Category: Democratic institutions

Disinformation’s ‘acute and strategic challenge for democratic systems’

     

  With European Union elections closing in, EU leaders are calling for measures to tackle the deliberate spread of disinformation, Associated Press reports. “The spread of deliberate, large-scale, and systematic… Read more »

Bangladesh: crackdown as elections loom

     

Bangladesh security forces have been arresting and intimidating opposition figures and threatening freedom of expression in advance of national elections on December 30, 2018, Human Rights Watch said today: The… Read more »

A ‘Free-World Strategy’ for countering neo-authoritarians

     

The world is seeing the rise of a neo-authoritarianism that seeks to roll back freedom where it currently resides and advance its own global reach. It is not monolithic and… Read more »

Russian disinformation takes fresh aim at democratic process

     

The techniques used by anti-democratic state and non-state actors to disrupt or influence democratic processes are constantly evolving, says the European Parliamentary Research Service. The use of algorithms, automation and… Read more »

Time’s Persons of the Year – The Guardians and the War on Truth

     

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in October at his country’s Istanbul consulate, was on Tuesday, December 11, named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” alongside several other journalists under siege in… Read more »

‘Disentangling Grand Strategy’ for advancing democracy

     

Many across the political spectrum are arguing for reinvigorating the Western alliance to contend with resurgent geopolitical competition with China and Russia. But they appear ambivalent, conflicted, or divided over… Read more »

Projecting Islamic ‘soft power’ in wake of failed Arab Spring

     

U.S. disengagement from the daily irritations of Middle East politics has encouraged Arab allies—particularly Saudi Arabia—to adopt more aggressive foreign policies, which has in turn required an ideological language for… Read more »

‘Neo-autocracy’: turning democracy into a tool of oppression

     

Władysław Frasyniuk (above) championed democracy in the face of Communist rule in Poland in the 80s. Now, he warns the freedom he fought for is starting to slip away. (The… Read more »

How authoritarians are ‘dismantling democracy from the inside’

     

Authoritarian learning facilitates the ‘dismantling of democracy from the inside’, The Washington Post’s Amanda Erickson writes. It used to be that autocrats came to power through coups or by enacting states… Read more »