Are elements of global public opinion accepting or even supportive of the current authoritarian resurgence? A new academic study finds that while democracy is widely preferred as a system of… Read more »
Pandemic geopolitics are intensifying investments in pro-democracy civic capacities and democracies’ societal resilience, according to a new report from the Carnegie Endowment. Developments are beginning to condition many states’ domestic… Read more »
Fears of COVID-19’s damaging impact on democracy were overstated, argues one observer. But whether you call it democratic erosion, democratic breakdown, or de-democratization, the pre-existing condition remains a threat, others… Read more »
Democracies are backsliding amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to recent reports. The idea of democratic backsliding illuminates a process that’s at work in democracies today: the erosion of formal institutions,… Read more »
Recent trends – not last democratic backsliding and autocratic resurgence – are enough to make one think that David Stasavage’s new book should have been about the rise and subsequent… Read more »
A new white paper titled “Global Populisms and Their Challenges,” by Anna Grzymala-Busse, Didi Kuo, Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul explores how mainstream political parties are the key enablers of populist challenges—and the key… Read more »
Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »
Around the world, democracies are getting weaker and elected politicians are becoming more unpopular. Are they serving the people—or themselves? The Economist asks (see below). The Crisis of Democracy and… Read more »
In Ecuador in 2000, Venezuela in 2002, Honduras in 2009, and now in Bolivia, opposition groups applauded when the army stepped in to remove elected governments they viewed as inept, corrupt or… Read more »
Is democracy broken? Vox’s Sean illing asks. Harvard politics professor Daniel Ziblatt, co-author (along with Steven Levitsky) of 2018’s How Democracies Die, explains why democracies collapse, what norms are most essential… Read more »