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 »
Category: Authoritarianism
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 »
How China’s corrosive capital impacts CEE governance
China’s economic and political investments in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe have a disturbing ability to influence governance institutions, Prague-based sinologist Martin Hala, the founder… Read more »
Three key lessons of Hong Kong protests: Xi’s brittle power
As the Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post in 1989, Dan Southerland covered the Tiananmen massacre and stayed on in China for more than a year afterward to report on… Read more »
‘Winning Without Fighting’? A strategy to counter autocrats’ political warfare
In the Russian view of information warfare, there is no front line and rear areas, and no non-combatants, Chatham House reports. According to Russia’s Chief of General Staff General Valeriy… Read more »
Georgia’s civil society must seize the opportunity of electoral reform
A new front has been opened in Georgia’s ‘Battle of the political airwaves’ with the announcement that a new channel, Formula, will be broadcast from October. One of the financiers… Read more »