Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

How Russian trolls weaponize virus lies

     

China isn’t the only authoritarian regime to take advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its sharp power in an effort to undermine democratic norms and institutions. Russia’s decade-long health… Read more »

Has Xi Jinping won coronavirus ‘battle of narratives’?

     

Chinese officials claim that their “success” in containing the coronavirus outbreak and Western countries’ ongoing “failure” to do so attests to the superiority of the so-called China model of one-party… Read more »

The democracy undercutting China’s claims to superiority

     

China has been buying up ads on U.S. social-media sites and adopting online tactics reminiscent of Russian disinformation campaigns in an apparent attempt to shape the story internationally about the… Read more »

Democracy during pandemic – a help or hindrance?

     

The coronavirus has given rise to a flood of conspiracy theories, disinformation and propaganda, eroding public trust and undermining health officials in ways that could elongate and even outlast the… Read more »

‘Weaponizing insecurity’: Covid-19 tests legitimacy of all modes of governance

     

Autocratic and illiberal leaders are using the coronavirus crisis to weaponize insecurity, says journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. She talks to Financial Times’ columnist Gideon Rachman  about the threat to… Read more »

COVID-19 ‘infodemic’: West in disarray over autocrats’ ‘battle of narratives’

     

The West has largely been in disarray in responding to autocratic disinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting calls for the U.S. to launch a “multilateral” initiative with like-minded democracies to… Read more »

Pandemic populist pandemonium? Dictators using coronavirus to strengthen grip

     

A contagion on the scale of the coronavirus may offer authoritarians a greater opportunity than any event short of war, Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council… 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 »