Eclipse of the West’s soft power?
While the resurgent authoritarians of Russia and China are investing in the expansion of soft power, that of the Western democracies is dwindling, analysts suggest. The European Union’s approach to… Read more »
Search Results for: civil resistance
Why Africa’s ‘presidents for life’ are afraid to lose power
The resistance to democratic transfers of power is a trend throughout Central and West Africa, where heads of states from Burundi to Togo have gone to great lengths, including the… Read more »
Orbanism at its limits? Hungary’s referendum exposes the cracks
Around 98 per cent of Hungarian voters who participated in last weekend’s referendum on refugees’ resettlement rejected the proposed EU quotas, but turnout fell below the 50 per cent threshold… Read more »
Suvash Darnal – ‘consummate democracy activist’
It was because Suvash Darnal (right) combined so flawlessly several key attributes that he can be considered to have been a consummate democracy activist, writes Carl Gershman, the President of… Read more »
Resisting the Tyranny of the Possible: Lessons from the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Resisting the Tyranny of the Possible. This was moral revolution, a revolution of conscience rooted in cultural reclamation, and it resonated through the region because it was entirely congruent with… Read more »
Global democratic recession – for now
The politicians who captured the spirit of the early 1990s were inspirational democrats such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia — and liberal reformers such as Mikhail… Read more »
Enough is Enough: Iranian Kurds Running Out of Patience
Two decades after a ceasefire, Kurdish fighters have resumed armed action in Iran, The London Times reports (subscription required). The result has been scores of deaths, cross-border artillery barrages into… Read more »
‘Unholy Alliance’? Kleptocratic Authoritarians and Western Enablers
It is widely understood that corruption is a pervasive problem in many societies and undermines public confidence in the political system and government institutions, argues Carl Gershman, President of… Read more »
How to understand and ‘throttle’ ISIS
A thorough examination of the Islamic State’s history and practices is useful for designing a coordinated and effective campaign against it—and for understanding why the group might be able to… Read more »
Vice News, Jigsaw partner to empower free expression
The global struggle for free expression is the focus of a new partnership between Vice News and Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas, the firm’s think tank and technology incubator). A new… Read more »