Author Archives: DemDigest

How to re-energize democracy: Demands for change may be spreading

     

Protesters around the world demanded change this year. While most protests were sparked by local issues, such as rising fuel prices or dissatisfaction with a leader, there were commonalities. Demonstrators… Read more »

Russia’s Murder, Inc.’s long, dark history

     

  President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia is not planning to create a military alliance with China, despite Moscow helping Beijing build a missile attack warning system, Reuters reports… Read more »

Why democracy depends on the ‘deep state’

     

Like all modern democracies, the U.S. needs a deep state, because it is crucial to fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law, argues Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at… Read more »

The Art of Deceit: How China and Russia’s sharp power subverts the West

     

For much of the last decade, China and Russia have been waging political warfare against the West – and we simply didn’t notice, says the co-editor of a new analysis…. Read more »

China must close Xinjiang ‘re-education camps’: Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti wins Sakharov Prize

     

A five-year-old Uyghur boy who was left in the care of grandparents because his parents are incarcerated for religious and political reasons was found frozen to death in a ditch… Read more »

Nation-State or State-Nation? India’s democratic character ‘in a precarious state’

     

The cumulative effect of recent moves by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party has been to throw India’s democratic character and future into a precarious state not… Read more »

Which nation improved the most in 2019?

     

Two countries became notably less despotic in 2019. In Sudan mass protests led to the ejection of Omar al-Bashir, one of the world’s vilest tyrants. However, the risk that thugs from… Read more »

China’s Civilizational Challenge – a great leap forward to ….. ?

     

Beijing’s response to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests demonstrates that far from enabling China’s peaceful reunification, the “one country, two systems” model is undermining it, argues Chin-Huat Wong, a professor of… Read more »

Market democracies’ ‘Faustian bargain’ being questioned

     

The United States ranks 15 in the Human Freedom Index 2019 released today by the Cato Institute, Canada’s Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom…. Read more »

‘The End of Techo-Utopianism’: Can technology destroy democracy?

     

….or will algorithms someday be used to optimize the ballot box, The Economist asks in a must-read long essay: @TheEconomist When it comes to eroding an existing democracy, rather than… Read more »