Kyrgyzstan: Nationalist firebrand takes ‘all power’
After more than a week in hiding following a disputed election, the president of Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia’s only democracy — on Thursday announced his plans to resign, saying he… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
Values matter: Cooperation, solidarity vital to post-pandemic democracy
Solidarity is the only solution for handling a global crisis like the Covid pandemic, an international forum heard this week. Talk about “saving” democracy is not helpful because democracy changes… Read more »
Time to unite T-12 of techno-democracies vs. digital authoritarianism
China has adopted a proactive and strategic approach to embrace the age of artificial intelligence (AI) as part of a digital technology package that the regime has actively employed not… Read more »
China: ‘Between Conflict and Accommodation’?
The State Department announced Wednesday it is appointing a special coordinator to oversee relations with Tibet, The Hill reports. Robert Destro, who serves as assistant secretary of the Bureau of… Read more »
The false promise of regime change
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s repeated assertion around the time of the Iraq war that Washington’s pursuit of “stability at the expense of democracy” in the Middle East had produced… Read more »
Covid vs. Democracy: How pandemic impacts the West
The pandemic has had two dramatic effects in the West, reports suggest: It has spotlighted shortcomings in Western democracies, where death rates have been far higher than in many Asian… Read more »
A lesson in pandemic democracy?
What if the coronavirus pandemic delayed an election and no one cared? Bloomberg’s David Fickling asks. That’s pretty much what’s happening in New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appears… Read more »
Africa policy ‘needs a reset’: What do Africans think?
In the runup to Guinea’s elections on Oct. 18, voters are grappling with a familiar-sounding problem: disinformation and a lack of transparency over who’s providing the news they’re getting, Bloomberg… Read more »
How to blunt China’s efforts to shift global norms
China’s efforts to secure a larger role for itself in multiple international institutions have generated questions about the scale of its ambitions and the ‘sharp power’ tools it will use… Read more »
Democratic déjà vu: Kyrgyzstan ‘developing immunity to authoritarianism’?
Kyrgyzstan’s President Sooronbay Jeenbekov announced Tuesday that he plans to ask Parliament for a new vote on their prime minister nominee, Reuters reports [HT: Cipher Brief]: The move could be… Read more »