Category: Civil Society

Democracies must resist China’s growing ‘infosphere’ of influence

     

China is “fed up” with hearing complaints from the United States about its Belt and Road program to re-create the old Silk Road, Reuters reports. The regime is bridling at… Read more »

What foreign policy approach toward backsliding liberal democracies?

     

Hungary’s illiberal premier Viktor Orban has rewritten Hungary’s constitution and dismantled judicial checks on power, stifled a once vibrant media, forced a top university out of the country, and criminalized the activities of some human rights organizations. Meanwhile, he… Read more »

Populism, polarization threaten Latin America’s democratic renewal

     

It was one of the greatest waves of democratization ever. In 1977 all but three of the 20 countries in Latin America were dictatorships of one kind or another. By… Read more »

Hong Kong crackdown: extradition law would extend Beijing’s ‘coercive reach’

     

A U.S. congressional commission fears that a proposed new extradition law in Hong Kong could extend China’s “coercive reach” into the financial hub and create serious risks for U.S. national… Read more »

Zelenskiy’s Ukraine well-placed to influence, compete with Russia

     

Ukraine is “the single most important front of [the] war against authoritarian expansion,” according to Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama. “Clearly it matters a lot to Putin that Ukraine does not… Read more »

Russia’s crony capitalism: from market economy to kleptocracy?

     

Russia’s main problem isn’t populism, but elitism in two basic forms, says analyst Emil Pain, the paternalist one in the state based on tradition and the “snobbish” version held many… Read more »

Delicate balancing act: freedom of press vs freedom from disinfomation

     

  This year’s World Press Freedom Day focuses on ‘journalism and elections in times of disinformation’, Teresa Mioli writes for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Western policymakers and… 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 »

Narratives can counter the disinformation dominating World Press Freedom Day

     

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it,”  said the celebrated satirist Jonathan Swift. A rising tide of fake news and disinformation is dominating World Press Freedom Day discussions taking… Read more »

A new chapter in Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy and autonomy

     

On April 9, a Hong Kong district court convicted nine core leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. On April 24, the court handed down prison sentences of… Read more »