It is almost 30 years since the demise of Encounter, the London-based monthly review of culture and politics, but no other magazine has since come close to matching its influence, Gerald Frost writes for… Read more »
Hungary’s parliament endorsed a bill on Monday giving nationalist premier Viktor Orban the sweeping new powers he says he needs to fight the new coronavirus pandemic. Critics at home and… Read more »
If democracies cannot cooperate to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the result could be a “decisive global shift” toward China’s authoritarian model, one analyst suggests. Three factors appear to… Read more »
History accelerates in crises. This pandemic may not itself transform the world, but it can accelerate changes already under way, notes FT analyst Martin Wolf: One ongoing change has been… Read more »
Has the coronavirus placed the world in a “really dangerous place for maintaining a democratic future”? With much of the world on lockdown, the coronavirus crisis has chipped individual liberties… Read more »
The real lessons of the coronavirus pandemic will be political, argues Thomas J. Bollyky, Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Plagues and… Read more »
As the COVID-19 pandemic escalates, China has shifted its propaganda machine into high gear, in an effort to change the narrative about the virus’s origins and the Chinese response. But… Read more »
The picture for democracy and civil society was mixed across the European Neighbourhood in 2019, according to Jerzy Pomianowski, Executive Director of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED). Some of… Read more »
Pandemics are democratizing experiences and can also catalyze social change. The Atlantic’s Ed Yong writes: People, businesses, and institutions have been remarkably quick to adopt or call for practices that… Read more »
Calling for “discipline and responsibility” in the face of the coronavirus, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday announced the postponement of a referendum next month on whether he… Read more »
