These are frightening times for Chinese civil-society activists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private businesses that see their role as building bridges between China and other countries. Nationalist bloggers, supported at… Read more »
The protesters pouring into streets across Cuba have a common rallying cry: “Patria y Vida,” or “Fatherland and Life.” The phrase comes from a hip-hop song released a few months ago… Read more »
Did Central Europe’s democratic forces defeat one form of authoritarianism, but fail to anticipate other threats to freedom? The post-Cold War disruption in job markets, economic inequities, and disputes over… Read more »
Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy has not been smooth. But there are grounds for hope, notes Alison Smale. What would Vaclav Havel have made of post-1989 developments? she asked… Read more »
In Samuel Huntington’s 1991 article on “Democracy’s Third Wave,” he argued that democratic declines are characterized by social and political polarization; the exclusion of populist and leftist movements by the… Read more »
No empire in history has disintegrated as quickly or as bloodlessly as the Soviet one, in the remarkable year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989…. Read more »
Two great earthquakes shaped the present global order. The first, in 1989, seemed to promise an irresistible march towards liberal democracy and open markets. The opportunity was squandered by those… Read more »
The west’s mistake after 1989 was not that we celebrated what happened in central Europe – and subsequently in the Baltic republics and the former Soviet Union – as a… Read more »
“Always prepared!” For decades, it was a catchphrase of the Pioneers, an outdoorsy youth group that was a hallmark of communist indoctrination efforts targeting schoolchildren throughout the U.S.S.R. and its… Read more »
After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central and eastern Europe were never fully realized – and now we are seeing the backlash, argue Ivan Krastev and Stephen… Read more »