Category: Democratic Backsliding

‘Democracy Under Lockdown’: COVID19’s repression pandemic

     

  The world’s democracies are showing signs of strain from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new Freedom House analysis. The report, titled Democracy Under Lockdown, says “the COVID-19 pandemic has… Read more »

Transition time: From democratic decay & breakdown to innovation & renewal?

     

There has never been a more appropriate and urgent occasion to celebrate International Democracy Day, say advocates and analysts. On 25 June the joint Letter to Defend Democracy was issued… Read more »

Coronavirus exploited to undermine democracies, world figures warn

     

The outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent pandemic has led to an alarming uptick in authoritarian behavior by governments across the globe, who are using the crisis to silence critics, an open letter signed by… Read more »

The ongoing democratic experiment: Reason for hope

     

Recent trends – not last democratic backsliding and autocratic resurgence – are enough to make one think that David Stasavage’s new book should have been about the rise and subsequent… Read more »

How Coronavirus will change the world: Autocracies more susceptible

     

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread concern about democracy, with pundits like Larry Diamond claiming that democracy is now under imminent threat as authoritarian tendencies take over. The ability of authoritarian… Read more »

Democratic resilience: explaining stability and fragility

     

Democracies are better equipped to cope with crises like the current Covid-19 pandemic and at less risk of institutional breakdown than many commentators believe, new research suggests. Comparisons of the… Read more »

Explaining democratic resilience in an age of crisis

     

Older democracies are better equipped to cope with crises like the current Covid-19 pandemic, while the risk of institutional breakdown is greater in new democracies with weak civil society and weak… Read more »

Democracies vulnerable to crisis: Covid exacerbates weaknesses, says BTI

     

The COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate the very weaknesses that have marked the democratic erosion of the last decade in most of the 137 developing and transformation countries examined in the… Read more »

China’s ‘hub and spoke strategy’: COVID-19 geopolitical turning point?

     

COVID-19 signals a global paradigm shift because even before the pandemic, the world was already in the grips of a far-reaching transformation, analyst Ullrich Fichtner writes for Der Spiegel. The… Read more »