From democratic unraveling to resilience
States fail the same way businesses do – gradually and then suddenly, argues Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
Democracy in demand – but not in supply?
Democracy’s crisis is not about people losing faith in democracy – it’s about people demanding more. That is the conclusion of the Democracy Perception Index (DPI), which claims to be… Read more »
Why COVID-19 is a ‘litmus test’ for democracy
Far more people around the world think China has responded well to the COVID-19 pandemic than those who think the United States has done a good job, a poll by… Read more »
Philippines’ ‘lie machine’ at work: Maria Ressa found guilty of cyber libel
High-profile journalist Maria Ressa has been found guilty of libel in the Philippines’ in a case seen as a test of the country’s media freedom, the BBC reports. The former… Read more »
Putin enriches political science, impoverishes democracy
Vladimir Putin’s regime has instituted a “pretend party system” in which real political groups, with popular leaders and a genuine support base, are denied a license, replaced by impostors who… Read more »
China’s malign designs on democracy
Charlemagne – Europe’s “Sinatra doctrine” on China https://t.co/QQDHFrbrUW — Democracy Digest (@demdigest) June 11, 2020 The European Union is treating China as a geopolitical chimera, The Economist observes: In 2019… Read more »
Erdogan ‘tightening the vice’ on what’s left of Turkey’s pluralism
A dominant narrative that has come out of Turkey in recent years highlights how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consolidated control over the news media, according to analysts Andrew O’Donohue, Max… Read more »
Fighting China’s Surveillance State wins award for Coda
A National Endowment for Democracy (NED) grantee today received the Distinguished Reporting Award of the 2020 European Press Prize for Fighting China’s Surveillance State by Isobel Cockerell (UK), published by Coda… Read more »
No time for democratic West to sit on its hands
European leaders are worried about a catastrophe for the democratic community of nations we commonly call the West, The FT’s Philip Stephen writes: That democracy is in retreat around the… Read more »
From democratic backsliding to ‘pandemic forthsliding’?
It is already clear why some countries have done better than others in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic so far, and there is every reason to think those trends will… Read more »