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 »
Category: Analysis
Gangnam Smile: North Korean defectors make history
The most important thing about South Korea’s legislative elections this week is the fact that they happened at all, notes John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University,… Read more »
Pestilential ‘battle of narratives’ a return to ideologies?
Surely among the strangest and least expected outcomes of the Great Pestilence is that the country that hatched the virus looks as though it will now enjoy the technological and… 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 »
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 »
‘Viral Alarm’: China’s rulers enter new era of moral depletion
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease… Read more »
Self-isolate or renovate? How democracies can shape post-corona world
When it comes to combating the Covid-19 pandemic, no one country can expect to achieve its full potential by going it alone, not even the United States. Bold action is… Read more »
Pushback against populism: An end to Grand Strategy?
Populist politics tilts authoritarian. In sweeping away supposedly corrupt elites and institutions, the populist leader weakens all forces standing in his way. Critics becomes enemies, constitutional constraints become obstacles to… 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 »
‘Viral Authoritarianism’? COVID-19 turns spotlight on democratic erosion
Seoul’s decision to hold the April 15 polls in the middle of a pandemic highlights South Korea’s status as a beacon of democracy in Asia. It stands in stark contrast… Read more »