Terms like “democratic recession” and “backsliding” are misleading and breed fatalism, diverting attention from potential paths out of the new authoritarianism, says a leading analyst. Authoritarians have now shown that… Read more »
Have all of the gains of democracy’s Third Wave been erased? The recent report from the Varieties of Democracy made a stir with some of its headline findings. Perhaps the most… Read more »
Global democracy is under siege. According to Freedom House’s authoritative “Freedom in the World” report, 8 of 10 people in the world now live in countries rated either “Not Free”… Read more »
How does political polarization affect democracy over the long-term? The findings of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data set are “not encouraging,” say Carnegie analysts Jennifer McCoy and Benjamin Press. Severe polarization… Read more »
Fears of COVID-19’s damaging impact on democracy were overstated, argues one observer. But whether you call it democratic erosion, democratic breakdown, or de-democratization, the pre-existing condition remains a threat, others… Read more »
Young people are less satisfied with democracy and more disillusioned than at any other time in the past century, especially in Europe, North America, Africa and Australia, a study by… Read more »
Does the Covid pandemic illustrate the fragility of liberty in the advanced democracies or its resilience? The world that is being ushered in as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic is… Read more »
Excessive use of emergency powers and limitations of media freedoms have raised concerns that Covid-19 is infecting democracy itself, a new analysis observes. How do government responses to Covid-19 violate… Read more »
Given current illiberal threats to democracy “it is easy to conjecture a Weimar Republic landscape breeding national populist types. Perhaps too easy,” analysts Levy Yeyati and Andres Malamud recently wrote… Read more »
Recent trends – not last democratic backsliding and autocratic resurgence – are enough to make one think that David Stasavage’s new book should have been about the rise and subsequent… Read more »