Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

Is the West losing the fight for democracy?

     

Coronavirus-related pressures are having a detrimental effect on democracies around the world, argues Steven Feldstein, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. “Pandemic-fueled… Read more »

Locking Down or Rising Up? Protest movements adapt to COVID-19

     

With #COVID19 inflicting severe economic pain in countries around the world and brutally exposing governance failures, the numbers of unsettled people are on track to rise rather than fall despite… Read more »

Who is undermining democracy in CEE & Eurasia? Stalinization of Russia’s historical propaganda.

     

Hungary was the first democratic victim of the coronavirus. It may not be the last, Boise State’s Steven Feldstein writes for Foreign Policy. China’s foreign policy has increasingly weakened democratic… Read more »

Post-Covid era: 1945 or 1918?

     

An astonishing 71% of Europeans are now in favor of introducing a universal basic income, according to an opinion poll designed by my research team at Oxford University. In Britain, the… Read more »

Great Power Competition: Will pandemic give democracies advantage?

     

Democracy was in retreat, and autocrats were on the march, before the coronavirus appeared, notes analyst Ruchir Sharma. To contain it, leaders of all political styles have assumed previously unthinkable… Read more »

Explaining democratic resilience in an age of crisis

     

Older democracies are better equipped to cope with crises like the current Covid-19 pandemic, while the risk of institutional breakdown is greater in new democracies with weak civil society and weak… Read more »

Destined for autocracy? Scenarios for post-Covid Russia

     

A new Russian landscape is emerging that demands patient observation, even if is still unclear what comes next amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, notes Lilia Shevtsova (above, left), the Richard von… Read more »

China faces rising wave of hostility, but U.S. at ‘strategic disadvantage’?

     

An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation,… Read more »

How to counter China’s strategy for ‘hollowing out’ Hong Kong

     

Beijing’s top political office in Hong Kong has called protesters a “political virus” and said the semi-autonomous city will never be calm until “poisonous” and “violent” black-clad demonstrators are eliminated, the… Read more »

‘Dropping the Democratic Facade’:  Nations in Transit 2020

     

In its latest report, Nations in Transit 2020: Dropping the Democratic Facade, Freedom House warns of a “stunning democratic breakdown” across Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as many leaders… Read more »