Tag: Freedom House

Illiberal Hungary ‘mounting an ambitious ideological campaign’?

     

Budapest’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic has been to suspend parliament and give Prime Minister Viktor Orbán open-ended powers to rule by decree. Will the latest move by the ruling… Read more »

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 »

‘When the World Wasn’t Looking’: An inflection point for democracy?

     

From anti-science conspiracy theories to state-sponsored disinformation, the United Nations warns that an “infodemic” of half-truths and falsehoods is undermining the effort to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic. How is social… 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 »

Autocratic assertion meets democratic dereliction

     

The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general… Read more »

Post-Corona World Disorder: Time to rethink West’s values trade-off?

     

The harsh, unavoidable “reality is the world will never be the same” following the Covid-19 pandemic, according to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Democracies like the United States can… Read more »

How Russian trolls weaponize virus lies

     

China isn’t the only authoritarian regime to take advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its sharp power in an effort to undermine democratic norms and institutions. Russia’s decade-long health… Read more »

‘Weaponizing insecurity’: Covid-19 tests legitimacy of all modes of governance

     

Autocratic and illiberal leaders are using the coronavirus crisis to weaponize insecurity, says journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. She talks to Financial Times’ columnist Gideon Rachman  about the threat to… Read more »

COVIS-19: Democracies must offer alternative to authoritarian solutions

     

The wider geopolitical effect of the COVIS-19 pandemic will likely turbocharge trendlines that were already creating a much more complicated and competitive landscape for the United States, argues William J. Burns,… Read more »

The global protest wave: Correcting misconceptions

     

The global protest wave is a roiling tide driven by a dauntingly diverse array of factors, including the travails of democracy and autocracy alike, the shortcomings of both market and… Read more »