Category: Analysis

Democracy beleaguered: freedom for one requires freedom for all

     

  Democracies generally remain the world’s wealthiest societies. They are the most open to new ideas and opportunities, the least corrupt, and the best at protecting individual liberties, according to… Read more »

Countering Russia’s Super Mafia – a kleptocracy in the making

     

Mark Galeotti’s timely account of the Russian underworld – The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia –  charts its rise from Soviet-era gangsters to Kremlin collaborators under Vladimir Putin, notes analyst Oliver… Read more »

Why liberalism (hasn’t) failed – but hyper-liberalism is a problem

     

In his Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, targets some genuine weaknesses of liberalism, sometimes with considerable eloquence, but never succeeds in presenting… Read more »

The Kremlin’s global challenge: paradoxes of Russian-Western relations

     

Russia appears today as an assertive power ready to weaken international norms and kick over the global chessboard, notes the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies. Even… Read more »

Hungary’s election result ‘disproves resilience of democratic institutions’?

     

  Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party signalled on Monday it could push on with legislation to crack down on organisations promoting migrant rights as soon as parliament reconvenes after Prime Minister… Read more »

China’s sharp power approach ‘more about bylines than bombs’

     

Russia isn’t the only authoritarian regime to deploy disinformation as a tool to undermine liberal democracies. “Within the last few weeks, China has leaped into the front ranks of global… Read more »

Anatomy of hybrid warfare: how disinformation corrodes democracies

     

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed contrition for allowing third-party apps to grab the data of its users without their permission and for being “too slow to spot and respond… Read more »

Is EU ‘enabling’ Hungary’s authoritarian kleptocracy?

     

Hungary is no longer a democracy, says Nóra Köves, an activist with the pro-democracy Eötvös Károly Institute. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Not, I think, any more. We are heading to… Read more »

Troll state: Russia’s disinformation campaign ‘follows familiar script’

     

OUTGOING NATIONAL security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday became the latest senior Trump administration official to publicly warn that Western governments, including his own, are not doing enough to deter Russia’s “sustained… Read more »