Persuasive populism enters the mainstream
Populist parties have more than tripled their support in Europe in the last 20 years, securing enough votes to put their leaders into government posts in 11 countries and challenging… Read more »
Category: Democratic institutions
Iran’s militia allies ready to ‘call the shots’ in Iraq’s parliament?
The killing of a Muslim cleric who demonstrated over poor public services in Basra undermines the pillars of democracy in Iraq, a member of the parliament-elected Iraqi High Commission for… Read more »
Bangladesh democracy hangs in the balance
By any measure, the current state of democracy in Bangladesh is grim, note analysts Atif Ahmad, a researcher at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Michael Kugelman, senior… Read more »
Populists have weakened, not destroyed democratic institutions
National populists operate within the shell of democratic institutions, and have weakened but not destroyed them, the FT’s John Lloyd writes in a review of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the… Read more »
Violence returns as Bangladesh gears up for polls
Bangladesh has faced increasingly difficult human rights challenges in recent years, notes the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission: The country’s decision to open its border to approximately 800,000 Rohingya refugees… Read more »
Weaponized Narratives? Confronting the disinformation challenge to democracy
A coalition of civil society organizations is calling on Facebook to provide a mechanism for all of its users to appeal content restrictions, and, in every case, to have the… Read more »
Saudis and Iran using sectarian non-state actors to shape Middle East
The Saudi-Iran rivalry playing out in the Middle East’s divided societies, such as the ‘proxy arenas’ of Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, and particularly Syria and Yemen, has cultivated sectarian difference that… Read more »
Opposition aims to rescue Bangladesh’s ‘decaying democracy’
The announcement of a schedule for the next general election in Bangladesh has triggered hope of a credible poll but also concern about more political violence across the Muslim-majority South Asian nation,… Read more »
Russia ‘actively sponsoring’ assault on Hungary’s democracy
The European Union should determine if Hungary is at risk of breaching shared European values of democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights, members of the European Parliament said today, raising concerns over… Read more »
Democratic renewal in an age of crisis: why democracies are resilient
The populist parties now making headway in many Western democracies are fundamentally different from the “anti-system” parties of the interwar years, which openly denounced democracy, argues Jørgen Møller, who teaches… Read more »