Search Results for: Covid-19 pandemic

Post-Covid democratic legitimacy demands ‘re-imagining social contracts’?

     

Václav Havel was spot on when he wrote: ‘The natural disadvantage of democracy is that it is extremely tiring to those who mean it honestly, while it allows almost everything… Read more »

Covid crisis exposes ‘chimera of authoritarian competence’

     

The novel coronavirus pandemic will only exacerbate recent anti-democratic trends, according to a new policy brief from the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI). While “it is neither foreseeable how fast and… Read more »

Who is undermining democracy in CEE & Eurasia? Stalinization of Russia’s historical propaganda.

     

Hungary was the first democratic victim of the coronavirus. It may not be the last, Boise State’s Steven Feldstein writes for Foreign Policy. China’s foreign policy has increasingly weakened democratic… Read more »

China faces rising wave of hostility, but U.S. at ‘strategic disadvantage’?

     

An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation,… Read more »

‘Dropping the Democratic Facade’:  Nations in Transit 2020

     

In its latest report, Nations in Transit 2020: Dropping the Democratic Facade, Freedom House warns of a “stunning democratic breakdown” across Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as many leaders… Read more »

Post-Covid world ‘already here’? Illiberal plague tests democratic resilience

     

In human history, national emergencies, whether caused by war, invasion, financial crisis, or an epidemic, have often been the occasions for major political reform. It takes a huge external shock… Read more »

Democracy’s place in a new post-Covid world order

     

International orders seldom change in noticeable ways, according to Edward Fishman, a former member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an… Read more »

Incompetence, impatience & impotence: Russia shows same traits that befell USSR

     

  The way Russian pro-governmental media approached Hungary’s “coronavirus coup” stand-off with the EU in the time of COVID-19 is in line with the outlets’ long-term attitude towards Hungary, notes… Read more »

Chris Patten urges investigation into coronavirus origins

     

Britain’s last colonial governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, has asked the British government to watch out for Chinese attempts to interfere with the city’s affairs while the world grapples… Read more »

Quality of democracy reaches new low – but ‘glimmers of hope’

     

The quality of democracy, market economy and governance reached its lowest level since 2004 when the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) was first published, it reported today. Limits on freedom… Read more »