopolitical shocks.
Since 1989, however, historical time has radically accelerated. Three decades have witnessed compressed, foundational shifts in political institutions, party systems, and global order. As Shapiro notes when contrasting the postwar era with the present: “From the point of view of the citizens of the Western democracies, except for those who are actually fighting in Vietnam, it was a far-off war that didn't have a great impact on the stability of people's lives and that is very different from what has been experienced since 1989; time, if you like, has speeded up a great deal.”
- **Post-WWII Period (ca. 1945–1989):** Characterized by sustained economic growth, Marshall Plan reconstruction, demographic stability, and localized proxy conflicts outside core Western homelands. - **Post-Cold War Period (1989–2019):** Marked by systemic turbulence, rapid institutional upheaval, and high domestic political volatility across advanced democracies.
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[02:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=170s) 1989 in Berlin: Reliving the Collapse of the Wall
Shapiro highlights a central pedagogical hurdle in teaching modern political history: the wide generational divide in the room. For older participants, the events of 1989 and the decades that followed remain vivid and personal, feeling as though they unfolded yesterday. For younger college students, who were born years after the turn of the millennium, 1989 is abstract history in the same category as the aftermath of World War II. To bridge this gap, Shapiro resolves to anchor the course in archival footage so that those who were not yet alive can experience the visceral shock of those moments, while those who lived through them can recall nuances they may have forgotten.
He plays an archival broadcast of the *CBS Evening News* from November 1989, featuring Dan Rather reporting live in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate amid cheering crowds. Rather recounts the emotional scenes as East German border guards actively dismantled portions of the concrete barrier to let citizens flood through, while the East German regime conceded that citizens could cross freely without special travel documents. In the footage, Rather interviews former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt standing among the jubilant crowds. Brandt reflects on the deep family trauma wrought by decades of physical division, expressing cautious optimism about German and European integration. Turning back to the lecture hall, Shapiro asks if anyone recognizes the elderly statesman, identifying him as Willy Brandt and noting that he passed away just three years later.
Reflecting on the emotional resonance of that night, Willy Brandt told Dan Rather: “My feeling is that we are very close to an end of the artificial division of Berlin and I also believe we are close to the point where the parts of Germany will become much closer together.”
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[06:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=364s) The Global Democratic Wave and Fukuyama’s "End of History"
The collapse of the Berlin Wall encapsulated a much broader systemic collapse across the Eastern Bloc throughout 1989. Citizen resistance movements had surged across Central and Eastern Europe, while a weakened Soviet Union proved unable and unwilling to deploy military force to prop up its satellite regimes. Across the region, countries shook off totalitarian governance for the first time in generations. Although China took a starkly different path in June 1989 with the violent suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square—a divergent trajectory Shapiro reserves for the following week’s lecture—the broader international consensus concluded that democracy was marching inexorably forward.
Throughout the 1990s, that optimism appeared continuously vindicated by breakthroughs in long-standing, seemingly intractable disputes around the world: - **South Africa:** Emerged from decades of bitter apartheid conflict and repression to establish a multiracial democracy in the early 1990s under Nelson Mandela. - **Northern Ireland:** Reached a historic diplomatic breakthrough with the signing of the Good Friday Accords in 1997. - **Israel and Palestine:** The Oslo Accords brought the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the negotiating table, creating widespread anticipation of a lasting peace until Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in November 1995.
This cascade of transitions fueled Francis Fukuyama’s influential thesis on the “end of history,” which posited that liberal democratic capitalism represented the final, unchallenged endpoint of human political evolution. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, a statistical milestone was passed: for the first time in modern history, a majority of the world’s sovereign states qualified as democracies under standard metrics. Summarizing the triumphant intellectual mood of that era, Shapiro explains: “Enormous confidence in democratic capitalism and enormous confidence in the idea that many people were gonna be lifted out of poverty and that the world was heading for a kind of benign equilibrium, as an economist would say, Fukuyama's end of history idea.”
