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EPISODE 15: Is Democracy Still Worth Defending? with Francesc Badia Dalmases
If only 7 percent of the world lives in a full democracy, is the model already failing? Is this model still worth defending if it cannot deliver justice, equality, and survival?
In this episode of Fading Causes, Mukesh Kapila sits down with veteran journalist Francesc Badia Dalmases to examine what happens when global crises slip from the headlines, not because they are resolved, but because the world has grown tired of looking at them.
Francesc has spent decades reporting from places where history rarely announces itself with a clear ending. Wars cool rather than conclude; humanitarian emergencies become permanent backdrops. Together, they trace how conflicts are reframed, downgraded, or quietly abandoned by international media and policymakers alike. When suffering becomes routine, does it cease to be news? And who decides when a crisis has outlived its moment?
What remains unresolved is whether AI will hollow out democratic agency or, paradoxically, force its reinvention. The Gen Z uprisings from Nairobi to Dhaka, from Belgrade to Seoul, may signal not the death of democracy, but a refusal to inherit one that feels rigged, remote and unresponsive. If technology is rewriting how power is contested, will democracy adapt, or will it be outpaced by the very generation meant to save it?