Public protests and prospects for reform in Iran
Over the last few months, Iran has experienced a series of street protests in rural areas and social arenas once seen as the key support base for the Islamic Republic,… Read more »
Category: Penn Kemble Forum
Information warfare ‘by other memes’
Facebook Inc. warned on Monday that it could offer no assurance that social media was on balance good for democracy, but the company said it was trying what it could… Read more »
The Rise of Ethnonationalism and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Ethnonationalism is another of several distinctive challenges to liberal democracy, notes Stewart M. Patrick, Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. He… Read more »
Advancing democracy vs national security a false dilemma
The argument that national security imperatives such as fighting terrorism demand a “hard power” focus at the expense of “soft power” subjects such as democracy promotion rests on a false juxtaposition, says a… Read more »
Ukraine: Europe’s East Faces Unsettled West
The Kremlin’s attempts to destroy Ukraine’s European aspirations is simply one of Russia’s many challenges to the post-World War II international liberal order, notes analyst Natalie A. Jaresko. The actions… 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 »
Romania: when the population turns against the populists
What happens when the population turns against the populists? Just such a drama is playing out in Romania, a country of 20 million people where hundreds of thousands have poured… Read more »
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 »
Why US-Russia spat is not a return to the cold war
After the cold war ended, the competition in ideas stopped, notes Peter Pomerantsev, author of ‘Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.’ There was only one democratic capitalist model out… Read more »
How Putin does it: well-trained in ideological warfare
Cold War notions of “fake news” and “Soviet-style propaganda” are back in style, except now people say them about shiny new concepts such as cyberattacks and WikiLeaks. Whether or not… Read more »