Category: Democratic Backsliding

Contesting Democracy: Can post-ideological ‘Macronism’ stem the populist tide?

     

Europe is in a tough spot, as it tries to reconcile the rise of populism with the need to confront migration, climate change, the digital revolution, the structure of its… Read more »

Closing civic space – or changing civil society?

     

The trend of closing civic space crystallized at the beginning of this decade. In response, concerned international actors — including various bilateral aid agencies, foreign ministries, private foundations and international… Read more »

Democracies under pressure: how and why citizens are disenchanted

     

The idea of democracy has revolutionized the world. It is based on a political order whose main feature is making the exercise of power subject to the consent of the… Read more »

Global democracy ‘at or near a modern-day high’ – but still scope for renewal

     

  Anxiety over the future of democracy, the populist threat, authoritarian alternatives, growing illiberalism, and general democratic malaise may be misplaced, new research suggests. Public support for democratic ideals remains… Read more »

Misapprehension of liberalism? ‘Viktator’ Orban is following Putin playbook

     

The European parliamentary elections, which will take place later this month, offer Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the chance to build a right-wing populist coalition across Europe, according to Kim Lane… Read more »

Populism, polarization threaten Latin America’s democratic renewal

     

It was one of the greatest waves of democratization ever. In 1977 all but three of the 20 countries in Latin America were dictatorships of one kind or another. By… Read more »

‘Dangerous backsliding’: radicals use Indonesia’s democracy to undermine it

     

  Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and former military general Prabowo Subianto will face off in a presidential election on Wednesday (Nikkei/CFR), with official results expected take up to a month to… Read more »

To defend liberal order, Western democracy must compete with alternative models

     

We are witnessing an intellectual transition to a worldview that is in equal parts “naïve, dangerous and ahistorical,” scholars Hal Brands and Charles Edel argue in a “brilliant” new book,… Read more »

‘Rethinking Democracy’: designing strategies for resilience and renewal

     

It is easy to be complacent about democracy, to imagine that it has become permanent and irreversible. But in politics nothing is guaranteed to last for ever, and what seems… Read more »

Third wave of global ‘autocratization’ may still be picking up

     

Conventional wisdom on democracy’s troubles is still taking shape, but it generally holds that a dozen or so countries have backslid in a global trend dating roughly to the global… Read more »