Category: Western Balkans

Preserving liberty in the time of corona: Democratic governance the best antidote

     

The Indian economist Amartya Sen insisted on democracy as a universal value (in a Journal of Democracy reader, left). He also observed that democratic governance is the best antidote to the… Read more »

Challenging the squeeze on media freedom

     

  Advocates for independent news media used Sunday’s World Press Freedom Day to call attention to what’s been dubbed the “coronavirus crackdown,” CNN reports. Journalists in numerous countries have been harassed, threatened… Read more »

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 »

Russia’s soft power set to divide Council of Europe’s democracies

     

The late Russian president Boris Yeltsin once said his country’s entry into the Council of Europe would help create a “new, greater Europe, free from dividing lines” and “united by common… Read more »

‘Pushing on an Open Door’: countering illiberal alliances in the Western Balkans

     

Nearly two decades after the cessation of violent conflict in the Western Balkans and efforts by the international community to support democratic reform, analysis suggests that most countries in the… Read more »

Western Balkans: how to build democratic resilience?

     

Twenty years after the wars in the Western Balkans ended, internal and external authoritarian tendencies threaten democracy in this troubled region. While technically free, elections are hardly fair. Internally, they are… Read more »