Taeku Lee, Oliver Bullough, Sarah Stein Lubrano and Pepper Culpepper chaired by Stephen Law

Experts in democracy Professor Taeku Lu and Pepper Culpepper, investigative journalist Oliver Bullough and social theorist Sarah Stein Lubrano discuss the growing mistrust of politicians and the rise in influence of oligarchs and corporate business.

Are capitalist democracies eating themselves? A tiny elite, with much of their wealth offshore and untouchable, appear to control everything, including our media and our governments. Scandals involving corporate giants dominate our news cycles. Business titans and politicians appear to collude against a public that is increasingly vulnerable to their exploitation. Amid this crisis, public hostility towards and distrust of politicians is growing. How can we prevent massive corporations from running amok? How might democracy resist? And how might we discuss such political issues without devolving into anger, derision, conspiracy, and more?

Culpepper holds the Blavatnik Chair in Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government. His research focuses on the intersection between capitalism and democracy, both in politics and in public policy.

Lee is Bae Family Professor and faculty dean of Dunster House at Harvard University. He has written extensively on identity and inequality, diversity, and democracy. He is co-author, with Culpepper, of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy.

Bollough is an investigative journalist whose books include Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take it Back, and Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won.

Lubrano is a social theorist and writer with a PhD from Oxford in political theory and a following on social media. She has written for The Guardian, Aeon, Zeteo, and more. Her first book is Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds.

Discussions are chaired by Dr Stephen Law, philosopher and academic, and author of bestselling introductions to philosophy for adults and children, including The Philosophy Gym. Law is also the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal Think, and the festival’s major projects director.