John Hume, R.I.P. – combined moral clarity with strategic vision
John Hume was a political giant whose vision created the Northern Ireland that exists today. But he was a politician, not a saint, and should be remembered as such,… Read more »
Category: democratic norms
Democracy for losers: The silencing of the majority?
The history of failed democracies is replete with one lesson above all others: In times of crisis, it is up to leaders committed to our democratic values to walk democracy… Read more »
Placing democratic values at the heart of international strategy
In a recent Atlantic Council/German Marshall Fund virtual meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressing the importance of making NATO a more global alliance to defend democratic values in a… Read more »
Do liberal values have a global future?
Liberals are supposed to believe that the freedom to dissent is an essential part of a functioning democracy. More points of view lead to a better grasp of complex… Read more »
A pro-democracy foreign policy: Retrenchment, restoration or reinvention?
We live in a new reality: America can no longer dictate events as we sometimes believed we could, especially given the damage to its values, image, and influence, argues… Read more »
Ideological conformity threatens democratic discourse
As someone with extensive personal experience with the suppression of debate by ideological conformity, I’m happy to see names from all over the political spectrum signing this open letter… Read more »
Democratic innovation key to strategy for shaping post-COVID world
While a recent global initiative cautioned that autocrats are exploiting the pandemic to erode democratic values and institutions, COVID-19 may yet allow the “re-imagining and strengthening of democracy” through innovative… Read more »
Persuasion: Democracy’s defenders now ‘full of passionate intensity’?
Over recent years, the political and intellectual energy has been with illiberal movements. Too often, the advocates of free speech and free institutions have been passive, even fatalistic. It is… Read more »
How great powers fall apart – from the inside
In his essay “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?”, initially published in the London-based journal Survey, Andrei Amalrik identified the process through which a great power succumbs to self-delusion, notes Charles King, Professor… Read more »
How COVID could kill off populism
Populists hate to be unpopular. That is why they have proved so bad at handling Covid-19, a crisis that brings nothing but grim news — death, economic destruction and curtailed… Read more »