Category: Authoritarianism

Data’s threat to democracy: civil society’s soft power ‘can counter disinformation’

     

Is our personal data safe? And might it be used by individuals, companies or governments to influence the democratic process? BBC media editor Amol Rajan asks: These are the two… Read more »

Who will pick up the democracy promotion mantle?

     

It is not surprising that liberty has enemies. The tragedy now is that the defense of liberty is absent where it should be vibrant, argues Stein Ringen, a visiting professor… Read more »

Springtime for autocrats: the new caudillos

     

  Liberal democracy is threatened by populism of both left and right, according to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “For the first time in my life I am anxious… Read more »

Will post-election Putin intensify conflict with the West?

     

If you want to know what might keep Vladimir Putin from a good night’s sleep after his expected landslide reelection as president of Russia on Sunday, there’s no better place… Read more »

A Brezhnev moment: ‘coronation’ takes Putin a step closer to leader-for-life

     

  With his reelection, Vladimir Putin took one step closer to becoming Russia’s leader for life.  On paper, Putin’s victory gave him a new six-year term as president. But some… Read more »

Liberal international order ‘mounting a comeback’ to neo-revisionist challenge

     

  The defenders of what’s called the “liberal international order” have recently suffered setbacks from adversaries inside and outside their home countries. But those who want to see the Western-led… Read more »

What do we know about the Russian cyber ops playbook?

     

  For Russia, cyber-operations are a subset of overall information warfare and a way to integrate hacking seamlessly into influence campaigns, according to Ryan C. Maness, an assistant professor in the Defense… Read more »

The right way to defend democracy

     

The title of William A. Galston’s “Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy” makes an excellent case that the populist surge of 2016 was rooted in the economic stagnation of… Read more »

Defending democracy: best responses to weaponized information

     

  Russia is likely to adopt innovative active measures as it seeks to interfere in future elections. Instead of fighting the last war, we should expect a new Kremlin meddling… Read more »

Largest-ever study of fake news concludes that…..

     

Lies spread faster than the truth, is the grim conclusions of the largest-ever study of fake news. Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and… Read more »