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[09:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=590s) The Rise of the AfD and Germany's Grand Coalition Crisis
Fast-forwarding thirty years, Shapiro presents a starkly different video clip from Germany to show how dramatically the political atmosphere soured. The footage shows leaders of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD)—a far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-system party—euphorically celebrating their breakthrough in the 2017 federal elections. Under Germany's electoral law, a political party must clear a 5% nationwide threshold to enter the Bundestag; having previously fallen short, the AfD crossed the line with ease, securing a powerful parliamentary foothold and unsettling the established democratic order.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: German 2017 Coalition Gridlock accDescr: The electoral dilemma following the AfD breakthrough in 2017, leading to the collapse of Jamaica talks and a reluctant Grand Coalition renewal.
subgraph Election["2017 Federal Election"] A["AfD breaches 5% threshold<br/>Mainstream parties refuse to govern with AfD"] B["SPD enters opposition<br/>(Refuses new Grand Coalition)"] end
subgraph FailedOption["Merkel's First Coalition Attempt"] C["'Jamaica' Coalition Talks<br/>CDU/CSU + Greens + FDP"] C --> D["Ideological clash:<br/>Greens (environmental rules)<br/>vs. FDP (deregulation)"] D --> E["Negotiations Collapse (6 Months)"] end
subgraph Dilemma["The Impasse & Resolution"] E --> F{"Risk of New Elections?<br/>Polls show AfD rising"} F -->|"High Risk"| G["President urges against new vote"] G --> H["SPD relents after major concessions<br/>(6 ministries including Finance)"] H --> I["Grand Coalition re-established<br/>CDU/CSU + SPD"] end
A --> C B --> C ```
Shapiro details the grueling political paralysis that ensued after the 2017 vote. For years, Germany had been governed by a "grand coalition" between the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Having suffered devastating electoral erosion from governing in Merkel's shadow, the SPD initially vowed to go into opposition to rebuild. Because the AfD was universally treated as a political pariah with whom no party would govern, Merkel spent six months attempting to negotiate a "Jamaica coalition" combining the CDU/CSU with the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP)—a pro-business party Shapiro equates to Rand Paul libertarians. The talks fell apart over irreconcilable regulatory differences: the Greens insisted on strict environmental rules, while the FDP demanded broad deregulation.
With coalition talks deadlocked, Germany faced the prospect of fresh snap elections. However, public polling throughout those six months indicated that renewed voting would trigger an even larger surge for the AfD. Desperate to avert that outcome, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier pressured the SPD to reconsider. The Social Democrats ultimately capitulated, agreeing to rejoin Merkel in government after wringing out major concessions, including six cabinet seats and control of the powerful Finance Ministry. Even with the grand coalition reassembled, stability proved elusive; by the following year, Merkel announced that she would step down from the CDU leadership and retire as Chancellor at the end of her term in 2021.
Describing the existential dread that forced the SPD’s reversal, Shapiro underscores: “So terrified were they of the prospect of another election in which the far right would do even better.”
[15:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=904s) The Rise of the Far Right in Germany and Europe
A contemporary news broadcast reports on the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffering a disappointing performance in a key regional election in the German state of Hesse. The anti-migrant, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party claimed more than a dozen seats in Hesse’s parliament for the first time, giving the party representation across all 16 German state parliaments, in addition to the national Bundestag and the European Parliament. Professor Ian Shapiro points out that this followed a similar collapse in Bavaria, where the CDU hemorrhaged around 10 percent of its vote to the AfD. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered a parallel decline, losing its base of support to the Greens. Across Europe, traditional center-left and center-right establishment parties are shrinking and weakening, while parties on the political fringes grow increasingly dominant.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: European Political Realignment accDescr: Visual diagram showing the collapse of establishment parties toward political fringes across Europe.
subgraph Center["Collapsing Center"] CDU["Center-Right (e.g., CDU)"] SPD["Center-Left (e.g., SPD)"] end
subgraph Fringes["Expanding Fringes"] Right["Far-Right Populists\n(AfD, Vlaams Belang, League)"] Left["Alternative Left\n(e.g., Green Parties)"] end
CDU -->|"Hemorrhages votes"| Right SPD -->|"Hemorrhages votes"| Left ```
This sudden resurgence of fringe extremism inevitably recalls the political turbulence of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and 1930s. A historical newsreel clip notes that following the German elections of July 1932, the Nazi Party emerged as the largest faction in parliament with 37 percent of the vote. Shapiro emphasizes that the rapid succession of elections reflected a deeply unstable system that ultimately culminated in Adolf Hitler coming to power 18 months later. In contemporary Germany, citizens and observers anxiously ask whether this dynamic represents a terrifying replay of history: “If you go to Germany, you hear very anxious people talking about is this back to the future?”
