Authoritarians are resurgent because of the failure to create a new global system of democratic values, said former Solidarnosc leader and Polish president Lech Walesa. “Polish democracy in practical terms… Read more »
As a fresh wave of protests generates speculation about an Arab Spring 2.0, the challenge for MENA democrats is to move beyond calls for regime change and focus on building… Read more »
As Soviet communism following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the experience of Baltic “freedom fighters” like Vytautas Landsbergis of Lithuania and Lennart Meri of Estonia demonstrated the “almost unbridgeable… Read more »
Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy has not been smooth. But there are grounds for hope, notes Alison Smale. What would Vaclav Havel have made of post-1989 developments? she asked… Read more »
Thirty years after the Berlin Wall fell, ending the Cold War in Europe, new political divisions are rising between East and West. Despite the economic success of German reunification and… Read more »
The United States this week imposed sanctions on five Venezuelan officials in the latest step to pressure Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro to step down as the country’s leader, VOA reports… Read more »
Today, sophisticates on both the political Left and Right argue that the United States has no business supporting the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people, or that Iraqis were… Read more »
Sudan’s transition promises to be anything but easy. Economic problems that sparked initial protests in 2018 still await complex solutions, and the state bureaucracy remains weak. How will the military… Read more »
In Samuel Huntington’s 1991 article on “Democracy’s Third Wave,” he argued that democratic declines are characterized by social and political polarization; the exclusion of populist and leftist movements by the… Read more »
No empire in history has disintegrated as quickly or as bloodlessly as the Soviet one, in the remarkable year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989…. Read more »