Category: Civil Society

In the conflict between ‘capitalist democracy’ and communism, capitalism won. But…..

     

The emerging competition between American and Chinese models of capitalism, the problem of inequality in developed societies, and the cultural contradictions of meritocracy, were the focus of The American Interest’s Damir… Read more »

Democracy for Palestinians? Election talk rekindles hope

     

The European Union is pressuring the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership to hold legislative and presidential elections, as the body appears to be moving toward a more strong-armed approach to Palestinian affairs… Read more »

Advancing Arab democracy: interests vs. ideals

     

The Arab Spring uprisings began a century after Woodrow Wilson began a push to promote democracy abroad, believing this would foster world peace and stability. Over the last 100 years,… Read more »

2019’s ‘tsunami of protests’: democracy’s new hope or false dawn?

     

When historians look back at 2019, the story of the year will be the tsunami of protests that swept across six continents and engulfed both liberal democracies and ruthless autocracies,… Read more »

Which nation improved the most in 2019?

     

Two countries became notably less despotic in 2019. In Sudan mass protests led to the ejection of Omar al-Bashir, one of the world’s vilest tyrants. However, the risk that thugs from… Read more »

China’s Civilizational Challenge – a great leap forward to ….. ?

     

Beijing’s response to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests demonstrates that far from enabling China’s peaceful reunification, the “one country, two systems” model is undermining it, argues Chin-Huat Wong, a professor of… Read more »

Market democracies’ ‘Faustian bargain’ being questioned

     

The United States ranks 15 in the Human Freedom Index 2019 released today by the Cato Institute, Canada’s Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom…. Read more »

‘The End of Techo-Utopianism’: Can technology destroy democracy?

     

….or will algorithms someday be used to optimize the ballot box, The Economist asks in a must-read long essay: @TheEconomist When it comes to eroding an existing democracy, rather than… Read more »

Is advancing democracy a moral foreign policy?

     

It is a mistake to conflate militarized forms of regime change with advancing democracy, observers suggest. The morality of a president’s foreign policy should be gauged on a rubric based… Read more »

China ramping up blueprint for digital totalitarian state

     

Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private… Read more »