- In Hesse, the AfD won more than a dozen seats, cementing its presence across all 16 state legislatures in Germany. - In Bavaria, the conservative establishment lost roughly 10 percent of its traditional vote share to the AfD. - The SPD experienced parallel losses, bleeding substantial voter blocks to the Greens.
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[17:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1048s) Global Shocks to the Establishment
The collapse of political orthodoxies extends far beyond Germany. In 2016, Western politics absorbed two monumental shocks: the unexpected Brexit referendum outcome in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s disruptive populist capture of the United States presidency. Both developments blindsided mainstream political figures, commentators, and establishment pollsters. Shapiro illustrates that identical patterns of fragmentation have rapidly taken hold across Western and Eastern Europe:
In Austria’s 2016 presidential election, establishment figures felt temporary relief when the Green candidate defeated the far-right contender in the runoff by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent. However, the subsequent 2017 legislative elections told a different story: the far-right Freedom Party surged into third place with 51 seats, while the traditional ruling parties were relegated to fourth and fifth place, and the Greens dropped below the electoral threshold entirely. In Belgium, despite the center-right retaining power, the far-right Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang gained significant ground, capturing nearly 12 percent of the vote. In Italy, power shifted away from the center-left as the right-wing populist League surged, securing 17 percent of the popular vote and over 100 parliamentary seats.
Similar structural erosion has appeared across places once celebrated as resilient models of social democracy, such as Sweden, as well as in Turkey and Latin America. In these diverse environments, insurgent parties that challenge established norms—often crossing the threshold into anti-system politics—continue to advance through democratic institutions. The contrast between the optimism of 1989 and the anxious polarization since 2016 could not be sharper. Despite this bleak picture, Shapiro cautions the audience: “And in some ways, it's a big downer, but my first thing I wanna say is don't get too depressed.”
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[20:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1239s) Three Central Questions and Methodological Approach
Shapiro outlines the core agenda of the course, which is structured around three overarching questions: 1. How did the world travel from the euphoria of 1989 to the fractured politics of the present? 2. What are the immediate challenges and structural prospects going forward? 3. How can societies redirect themselves toward a more functional, stable political settlement?
To address these questions, Shapiro articulates his methodological strategy: combining empirical political science with normative political theory, while relying on real-world historical realities to keep both disciplines grounded. As Shapiro formulates it: “I'm going to be studying history with the tools of political science and political theory on the one hand, but also using history to keep political science and political theory honest.”
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[21:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1307s) The 1989 Natural Experiment and Testing Conventional Wisdom
From the perspective of empirical political scientists, the geopolitical rupture of 1989 served as a massive, exogenous shock that functioned as an unprecedented natural experiment. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, scholars of European democracy had spent roughly four decades cycling variations of the same theories through an unchanging, closed data set. This cyclical loop often led to what statisticians refer to as "just-so stories"—constructing post-hoc theories tailored neatly to fit static historical curves rather than genuinely evaluating predictive power. The sudden birth of multiple new parliamentary regimes across Central and Eastern Europe created an entirely new, real-time data stream, allowing scholars to subject foundational assumptions to rigorous testing:
- **Modernization Theory:** The long-held thesis that economic development reliably produces democratic governance faces serious challenges. While market transformations occurred in parts of the former Soviet bloc, nations such as China and Vietnam transitioned into forms of state capitalism while explicitly preserving authoritarian rule. - **Economic Systems and Democracy:** Political science long asserted that competitive democracy is fundamentally incompatible with state-run economies, a premise that demands reexamination in light of contemporary hybrid regimes. - **Conditions for Democratic Stability:** The post-1989 landscape allows social scientists to isolate what truly sustains democratic institutions: does stability depend purely on the economy, or do the beliefs, values, and norms of everyday citizens and elite actors play decisive roles? - **Tripartite Relations (Business, Labor, and Government):** With state socialism removed as a viable macroeconomic alternative, the bargaining leverage between organized labor, corporate enterprise, and the state shifted fundamentally. - **Electoral Systems and Public Goods:** Long-standing assumptions regarding how specific voting structures shape economic inequality, universal public provisions, and environmental regulations can now be evaluated across emerging and established democracies alike.
