Category: Authoritarianism

Democracy ‘still the most effective form of government ever devised’

     

U.S. President Barack Obama warned today against a rise in nationalism and populism – from both Left and Right – noting that a backlash against globalization had stoked illiberal movements…. Read more »

Real security: Governance and stability in the Arab world

     

The breakdown of regional order in the Middle East was driven by domestic crises in the relationship between Arab citizens and their governments, but the resulting disorder has unleashed civil… Read more »

Advancing democracy plays key role in more competitive ideological environment

     

The world ideological climate is now more contested. After being in retreat for decades, authoritarian regimes are increasingly pushing back against liberalizing currents, as the 2008 global financial crisis and… Read more »

Facing up to authoritarian influence-peddling

     

For 25 years, open societies saw themselves as the uncontested winners and expected that the remaining autocracies, with the help of western pro-democracy actors, would be relegated to the dustbin… Read more »

Pro-Russian candidates win elections in Bulgaria and Moldova

     

Voters in Bulgaria and Moldova elected pro-Russian populist presidents on the weekend, adding to mounting concern about Western unity,The Daily Telegraph reports. Bulgarian Socialist ally Rumen Radev, a Russia-friendly newcomer… Read more »

Resisting China’s erosion of Hong Kong’s democratic institutions

     

Since Hong Kong’s democratic movement began some three decades ago, Hong Kongers have relied on Beijing’s good will to achieve democracy, says democracy advocates Joshua Wong (left) and Jeffrey Ngo… Read more »

Defending democracy a Sisyphean task

     

History does not follow a teleological path. There is no straight road towards freedom, notes David Motadel, an Assistant Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. Throughout… Read more »

How populism can strengthen democracy, not imperil it

     

Populism has long been a contested and ambiguous concept, notes Michael Kazin, who teaches history at Georgetown University: Scholars debate whether it is a creed, a style, a political strategy,… Read more »

Hybrid Putinism: ‘a mafia state with a totalitarian society’?

     

The question of what constitutes democracy did not have time to be hashed out in the Russian public sphere before that sphere began disappearing a decade and a half ago,… Read more »

Populism and protest: is Poland a harbinger?

     

The 2015 victory of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party is an example of the rise of contemporary authoritarian populism, say analysts Joanna Fomina and Jacek Kucharczyk. The PiS’s rise… Read more »