Category: Authoritarianism

Have liberal democratic model’s geopolitical limits been reached?

     

The annus mirabilis of 1989 will not be repeated, says a former State Department adviser. Democracy and the other political principles that are at the foundation of the United States are… Read more »

Money, muscle, media: China’s soft power failure makes CCP leaders ‘look like bullies’

     

  China has deployed a three-pronged strategy to suffocate pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong — propaganda, economic leverage and intimidation, or media, money, and muscle. For instance, videos – including… Read more »

China vs. Democracy

     

The U.S.-China trade dispute is now about much more than economics—it’s testing whether a democratically elected government can prevail in the face of the authoritarian government of the world’s most… Read more »

At hinge in history, democracies need renewal to survive

     

Every generation is tempted to think that its challenges are unique. History teaches otherwise.  Democracies can die — of that there should be no doubt. But they can also be… Read more »

150 years of data proves autocrats are bad for the economy

     

Deference to autocratic rulers is not only a bad idea for democracy: It’s terrible for the economy, too, according to a new analysis. The authors of the study published in… Read more »

Weaponization of information ‘mutating at alarming speed’

     

Communication has been weaponized, used to provoke, mislead and influence the public in numerous insidious ways, argues Sophia Ignatidou, an academy fellow at Chatham House, researching AI, digital communication and… Read more »

Another Tiananmen? Alarming echoes of 1989 in Hong Kong protests

     

An estimated 1.7 million people took part in a peaceful pro-democracy protest (NYT/CFR) in the city center yesterday, the second-largest demonstration since the protest movement began more than two months… Read more »

How to dismantle a democracy

     

    There are four key signs that democracy is under attack, The Economist observes. The protests in Hong Kong and Russia highlight a paradox: In two of the most… Read more »

Hong Kong: Why China’s propagandists peddle ‘black-hands’ myth

     

Since he took power seven years ago, President Xi Jinping has faced a growing din of foreign condemnation over his government’s human rights record, a trade war that has sapped… Read more »

Hungary – not an illiberal democracy but a pseudo-democracy

     

In his essay “Democracy Demotion” (July/August 2019), Larry Diamond claims that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “has presided over the first death of a democracy in an EU member state,”… Read more »