Category: Poland

Understanding Central Europe’s illiberal metamorphosis

     

To understand Central Europe ’s illiberal metamorphosis, bear in mind that the region’s political imperative for almost three decades was “Imitate the West!” That process went by different names –… Read more »

‘Neo-autocracy’: turning democracy into a tool of oppression

     

Władysław Frasyniuk (above) championed democracy in the face of Communist rule in Poland in the 80s. Now, he warns the freedom he fought for is starting to slip away. (The… Read more »

Beginning of the end for CEE populists?

     

  The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), wants to adopt a resolution in defense of liberal democracies, Euronews reports. The largest political grouping in the EU is reacting to mounting… Read more »

Conservative civil society pushing back against Western liberal norms

     

The rapid rise of Brazil’s new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro may have surprised some observers but it did not come out of thin air. His success follows years of support… Read more »

What’s at stake in Poland’s democracy

     

Poland’s right-wing government has the chance to explain itself to its European Union peers on Tuesday for the second time in three months amid concern over changes to the judiciary… Read more »

A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come

     

Monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, democracy—these were all familiar to Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. But the illiberal one-party state, now found all over the world—think of China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe—was first developed by… Read more »

Populism is (or is not) the legacy of the global financial crisis? Discuss

     

The process set in train by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers has produced two big losers — liberal democracy and open international borders. The culprits, who include bankers,… Read more »

Illiberal alliances underpinning populist revolts’ ‘cultural revolution’

     

There are many similarities between American consultant-turned-ideologue Steve Bannon and Hungarian liberal-turned-ultraconservative Viktor Orban. Both have a missionary mind-set; both are interested in ideas; both are obsessed with what they… Read more »

Will liberal democracy survive ‘Illiberal International’ onslaught?

     

An Illiberal International is now advancing and one of the first to sound the alarm was Yascha Mounk, the author of The People vs Democracy (2018) and a lecturer on government at… Read more »