Category: Analysis

Who crushed Palestinian hopes for democracy?

     

Yesterday marked the fourteenth anniversary of Mahmoud Abbas’s election to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for a four-year term. Not only have no subsequent elections for the presidency… Read more »

Getting the China challenge right: future of free societies at stake

     

What is at stake in the emerging contest between Washington and Beijing is nothing less than the future prosperity and security of free societies—in Asia and around the world, according… Read more »

Is a populist specter really threatening democracy?

     

2019 stands a good chance of being the year that the populist project crumbles into incoherence, as it becomes increasingly clear that bad ideas have bad consequences, argues FT analyst… Read more »

Russia’s ‘geopolitical capability’ in decline

     

Russia’s global ranking in the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index fell by nine places to 144th from 135th in 2017, putting it in the same position as… Read more »

American exceptionalism reclaimed?

     

Franklin D. Roosevelt once spoke of the United States as an “arsenal of democracy”; today, an arsenal of autocracy is forming as authoritarian states seek to put pressure on America’s… Read more »

The retreat of global democracy stopped – or just paused?

     

Only 4.5% of the world’s people live in a “full democracy,” but the global democratic regression at least paused in 2018, according to the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence… Read more »

Malaysia’s democratic opportunity can still be squandered

     

In a world struggling with resurgent authoritarianism, Malaysia is a bright spot, notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Joshua Kurlantzick. Yet Malaysia’s government is now in danger of frittering away the… Read more »

‘New Cold War’ with assertively autocratic China? Display West’s democratic unity

     

The international system is currently experiencing a period of transition as economic, institutional and military power is being amassed by China, which is depleting the relative influence and stature of… Read more »