Category: Journal of Democracy

How populism can strengthen democracy, not imperil it

     

Populism has long been a contested and ambiguous concept, notes Michael Kazin, who teaches history at Georgetown University: Scholars debate whether it is a creed, a style, a political strategy,… Read more »

Beyond Dysfunction and Devastation: Iraq, the Arab Spring, and Lessons for Today

     

Kanan Makiya* has been described as the Arab world’s “Solzhenitsyn” for courageously bearing witness to unspeakable cruelty, notes the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His new critically acclaimed novel, The Rope, is… Read more »

Populism and protest: is Poland a harbinger?

     

The 2015 victory of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party is an example of the rise of contemporary authoritarian populism, say analysts Joanna Fomina and Jacek Kucharczyk. The PiS’s rise… Read more »

Is ‘Populist International’ Undermining Western Democracy?

     

Europe’s populists share ideas and ideology, friends and funders, notes analyst Anne Applebaum. They cross borders to appear at one another’s rallies. They have deep contacts in Russia — they… Read more »

Reclaiming Mosul: concerns about politics the ‘day after’

     

An array of Iraqi forces, backed by a broad international coalition, is closing in on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, united in their determination to crush the jihadists but… Read more »

Helping Europe through its crisis of illiberal politics

     

Twenty years after the U.S. brokered peace in Bosnia, leaders who once pledged to rebuild a European democracy here are shunning the West, The Wall Street Journal reports: In the… Read more »

Dialog can’t avert ‘final blow to Venezuela’s democracy’

     

Venezuela has freed three opposition activists jailed for more than a month in a first gesture by President Nicolas Maduro’s government after talks began with his foes, Reuters reports: The… Read more »

ISIS conflict highlights Iraq’s ‘Year of Rage’

     

“Iraqis are fed up,” Mieczysław P. Boduszyński writes. “Even as they wage war on ISIS they are also battling their own country’s corrupt and ineffective political elite.” Since 2015, Iraqis… Read more »

Orban leads surging illiberalism in CEE

     

Populist and nativist political parties have emerged throughout Europe, yet only in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have these illiberal democratic parties gained power, notes Jacques Rupnik, director of research… Read more »

West’s ‘China fantasy’ a conceptual failure and strategic blunder

     

A top-level meeting of the ruling Chinese Communist Party has endorsed President Xi Jinping as a “core” leader, giving him equal billing with late supreme leaders Deng Xiaoping and Mao… Read more »