Category: Europe

Are Eastern Europe’s new illiberal democracies sustainable?

     

Hungary’s largest daily newspaper was unexpectedly shut down on Saturday (8 October), fueling concerns over a government crackdown on critical media. Nepszabadsag’s print and online editions were abruptly shut on… Read more »

Poland highlights the ‘specter haunting Europe’

     

Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets of the Polish capital Warsaw Saturday (24 September) to rally against moves by the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government that they… Read more »

The Illiberal Turn? Reasserting Democratic Values in Central and Eastern Europe

     

Michael Ignatieff begins his new post this fall as president and rector of the famed Central European University – about as politically charged a job there is right now in… Read more »

Georgia’s turn to the West no cause for complacency

     

Democracy has been in retreat across Eurasia in recent years, and in many countries, the lure of Western political models has faded. But Georgia has been an exception, note analysts… Read more »

Corruption overshadows Ukraine aid package

     

  “You can’t catch a big fish with a small, thin rod” said Volodymyr Groysman, the prime minister of Ukraine, when asked why not a single “big fish” has been… Read more »

Illiberal international seeks ‘cultural counter-revolution’

     

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an… Read more »

EU reform could give democracy promotion a lift

     

It’s time for a pan-European union that encompasses all of the continent’s sovereign countries at different levels of integration, writes Carnegie Europe analyst Cornelius Adebahr: The most basic integration level… Read more »

Populism – a danger to democracy

     

The conventional wisdom that populists want to bring politics closer to the people or even clamor for direct democracy could not be more mistaken, notes Jan Werner Müller, a professor… Read more »