How democracy dies: Media first?
Journalists and independent media are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to identifying the early signs of democratic regression, observers suggest. This is how democracy dies in… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
How Covid-19 will change the world
The governments of Australia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand & Norway register the highest scores in our new index: they have performed best in managing the #public… Read more »
Illiberal competitors challenge transnational civil society networks
The unipolar moment has passed, and it isn’t coming back, according to Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, the authors of Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. The United… Read more »
Secondary Infektion: Russia-linked disinformation campaign exposed
A group of Russia-based hackers used sophisticated new techniques to spread disinformation in the U.S. and avoid detection by social media companies for years, according to a new report from an… Read more »
Time to abandon muddled thinking about China’s ‘Mussolini model’
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has criticized China for creating “disinformation” during the coronavirus pandemic, saying it “will cost lives,” Bloomberg reports. “It is troubling that some countries are… Read more »
Hungary vote an ‘optical illusion’ and ‘peacock dance’
Hungarian lawmakers have voted in favour of repealing extraordinary powers granted to Prime Minister Viktor Orban to fight the coronavirus, the BBC reports: Members of parliament unanimously requested the… Read more »
The limits of authoritarian compatibility
Authoritarian regimes are corrupt in a more fundamental way than liberal democracies because the access to power on every level of state bureaucracy in the former effectively signifies access to… Read more »
Why COVID-19 is a ‘litmus test’ for democracy
Far more people around the world think China has responded well to the COVID-19 pandemic than those who think the United States has done a good job, a poll by… Read more »
Putin enriches political science, impoverishes democracy
Vladimir Putin’s regime has instituted a “pretend party system” in which real political groups, with popular leaders and a genuine support base, are denied a license, replaced by impostors who… Read more »
No time for democratic West to sit on its hands
European leaders are worried about a catastrophe for the democratic community of nations we commonly call the West, The FT’s Philip Stephen writes: That democracy is in retreat around the… Read more »