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[27:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1622s) Grounding Political Theory: Avoiding Dublin Directions
Reflecting on his primary disciplinary background as a political theorist, Shapiro provides a critique of abstract normative philosophy. Political theorists often construct elaborate visions of how the world ought to look, while ignoring real-world political realities, logistical feasibility, and power dynamics. He illustrates this disconnect with an Irish anecdote: “The confession I need to make about my home discipline is that it reminds me of the story about the fella who goes up to a farmer in Donegal and says how do I get to Dublin, and the answer that comes back is well, I wouldn't start from here, sonny.”
Shapiro applies this criticism to contemporary policy proposals, pointing to economist Thomas Piketty’s argument in *Capital in the Twenty-First Century* for an international 4 percent wealth tax. While logically consistent on paper, the proposal ignores the institutional architecture necessary for enforcement: “Who's gonna implement a 4% global wealth tax?” Instead, Shapiro emphasizes examining practical institutional pathways that could realistically achieve desired political and social outcomes. This requires interrogating historical paths not taken, such as the post-Cold War expansion of NATO following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
[29:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1784s) Paths Not Taken: NATO Expansion, the War on Terror, and the Financial Crisis
Professor Shapiro turns to the historical turning points where alternative choices were available, beginning with the eastward expansion of NATO. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded to encompass most, and eventually all, of the former Soviet-bloc nations, alongside overtures to former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine. Shapiro points out that discussions of Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO were intimately tied to Russia's eventual aggression in Ukraine. At the Cold War's conclusion, alternative visions existed; French President François Mitterrand, for instance, argued that NATO should simply be dismantled because it was fundamentally a defensive alliance that had outlived its original raison d'être. Shapiro notes that the course will examine whether Mitterrand’s proposal was realistic and how the geopolitical landscape might look today had that path been pursued.
A parallel counterfactual inquiry applies to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the launch of the Global War on Terror. The class will assess whether politically viable alternatives existed to the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—routes that might have pointed global affairs in a radically different direction. Similarly, the course will investigate the policy responses to the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, probing whether political leaders overlooked or discarded options that were both politically feasible and far more effective at resolving systemic distress.
- **NATO Expansion & Backlash**: Overtures to incorporate former Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine into NATO served as a major factor precipitating Russian military aggression in Ukraine. - **The Mitterrand Counterfactual**: French President François Mitterrand maintained that NATO had lost its defensive purpose and ought to be shut down after the Cold War. - **Post-9/11 Interventions**: The course examines whether alternatives to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq could have commanded viable political support. - **Crisis Management in 2008–2009**: The lecture series will re-evaluate the overlooked policy alternatives that could have mitigated long-term social and economic fallout.
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[31:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1885s) Marrying Policy Wonkery with Political Feasibility
These historical crossroads illustrate the third defining feature of Shapiro's pedagogical framework: bridging the divide between idealistic public policy design and hardheaded political analysis. Public policy discourse typically suffers from a persistent bifurcation. On one side stand the "policy wonks," who dwell exclusively on abstractly optimal designs without considering real-world implementation. On the other side sit political scientists, who specialize in explaining why particular systems adopt certain policies while rejecting others, yet rarely focus on prescriptive strategy.
Shapiro stresses that academic literature regularly overlooks the practical mechanics of how to build coalitions for constructive measures or how to effectively derail destructive ones. When evaluating proposed institutional and economic innovations in the latter stages of the term, the class will concentrate squarely on wedding technical policy soundness to political viability. As Shapiro summarizes his pedagogical stance: “There's very little discussion of what is the effective political way of achieving a good policy or the effective political way of blocking a bad policy and so when I talk about innovations in the last part of the course, it's very much going to be in a way that marries considerations of politics to considerations of good public policy.”
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[32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1958s) Course Structure: Collapse of Communism, Neoliberalism, and the New Global Order
Shapiro lays out the five-part architecture of the course. The first part examines the collapse of communism and its immediate aftermath, reviewing events in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and Vietnam. This transition transformed a bipolar Cold War world—which, despite severe proxy wars across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, maintained great-power stability through nuclear standoff—into a unipolar order dominated by the United States. The course will explore how unipolar hegemony fundamentally restructured the boundaries of international politics.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Five Sections of the Course accDescr: A structural flow diagram detailing the five main sections of the lecture course.
