Category: Central/Eastern Europe

Understanding and countering Russia’s information operations

     

Russia has tended to use online tools to cause confusion, manifest ethnic tensions and erode trust in democratic institutions. But to understand its information operations, it is important to understand the… Read more »

Populism is (or is not) the legacy of the global financial crisis? Discuss

     

The process set in train by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers has produced two big losers — liberal democracy and open international borders. The culprits, who include bankers,… Read more »

‘One of the great freedom fighters’: John McCain, R.I.P.

     

  Senator John McCain “was one of the great freedom fighters of all time,” according to a leading democracy advocate. “He was a champion of democracy wherever it was being… Read more »

50 Years After Prague Spring, Lessons on Freedom

     

As his country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion that crushed an effort to ease the totalitarian grip of Communism known as the Prague Spring, the Czech Republic’s… Read more »

Illiberal alliances underpinning populist revolts’ ‘cultural revolution’

     

There are many similarities between American consultant-turned-ideologue Steve Bannon and Hungarian liberal-turned-ultraconservative Viktor Orban. Both have a missionary mind-set; both are interested in ideas; both are obsessed with what they… Read more »

Engaging illiberal Hungary: ‘excessively transactional, insufficiently rhetorical’?

     

Since Viktor Orbán was returned to the office of Prime Minister of Hungary in May 2010, he and his party Fidesz have transformed the political system of Hungary in a sustained… Read more »

Will liberal democracy survive ‘Illiberal International’ onslaught?

     

An Illiberal International is now advancing and one of the first to sound the alarm was Yascha Mounk, the author of The People vs Democracy (2018) and a lecturer on government at… Read more »

Counter influence strategies for combating disinformation

     

The potential for Russian hacking of election systems in the 2018 midterm elections has emerged as an urgent and destabilizing issue in the run-up to the U.S. elections, CodaStory reports…. Read more »

Can Romania recapitalize trust in democracy?

     

Fifty years on from the crushing of the Prague Spring and almost 30 years after the 1989 revolutionary upheaval, Eastern Europe is experiencing a vicious return to authoritarianism, according to… Read more »