Fifty years on from the crushing of the Prague Spring and almost 30 years after the 1989 revolutionary upheaval, Eastern Europe is experiencing a vicious return to authoritarianism, according to… Read more »
Populists and authoritarians now manage the largest bloc of the G-20 economies, according to a new analysis. When you add up the nominal output of the G-20 states plus… Read more »
Economic conditions for most Russians are about to get much worse, say analysts [HT: Paul Goble]. That makes grim reading for the Kremlin alongside news that Vladimir Putin’s personal support hit… Read more »
At a bucolic border post, Western-trained Hungarian counterintelligence agents recently got word that a known operative of Russia’s foreign spy service was driving into Hungary, and asked headquarters for permission… Read more »
Does conservative support for such illiberal rulers as Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán indicate growing “demoskepticism” on the right? Some conservatives now dismiss policies that are infused with… Read more »
Poland’s populist Law and Justice Party appears intent on imposing quasi-authoritarian control over its unruly democracy, analyst Max Boot writes for Commentary. A new draft Law on Higher Education… Read more »
If Egypt’s liberal activists had tolerated Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi’s illiberal but weak rule until he could be voted out, democracy might have had a chance, David D. Kirkpatrick suggests… Read more »
Which political model are countries in the ASEAN region more likely to follow – Cambodia or Malaysia? analyst Simon Roughneen asks in the Nikkei Asian Review. With an increasingly powerful… Read more »
For the first time in 25 years, the International Republican Institute will have a new leader. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling brain cancer, has decided to step down… Read more »
There is a major difference between former Soviet leaders and senior Russian officials today, including Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov, whose families are abroad, former… Read more »