Category: Democratic institutions

Comparing transatlantic democratic distress (and prospects for renewal)

     

Liberal democracy is in crisis where it was long thought most securely established. In both Western Europe and the United States, polls suggest voters are losing faith in democratic institutions;… Read more »

Zimbabwe’s upcoming polls present new political dynamics

     

  Since the Movement for Democratic Change’s founding in 1999, Zimbabwe has been going through a protracted struggle for democratization. An entrenched incumbent, fortified by a strong political-military network, has… Read more »

Hope for Turkey’s democracy, even if Erdogan wins

     

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces stiff competition from his opponents, including main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) candidate Muharrem Ince and Iyi (Good) Party leader Meral Aksener, in Sunday’s… Read more »

Is Nigeria’s democracy fragile ahead of 2019 elections?

     

Is Nigeria’s democracy increasingly fragile or does it give grounds for optimism? Nigeria is the sixth largest electoral democracy in the world, and 2019 will mark 20 years since the… Read more »

Mexico’s maverick populist may “corrode democracy from within”?

     

Sick of corruption and violence will Mexico’s voters embrace the maverick leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (left), popularly known as AMLO? Jon Lee Anderson asks in the New Yorker. Historian… Read more »

Kleptocracy and kakistocracy feed on each other

     

In a kleptocracy, criminal behavior is not individual, opportunistic, or sporadic, but rather collective, systematic, strategic, and permanent. It is a system in which all the high-level government officials are complicit, where… Read more »

How West can resist ‘long arm’ of China’s sharp power

     

China, not Russia, is the biggest threat to the United States in the decades to come, according to former secretary of defense Robert Gates who served the previous two U.S…. Read more »