What makes the populist wave sweeping the Western world so disturbing is the characteristic that unites all populists: their rejection of liberal values, argues Carla Norrlof, Associate Professor of Political Science at… Read more »
Ideas, experiences, and lessons from other countries are not panaceas but, if properly researched, disseminated, and discussed, they can magnify democratic reform, say two leading analysts. The resounding success of Steven… Read more »
In the span of just two years, the widely shared utopian vision of the internet’s impact on governance has turned decidedly pessimistic, notes Stanford Law School analyst Nate Persily…. Read more »
Illiberal political actors and authoritarian regimes are leveraging the increasingly complex globalized information space to exploit societal cleavages created by political polarization, employing a problematic mix of media manipulation and… Read more »
The breakout of real democracy in a Muslim-majority Asian country has gone largely unnoticed here in Washington, but we ignore it at our own peril. Malaysia’s fragile democratic experiment is a crucial… Read more »
Today’s pessimism about democracy is both historically unwarranted and self-defeating; it undermines the optimism necessary to sustain the struggle ahead, argues Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard… Read more »
The alarmists have a point. The Liberal International Order (LIO) has many enemies. One is populism, the insurgency against the institutions of representative democracy, flanked by the revolt against fourth… Read more »
How to restore trust in democracy and the media that serve it and us? More specifically, what can leaders, media and citizens do to better understand the “other,” to distinguish… Read more »
What role do the interplay of new and old media play in getting authoritarian demagogues elected? How do new media platforms supercharge the spread of conspiracy theories and false ideas?… Read more »
This year, the European elections set for late May have continent-wide themes and a continent-wide significance, notes Anne Applebaum, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. Ironically, or perhaps absurdly,… Read more »