Search Results for: Civil Society

Pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats’ opportunity in disaster

     

Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »

COVID-19’s new pretexts for consolidating autocrats’ power

     

Authoritarian-minded leaders around the world have used the coronavirus emergency to consolidate power. In Europe, the governments of Poland and Hungary have done that and more. They have managed to… Read more »

Russian, Chinese, Iranian disinformation narratives echoing each other

     

China, Iran and Russia are using the coronavirus crisis to launch a propaganda and disinformation onslaught against the United States, the State Department warns in a new analysis, POLITICO’s Betsy… Read more »

Hong Kong’s constitutional crisis escalates

     

As the world has been engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities in Hong Kong have arrested prominent pro-democracy figures in politics, civil society and the media, waging a broad… Read more »

Is China winning? Covid-19 a ‘unique stress test’ of political resilience

     

Like an asteroid, coronavirus is the textbook example of an exogenous shock. The threat came from beyond. Yet the pathogen offers a unique stress test of each country’s resilience, argues… Read more »

CCP rule by fear endangers Chinese citizens – and the world

     

As China tames the coronavirus epidemic now ravaging other countries, its success is giving rise to an increasingly strident blend of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, at a pitch many say… Read more »

Avoiding authoritarian pitfalls during Covid-19 crisis

     

  The political effects of the Covid-19 crisis are likely to be profound, Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond writes for the Atlantic Monthly: In the medium to long run, the… Read more »

Are some NGOs really ‘foreign agents’?

     

Here’s what people in Georgia and Ukraine say, according to a recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC), Gerard… Read more »

You don’t defeat the virus by bleeding democracy

     

The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to alleviate demands for more democratic governance, respect for human rights, equality, an end to austerity, and meaningful steps to combat climate change and corruption,… Read more »

Has Xi Jinping won coronavirus ‘battle of narratives’?

     

Chinese officials claim that their “success” in containing the coronavirus outbreak and Western countries’ ongoing “failure” to do so attests to the superiority of the so-called China model of one-party… Read more »