subgraph Phase1["Part 1: Post-Cold War Shift"] A["1. Collapse of Communism<br/>(Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam)"] B["Rise of Unipolar Order<br/>(US Hegemony replaces Bipolar Standby)"] A --> B end
subgraph Phase2["Part 2: Economic & Global Order"] C["2. Neoliberalism & Washington Consensus<br/>(Deregulation, Privatization, Free Trade)"] D["The New Global Order<br/>(Democratization waves, ICC, R2P Doctrine)"] C --> D end
subgraph Phase3["Parts 3 to 5: Backlash & Solutions"] E["3. End of the 'End of History'<br/>(War on Terror, State Capitalism, Resurgent Russia/China)"] F["4. New Politics of Insecurity<br/>(Post-2008 bailouts, working-class vulnerability)"] G["5. What Is to Be Done?<br/>(Misdiagnosed electorates, systemic political reform)"] E --> F F --> G end
B --> C D --> E ```
The second section investigates the domestic and international economic orthodoxy that arose from the vacuum left by communism's fall. Domestically, this manifested as neoliberalism, built upon three pillars: comprehensive trade deregulation, the dismantling of internal regulatory constraints, and the large-scale privatization of state assets. Exported abroad through the conditional lending programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, this framework was christened the "Washington Consensus." This economic paradigm was accompanied by the optimistic belief that liberal democracy was marching forward in successive waves: following the first wave of franchise expansion in early democracies and the second wave of post-WWII decolonization, a third wave had swept 1989–1991, with hopes that a fourth wave was underway through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, peace accords in Northern Ireland, and the Arab Spring. Simultaneously, international institutions claimed supranational authority, from the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecuting authoritarian human rights abusers to the United Nations adopting the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) doctrine after atrocities in Rwanda and Kosovo—formally asserting the right to violate state sovereignty to halt humanitarian catastrophes.
As Shapiro explains regarding the ideological hegemony of that moment: “And so the post-communist era is marked by this massive confidence in the capacity of unregulated or mildly regulated free-market capitalism to deliver the best results for every country in the world.”
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[38:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2319s) The End of the "End of History" and the Politics of Insecurity
The third section, titled "The End of the End of History," charts the collapse of this post-Cold War optimism, initiated by September 11 and the ensuing Global War on Terror. Interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, alongside the descent of Syria into catastrophic civil war, shattered the notion that human history was progressing along a benign, inevitable trajectory toward liberal democracy. This period saw the vigorous resurgence of state capitalism, China's expanding footprint across Africa, Russia's assertive re-emergence in the Middle East and beyond following its post-Soviet retreat, and the increasingly influential, often destabilizing role of corporate enterprise in global conflicts.
The fourth section examines "The New Politics of Insecurity." Shapiro argues that this climate was triggered less by the 2008 financial shock itself than by the political establishment's handling of it. Decades of unaddressed economic precarity within the working classes of advanced industrial democracies were laid bare when governments rushed to salvage financial elites while offering virtually no relief to vulnerable citizens. As Shapiro summarizes the fallout: “The financial crisis threw into sharp relief the fact that most governments were not doing much about it if anything at all and in fact that they ended up bailing out the elites, while doing nothing much for the people who have been most harmed in the crisis.”
- **Geopolitical Reversals**: Prolonged quagmires in Iraq, Libya, and Syria disproved the thesis that liberal democracy had permanently triumphed. - **Rival Models**: The resurgence of state capitalism challenged Western free-market orthodoxy, propelled by Chinese investment across Africa and aggressive Russian foreign policy. - **Corporate Power**: Large multinational corporations assumed prominent, complicated, and often harmful roles in international disputes. - **Elite Bailouts**: Post-2008 recovery packages protected the financial establishment while leaving working-class precarity unmitigated across major democracies.
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[41:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2481s) "What Is to Be Done?" and Course Logistics
The final segment of the syllabus borrows Vladimir Lenin's classic formulation: "What is to be done?" Here, the course investigates how political establishments and party leaders fundamentally misdiagnosed public sentiment. Instead of addressing the structural insecurity impoverishing millions of workers, elites championed electoral and institutional reforms that actively worsened political polarization and instability. The course concludes by synthesizing how these failed economic and political strategies collided, offering concrete arguments on how democratic institutions can be realigned going forward across the remaining 25 lectures.
Concluding the opening session, Shapiro turns to classroom logistics. He alerts the audience that the university's Office of Public Affairs is filming and recording all class sessions, complete with circulating floor microphones for student participation. He dryly jokes about the public recording: “You should know that this is all being tape recorded and so anything you say can be taken down and used in evidence against you.” Shapiro then introduces Christina Seyfried, the course's head teaching fellow, who will supervise grading for enrolled students and assist with running community office hours. Finally, he outlines his own office hour availability, scheduled from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays in Rosenkranz Hall, Room 201.
