Conventional wisdom has long held that democratic consolidation is a one-way street and that democratic states, once reaching a certain level of GDP per capita, are immune to democratic breakdown…. Read more »
At the geostrategic level, the state of global affairs today is defined by two principal trends: the growing assertiveness of Russia and China, the two principal revisionist states; and the… Read more »
Cambodia is drifting towards autocracy with a clear trend. An unprecedented crackdown on independent media, civil society and the country’s major opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), hardly suggest otherwise. Whether Hun… Read more »
Today’s pessimism about democracy is both historically unwarranted and self-defeating; it undermines the optimism necessary to sustain the struggle ahead, argues Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard… Read more »
Democracy is undergoing an ‘alarming’ decline around the world, according to the latest annual survey from Freedom House.* The country-by-country report – Freedom In The World 2019 – paints a… Read more »
Eight years ago this week, protests erupted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, with throngs of Egyptians demanding an end to autocratic rule and chanting the slogan, “Bread, freedom, social justice,” Jared… Read more »
How are we to understand the resurgence of authoritarianism? What form does it now take? What responsibility do elites bear for its success? These are among the most important questions… Read more »
Only 4.5% of the world’s people live in a “full democracy,” but the global democratic regression at least paused in 2018, according to the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence… Read more »
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 »
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 »