The Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World

On 6 December 2004, Fernando Henrique Cardoso delivered the first annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The inaugural lecture, which was also supported by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers, was followed by a reception and dinner hosted by Canadian Ambassador Michael F. Kergin. This new lecture series is cosponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, and in future years it will be delivered in both the United States and Canada.

The series honors Seymour Martin Lipset, one of the most influential social scientists and scholars of democracy of the past half-century. A frequent contributor to the Journal of Democracy and a founding member of its Editorial Board, Lipset has taught at Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, and George Mason University. He is the author of numerous important books, including Political Man, The First New Nation, The Politics of Unreason, and American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. He is the only person ever to have served as president of both the American Political Science Association (1979–80) and the American Sociological Association (1992–93).

Lipset's work has covered a wide range of topics: the social conditions of democracy, including economic development and political culture; the origins of socialism, fascism, revolution, protest, prejudice, and extremism; class conflict, structure, and mobility; social cleavages, party systems, and voter alignments; and public opinion and public confidence in institutions. Lipset has been a pioneer in the study of comparative politics, and no comparison has featured as prominently in his work as that between the two great democracies of North America. Thanks to his insightful analysis of Canada in comparison with the United States, most fully elaborated in Continental Divide, he has been dubbed the "Tocqueville of Canada." It is hoped that the joint U.S.-Canadian sponsorship of the Lipset Lecture will serve as a catalyst for further cooperation between Canada and the United States in the promotion of democratic ideas and institutions around the world.

At the lecture, Lipset was presented with the NED's Democracy Service Medal. As he was unable to attend the ceremony because of failing health, the award was accepted on his behalf by his wife Sydnee.