Growing threats to civil society
A healthy and functioning civil society is vital for human rights and democracy everywhere, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission writes: Civil society organizations (CSOs) play a crucial role in… Read more »
Category: Hungary
‘Constrainment’: A new Western strategy to counter Putin’s Russia?
A growing majority of French voters see Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front as a threat to democracy, but a third approve of its ideas, a poll showed on Tuesday, Reuters… Read more »
Hungarian law targets foreign-backed NGOs
The Hungarian government is moving to limit the influence of nongovernmental organizations that promote democracy and the rule of law, Lili Bayer writes for POLITICO: This week, parliament is expected… Read more »
Is ‘Populist International’ Undermining Western Democracy?
Europe’s populists share ideas and ideology, friends and funders, notes analyst Anne Applebaum. They cross borders to appear at one another’s rallies. They have deep contacts in Russia — they… Read more »
What the West can do to contain Russia’s aggression, disinformation
Even before the December 2011 protests — and his own reelection as president in March 2012 — Vladimir Putin had begun signaling the return of a more authoritarian and aggressive… Read more »
Why Poland is not Hungary
Contemporary commentary on central and eastern Europe tends to come down with a heavy hand, say analysts Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski and In his recent snapshot, “Poland’s Constitutional Crisis,” Daniel Kelemen… Read more »
Illiberal international seeks ‘cultural counter-revolution’
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an… Read more »
Populism – a danger to democracy
The conventional wisdom that populists want to bring politics closer to the people or even clamor for direct democracy could not be more mistaken, notes Jan Werner Müller, a professor… Read more »
Making democracy work in Central and Eastern Europe
In Central and Eastern Europe, conservative nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland are causing alarm in western European capitals that democracy itself is under sustained challenge in the post-communist half of Europe,… Read more »
The West’s Weimar moment?
The emergence of a virulent new strain of authoritarian populism on both sides of the Atlantic has prompted many observers to draw (largely inappropriate and far-fetched) analogies with the… Read more »