Time to stop South Africa’s descent into despotism
In recent months, Brazil and South Korea have shown how far countries can go in the fight against corruption. No one, not even the president, has been above the… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
‘Like-minded’ dictatorships show solidarity at U.N.
Why can’t the UN get more done to promote freedom? Council on Foreign Relations analyst Elliott Abrams asks. The answer is clear: so many member states are themselves dictatorships… Read more »
Beijing is exporting Great Firewall in effort to ‘tame’ Internet
Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China’s “Great Firewall,” which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to… Read more »
UN General Assembly a crucial opportunity to reassert democracy-based soft power
This week’s United Nations General Assembly is a crucial opportunity to reassure the world that U.S. foreign policy is based primarily on the soft power of diplomacy rather than military… Read more »
How (not) to wage information warfare: Russia ‘using democracy to undermine democracy’
Like many media experts in Europe, Tetiana Popova worries that Russia is turning free speech against the West and using democratic information tools such as Twitter as weapons in a… Read more »
Asian democracy: glass half-full or half-empty?
Many observers been assuming that China’s rise is loading the dice against democracy in Asia and is part of a global authoritarian resurgence, notes Maiko Ichihara, an associate professor at… Read more »
How democracies should respond to authoritarian influence
Democracies should tackle the mechanisms of authoritarian influence head-on, argues Thorsten Benner, Director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. Twenty years ago, the German British sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf argued that… Read more »
Scourge of Russian disinformation aims to undermine democracy
Western observers were quick to treat Valery Gerasimov’s articulation of the science of war as the blueprint for a future Russian hybrid attack against the west. From the proliferation of… Read more »
‘A potentially revolutionary tool’ – Global Magnitsky sanctions set in motion
Police and spy chiefs from China to the Middle East, a Ukrainian oligarch and a former president of Panama are among the people a coalition of human rights groups wants… Read more »
Has the West lost it? Is democracy endangered?
……..Serge Schmemann asks in The New York Times: Countries rarely embrace democracy as their first choice; they have often tried monarchies, oligarchies or other forms of coercive government first. They… Read more »