Authoritarian resurgence is puzzling intellectually because the dominant theoretical paradigm during the past four decades has focused on explaining the drivers of democratic advance, not retreat, says a leading analyst…. Read more »
Radical Islamist extremist violence is wracking the fragile state of Burkina Faso and spreading east, The Washington Post reports: Nearly 1,000 civilians were killed in 2019 by local militias and… Read more »
The Islamic State was dealt serious blows with the loss of its territorial caliphate in March 2019 and death of its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in October 2019, analyst… Read more »
The top U.S. representative in Taiwan says Washington is working with it to combat efforts by Beijing to influence upcoming elections on the island, AP reports. The U.S. is… Read more »
Is democracy broken? Vox’s Sean illing asks. Harvard politics professor Daniel Ziblatt, co-author (along with Steven Levitsky) of 2018’s How Democracies Die, explains why democracies collapse, what norms are most essential… Read more »
Russian authorities have threatened protesters in Moscow with lengthy jail sentences in an attempt to dampen an unexpected surge in protest mood before a planned opposition rally, The Guardian reports…. Read more »
Venezuela’s humanitarian, economic, and political crisis has forced millions of citizens to flee, created a lawless environment where crime rates are astronomically high, and has given rise to the presence… Read more »
This week’s election in the world’s two most populous democratic land masses — India and Europe — confirmed the global advance of ethno-nationalism, according to FT analyst Edward Luce, author of… Read more »
Both the ethnic nationalist and socialist variants of populism threaten the delicate balance between markets and the state, and that will put an end to both prosperity and democracy, argues… Read more »
The power outage that left most of Venezuela without electricity for five days in early March seemed eerily symbolic of the mood among many people there. Living through one of… Read more »