[44:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2680s) Office Hours Logistics and Filmed Recaps
Professor Ian Shapiro outlines the office hours arrangements for both Yale students and community members attending the DeVane Lecture series. Walk-in office hours (no appointment necessary) are scheduled for Fridays from 10:00 to 12:00 in Room 201 of Rosenkranz Hall, located right across the street from the new colleges. Shapiro notes that Yale students have priority during the first hour, while community members have priority during the second, humorously remarking, “Who knows if anyone will show up, but that’s the way it’ll work.” In addition, teaching fellow Christina will hold dedicated office hours for community members on Thursdays from 5:00 to 7:00 at a location to be announced.
Rather than letting office hour discussions disappear into thin air, Shapiro and Christina plan to film five recap sessions throughout the semester to synthesize the major themes, questions, and discussions emerging from both their own office hours and those held by the other teaching fellows. These filmed discussions will be posted directly to the course website. Shapiro mentions adopting this method from his Coursera online course, where it proved highly valuable for clarifying recurring student questions and synthesizing debate.
[46:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2772s) Reading Access, Copyright Limits, and Exam Scheduling
Shapiro turns to course logistics, addressing syllabus readings, copyright constraints, and final exams. Anyone with a Yale ID can access nearly all readings digitally through Canvas. Due to strict copyright limitations, three books excerpted too extensively could not be uploaded to Canvas; these are available on physical reserve in the library. For community auditors who do not have access to Canvas, the teaching staff placed two complete sets of course books in the New Haven Public Library.
The official final exam is scheduled for the last afternoon of the Yale exam period, a date that inevitably conflicts with travel plans for students who have already booked flights. To resolve this, the course provides two alternate exam slots: one on Wednesday, December 11th—primarily arranged to accommodate Yale School of Management (SOM) students due to their elective exam schedule, tentatively held at SOM—and another alternate exam on Friday, December 13th.
- Reading access: Canvas for Yale students; physical reserve in Yale libraries for copyright-restricted books. - Community access: Two complete book sets placed at the New Haven Public Library. - Alternate exam dates: December 11 (at SOM, open to all) and December 13.
[47:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2871s) Classroom Technology Policy and Lecture Slides
Shapiro establishes a strict ban on in-class electronics, prohibiting laptops, tablets, screens, and smartphones. Reflecting on his transition to this rule a few years earlier, he notes that it has made a noticeable positive difference in the classroom environment. As he explains:
> “It’s just too tempting to be doing that Amazon shopping for your grandmother’s birthday present that you forgot about, and it’s very distracting not only for the people around you but it’s also distracting for me to teach.”
To ensure students do not need to take frantic, detailed notes off the screen, all lecture slides will be published on Canvas and the public course webpage following each lecture. Shapiro clarifies a technical quirk regarding video playback: slides viewed in the standard Canvas browser preview appear flattened into a static PDF where embedded videos will not play. To view embedded multimedia clips, students must download the slide deck directly to their machines, allowing the video components to play properly.
[49:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=2964s) Q&A: Copyright Rules, European Union Coverage, and Cold War History
During the question-and-answer period, a community member asks about accessing online materials. Shapiro elaborates on the legal rationale behind public access limits, emphasizing that university policies are dictated by intellectual property statutes rather than institutional stinginess:
> “So we can take more than 10% from a book and put it up on Canvas if it’s only available to Yale students, but if we made them available to the general public, Yale would be violating copyright laws.”
Under educational fair use, universities may reproduce substantial portions of books for enrolled students behind password protection, but public dissemination of that volume requires commercial licensing fees.
Another audience member asks whether the course will cover the European Union. Shapiro confirms that the EU's post–Cold War expansion will be explored starting in the very next lecture. However, he clarifies the historical boundaries of the syllabus. Because Yale recently recruited prominent Cold War historians David Engerman and Arne Westad to teach European history from World War II through 1989, Shapiro has deliberately focused this DeVane course on the post-1989 era. He will briefly survey the initial formation of the European Union solely to explain the structural roots of its contemporary crises, leaving mid-twentieth-century Cold War geopolitics to his colleagues.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Course Historical Division of Labor accDescr: Diagram illustrating how historical coverage is split between the Cold War courses and Professor Shapiro's post-1989 course.
