The central European states were the vanguards of communism’s collapse in the late 1980s, prompting a sense of inevitability about democracy’s benign coming, reinforced by the diverse figures who stepped… Read more »
Populist leaders across Central and Eastern Europe are mounting simultaneous crackdowns on nongovernmental organizations that promote open government, aid refugees and often serve as checks on authoritarian governments, The New… Read more »
Democracy today is being challenged as never before since the end of the Cold War, says Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy. The crisis has many dimensions,… Read more »
What happens when the population turns against the populists? Just such a drama is playing out in Romania, a country of 20 million people where hundreds of thousands have poured… Read more »
A Zimbabwean pastor arrested last week for his #ThisFlag campaign, an Iranian Kurdish journalist covering life as an interned Australian asylum seeker, one of China’s most notorious political cartoonists, and… Read more »
The resurgence of authoritarian powers and the emergence of “populist and nationalist forces” in democratic states have prompted a deterioration of democracy and growing threats to civil liberties, U.S.-based watchdog… Read more »
After years in jail as a dissident under communism, Adam Michnik took part in the groundbreaking 1989 Round Table talks that brought semi-free elections to Poland and helped bring down… Read more »
Countries riven with corruption and inequality that turn to populist leaders to solve crises often see their problems get worse, according to the latest edition of an annual index of… Read more »
Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat… Read more »
In the wake of Fidel Castro’s death, it may be helpful to examine the empirical evidence of the transition experience of the Central and Eastern European countries when the Soviet… Read more »