Category: Authoritarianism

China’s ‘hub and spoke strategy’: COVID-19 geopolitical turning point?

     

COVID-19 signals a global paradigm shift because even before the pandemic, the world was already in the grips of a far-reaching transformation, analyst Ullrich Fichtner writes for Der Spiegel. The… Read more »

‘Beginning of the end’ for Hong Kong? Two systems ‘dead as a Dodo’

     

Hong Kong activists are planning to take advantage of forthcoming opportunities to counter the recent crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. “We’re only at half-time in the match,” one activist suggested…. Read more »

COVID-19 pandemic reveals malfeasance, misrule & maladroit propaganda  

     

In the absence of global democratic leadership, China is taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to proclaim the superiority of its authoritarian model, notes Keith B. Richburg, director of the… Read more »

Pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats’ opportunity in disaster

     

Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »

COVID-19’s new pretexts for consolidating autocrats’ power

     

Authoritarian-minded leaders around the world have used the coronavirus emergency to consolidate power. In Europe, the governments of Poland and Hungary have done that and more. They have managed to… Read more »

Learn to live with despots or avoid ‘realist’ retreat?

     

Former State Policy Planning Director Steve Krasner (someone we have worked with and respect) has written a piece in Foreign Affairs (“Learning to Live with Despots”) that advocates realism as the… Read more »

When elections hurt democracy

     

The Algerian government has begun investigating the funding of media organizations and news sources that it claims are using foreign funding to promote anti-government and anti-reform content. The authorities have… Read more »

How China’s authoritarian model made Covid pandemic worse

     

China must be held accountable for the coronavirus outbreak, as thousands of lives could have been saved if it had acted earlier, says a leading human rights advocate. The Chinese… Read more »