subgraph ColdWar["Cold War & Post-WWII Europe"] A["1945 to 1989 Geopolitics"] --> B["David Engerman & Arne Westad Courses"] end
subgraph DeVaneCourse["Power and Politics in Today's World"] C["1989: Fall of Communism"] --> D["EU Expansion & Current Crises"] C --> E["Post-Soviet Transition & Oligarchy"] C --> F["Contemporary Democratic Turmoil"] end ```
[52:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=3160s) Q&A: Course Structure, Expectations, and Next Class
Students ask several logistical questions regarding course requirements, section meetings, enrollment limits, and teaching fellows:
- **Discussion sections:** There are no breakout discussion sections; to compensate for this format, the course meets for extended 75-minute lectures rather than standard 50-minute blocks. - **Paper prompts and research expectations:** Essay topics will be distributed two weeks before deadlines, offering four or five prompt choices. Shapiro emphasizes: “This is not a research course, so you can write a first-rate paper based on reading the material on this syllabus. You are not expected to go beyond the syllabus.” - **Graduate student requirements:** Graduate students take the course under the exact same expectations as undergraduates: two written papers and a final exam. - **Enrollment cap:** The lecture is completely uncapped. Shapiro anticipates that class size will stabilize after Yale's shopping period, allowing everyone to stay in the current auditorium. - **Lecture interactivity:** Shapiro promises that the course will not simply be him speaking uninterrupted for 75 minutes. Starting the following session, handheld microphones will circulate through the auditorium to support interactive debates and cold calls. - **Teaching Fellows:** Six teaching fellows, alongside head TF Christina, will host weekly office hours to discuss reading concepts, lecture arguments, and essay drafts. Their insights will feed into the five filmed recap videos.
To conclude the inaugural meeting, Shapiro announces the subject of the upcoming Tuesday lecture: examining the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, tracing the transition from Soviet Communism to Russian gangster capitalism.
## Notable quotes > [20:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1239s) I'm going to be studying history with the tools of political science and political theory on the one hand, but also using history to keep political science and political theory honest. — Ian Shapiro
> [32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&t=1958s) The post-communist era is marked by this massive confidence in the capacity of unregulated or mildly regulated free-market capitalism to deliver the best results for every country in the world. — Ian Shapiro
## Mentioned Ian Shapiro, Dan Rather, Willy Brandt, Francis Fukuyama, Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin, Angela Merkel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rand Paul, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump, Thomas Piketty, François Mitterrand, Vladimir Lenin, Christina Seyfried, David Engerman, Arne Westad, Alternative für Deutschland, Christian Democratic Union, Social Democratic Party of Germany, Free Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens, Freedom Party of Austria, Vlaams Belang, Lega, Palestine Liberation Organization, International Criminal Court, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, United Nations, Yale University, Yale School of Management, New Haven Public Library, CBS Evening News, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Good Friday Accords, Oslo Accords, Marshall Plan
## Video description Professor Ian Shapiro introduces the class “Power and Politics in Today’s World.” This course provides an examination of political dynamics and institutions over this past tumultuous quarter century, and the implications of these changes for what comes next. Among the topics covered are the decline of trade unions and enlarged role of business as political forces, changing attitudes towards parties and other political institutions amidst the growth of inequality and middle-class insecurity, the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism, and the character and durability of the unipolar international order that replaced the Cold War.
How did we get from the huge euphoria that followed the fall of communism in the early 1990s to our present politics of fear and resentment, and what are the prospects going forward? This DeVane Lecture series course entitled “Power and Politics in Today’s World” with Professor Ian Shapiro answered some of those questions. This course in the fall of 2019 was open to Yale students and the general public.
Ian Shapiro is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale University. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice, and the methods of social inquiry. The DeVane Lecture series was established in 1969 to honor William Clyde DeVane, dean of Yale College from 1939 to 1963.
To view all the lectures in this course, please visit this playlist link. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyViG2ar68jkgEi4y6doNZy
To view and download the syllabus and lecture material, please visit the link below. You can also find more information about Professor Shapiro’s book ‘After the Fall’ which is based on the course. https://yaleedu.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/PoorvuCenter-TeachingStudios/IgBbRGjjODrKRpzBhEaEYt-bAZOdYiaQH0tIi5mSDQ05LPs?e=b27fBS
To view the Office Hours of this course, visit https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewXXh3Yej7icrFY35qDmGT5
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg)