Is Turkey heading toward autocracy?
A referendum in Turkey on April 16 will decide whether the country’s parliamentary system is replaced with a stronger presidency. This is something President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping for,… Read more »
Category: Journal of Democracy
Tzvetan Todorov – highlighted democracy’s ‘inner enemies’
Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian-French literary theorist and historian of ideas whose concerns in dozens of books ranged from fantasy in fiction to the moral consequences of colonialism, fanaticism and the… Read more »
Democracy ‘no longer the only game in town’
“Democracy is no longer the only game in town,” says Harvard political scientist Yascha Mounk. Mounk’s work first came to my attention this past summer, when he and Roberto Stefan… Read more »
Autocracies fear ‘existential threat’ of democratic contagion
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today, writes Brookings analyst Robert Kagan. One is the increasing ambition and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and… Read more »
How authoritarians consolidate
The murder in Yangon of Ko Ni (left), one of Myanmar’s most prominent Muslim voices and a legal adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, is ominous for the country’s democratic transition, The Financial Times… Read more »
Blacklisting Muslim Brotherhood ‘may backfire’
Proposals to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood are raising questions about appropriate strategies to counter violent extremism, The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in particular, is a strong supporter… Read more »
Democracies in a new global competition of ideas
Moscow has made information and asymmetrical warfare central to its foreign and military policy, analyst Fareed Zakaria writes for The Washington Post: The idea of information warfare is not new…. Read more »
Populism vs. post-democracy?
Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat… Read more »
Poland’s civil society ‘roars to life’
Thousands of Poles used yesterday’s anniversary of the imposition of martial law by the communist regime 35 years ago to protest against the current conservative government, the BBC reports: The… Read more »
Democratic deconsolidation: globalization to blame?
The process of deconsolidation now taking place across most liberal democracies is a very serious warning sign, analysts Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk write for the National Endowment for Democracy’s… Read more »