Authoritarian leaders are encouraging hostility toward journalists and promoting post-truth politics, disinformation and fake news according to the 2018 World Press Freedom Index. Hatred of journalism threatens democracies, said Reporters… Read more »
Most Western observers have long believed that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand, that economic liberalization both requires and propels political liberalization, notes Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of… Read more »
Poland represents the gravest illiberal challenge to European democracy, says the Economist: Since taking office in 2015 the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party has stacked the courts, skewed… Read more »
Under pressure from a surging popular protest movement, Armenia’s Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan (left) resigned on Monday, less than one week after taking office, notes the Commission on Security and… Read more »
Facebook, Google and the ‘big data’ revolution is undermining western democracy while strengthening the hand of authoritarian states to address the challenges thrown up the globalization, the Telegraph reports:… Read more »
India and China are jostling for influence in Iran and Central Asia, Nikkei reports, as New Delhi’s 7,000km transport corridor cuts across Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Prime Minister Narendra… Read more »
There is little prospect of a Russo-American ‘grand bargain’ or rapprochement, even if Vladimir Putin visits Washington, in part because the US will not abandon democracy promotion, a RUSI analysis suggests: Russia unsuccessfully pushed for… Read more »
In Armenia, a constitutional power grab backfired, says Chatham House analyst Laurence Broers. Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan stepped down Monday amid large-scale protests against corruption and his rule, a move… Read more »
A few years ago the US academic Larry Diamond declared that a “democratic recession” had set in after about 2006. The long global expansion of democracy that began with the… Read more »
When a Russian official at February’s Munich Security Conference proposed a joint initiative between Russia and the United States on cybersecurity, then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster replied, “I’m surprised there… Read more »