Category: Democratic Transitions

South Korea’s president impeached. What you need to know.

     

On Friday, South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld the legislature’s impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, notes Celeste Arrington, an assistant professor of political science at George Washington University. After months… Read more »

Democratic modernity ‘not enough’ for CEE

     

The illiberal, populist drift in Central and Eastern Europe is a consequence of disillusion with the European Union as well as historical legacies, says a prominent analyst. “These countries had… Read more »

Kazakhstan’s ‘authoritarian lite’ regime hints at cosmetic change

     

Kazakhstan’s leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is the country’s only president since independence — elected five times with 97.5 percent of the vote. Nazarbayev has created a kind of “authoritarian lite” system… Read more »

The third counter-wave to democracy and liberalism. What’s next?

     

If history shows that successive waves of democracy are followed by anti-democratic reaction, the current surge of authoritarian, illiberal or populist politics should suggest that we’re eventually due a democratic… Read more »

Advancing democracy at the root of American ‘exceptionalism’

     

The classic liberal internationalist vision of a global Pax Democratica lies at the root of American “exceptionalism,” according to Tony Smith, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Tufts University, and… Read more »

How central Europe’s high hopes gave way to creeping authoritarianism

     

The central European states were the vanguards of communism’s collapse in the late 1980s, prompting a sense of inevitability about democracy’s benign coming, reinforced by the diverse figures who stepped… Read more »

Ukraine democratic transition ‘being driven from bottom-up’

     

Ukraine is set to launch its case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, seeking an order to halt Moscow’s support for pro-Russia separatists in… Read more »

Democracy challenged, but still in demand

     

Democracy promotion, long a pillar of America’s foreign policy framework, is viewed either as too soft or idealistic as a response to serious security threats facing the nation; or it… Read more »

Ukraine’s leaders ‘giving up on reuniting the country’?

     

Ukraine’s leaders may be giving up on reuniting the country, The Economist reports: Most Ukrainians say the war in Donbas, as the region is known, is the country’s most important… Read more »