Category: COVID-19

Coping with COVID-19: democracies ‘hold a clear advantage’

     

China and some of its acolytes are pointing to Beijing’s success in coming to grips with the coronavirus pandemic as a strong case for authoritarian rule. Yet democracies do appear… Read more »

Covid-19 crisis could ‘help restore democratic leadership’

     

  The coronavirus crisis could still help restore democratic leadership in the world, says William Burns (left), a distinguished veteran of the U.S. State Department and National Endowment for Democracy… Read more »

‘Authoritarian entrepreneurship’: How coronavirus contaminates democracy

     

Open societies “are more likely to find answers (to the #covid19 crisis) more quickly” than authoritarian ones because they encourage “ creativity and cooperation, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) board… Read more »

Dismantling democracy? Covid-19 used as excuse to quell dissent

     

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 »

Do autocracies or democracies handle pandemics better?

     

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 »

Hard truths about China’s ‘soft power’: How Beijing exploits pandemic

     

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 »

Democratic adaptability vs autocratic ruthlessness: Coronavirus impacts great power competition

     

The major dividing line in effective crisis response will not place autocracies on one side and democracies on the other, argues Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama. Rather, there will be some high-performing… Read more »

The political lessons of the coronavirus pandemic

     

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 »