“While representing political prisoners in the Soviet Union 45 years ago, I noted that ‘vacation time in the West is prison time in the Soviet Union,’ with the regime imprisoning… Read more »
Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s right-hand diplomat who led rare negotiations with China that proved frustrating and fruitless, was effectively a foreign minister for the Tibetan spiritual leader and became… Read more »
More than 120 state and local election officials, communications directors, IT managers, and secretaries of state ran drills simulating security catastrophes that could happen on the worst Election Day imaginable,… Read more »
Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential victory in Brazil is part of a growing trend of authoritarian leaders being democratically elected across the world, notes Latin America expert Pablo Galarce. “[What] has happened… Read more »
Anecdotally, Egyptians appear far more concerned about security and economic issues than they are about their diminished civil liberties, argues Barak Barfi, a research fellow at the New America Foundation…. Read more »
Following the crushing victory of right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Sunday’s runoff presidential election, Brazil’s Latin American neighbors are bracing for a regional “Bolsonaro effect,” AFP reports: The knock-on effect… Read more »
There’s a rising angst in foreign policy circles over the status of democracy around the world, CNBC reports. “This is an authoritarian era, all things being equal. Democracy is in… Read more »
Authoritarian rule is not imposed on Russians from above but is solicited from below by the people themselves, claims Sergey Karaganov, a former Putin advisor and one of Russia’s leading… Read more »
Democracies can collapse or erode beyond repair, but they can also suffer substantial yet “non-fatal” deterioration in the quality of democratic institutions, and then experience a rebound, according to Tom… Read more »
Two prominent advocates of freedom and human rights were honored on Thursday at the 8th annual Oxi Day Courage Awards, held at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington DC, notes… Read more »
