628. The Civic Bargain: Democracy, Knowledge, and the Challenge of Scale with Josiah Ober

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc · Mar 10, 2026 · 55m

A key precondition for democracy is civic trust and commitment to common goods; polarization and party identity undermine this, worsened by modern communication technologies that enable separate realities. Josiah Ober is a professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University and also the author and co-author of several books about Athens, Civics, and Ancient Democracy. His latest title is The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives. Greg asks Josiah about his work linking ancient Athens to modern democracy and organizational design. Josiah argues that political science necessarily…