Turkey Divided and Conquered: How the AKP Regained Power
The landslide victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey’s November 1 election came as a shock to many, notes a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center…. Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
The Chavismo Files
Following the recent shift in the Venezuelan National Assembly it is sensible to go back and examine the legacy Hugo Chavez and his acolytes that steered Venezuela to the edge… Read more »
How the West’s normativists misjudged Russia
The expert community both in the West and Russia is retracing the steps that Sovietologists made in the 1980s, when they turned out to be completely unprepared for the disintegration… Read more »
China’s leaders reveal their fears
Once admired by authoritarian governments elsewhere, not to mention some commentators in the West, for its canny balancing of free markets and party control, China’s style of leadership may be… Read more »
Russia and China seek new ‘client states’?
U.S. President Barack Obama raised eyebrows around the world with a difficult-to-interpret reference to Ukraine in his final annual State of the Union address that lumped the post-Soviet state and… Read more »
Is Poland a failing democracy?
Poland’s new right-wing government faces international demands to roll back radical changes to the country’s institutions, but the odds that it will suffer any serious punishment from Brussels are close to zero, analyst Jan Cienski… Read more »
Turkey: Erdogan’s ‘dangerous dance with radicalism’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s flirtation with radical Islam in Syria and march from liberal democratic reformer to illiberal populist authoritarian have confused Americans trying to deal with Turkey, which… Read more »
China steps up crackdown on civil society, rights advocates
Chinese authorities have formally arrested China‘s most prominent woman human rights lawyer, Wang Yu, accusing her of subversion, as part of a crackdown on activists who have helped people fight… Read more »
Fears of illiberal Central Europe axis ‘overblown’?
Poland’s crackdown on the judiciary and public media, emulating Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s accumulation of power, has raised fears in the European Union of a new illiberal axis based… Read more »
Cuba: still condemned to silence
Dissident artists are no better off post-Fidel, and renewed relations with the US haven’t helped as many hoped or claimed they would, Ryan McChrystal writes for Index on Censorship: The… Read more »