A post-pandemic democratic renaissance?
As leading authoritarian states exploit that Covid-19 pandemic to pursue a strategy of “co-option, coercion, and concealment,” as H.R. McMaster has summarized it, the old liberal order may rapidly… Read more »
China’s ‘hub and spoke strategy’: COVID-19 geopolitical turning point?
COVID-19 signals a global paradigm shift because even before the pandemic, the world was already in the grips of a far-reaching transformation, analyst Ullrich Fichtner writes for Der Spiegel. The… Read more »
Great Power Populism: A ‘danger coeval with political life’?
Political scientists Jan-Werner Müller cautioned that populism is a “permanent shadow of modern representative democracy, and a constant peril,” while Shawn Rosenberg warned that “democracy seems now poised, as it… Read more »
‘He Found One of Stalin’s Mass Graves. Now He’s in Jail.’
An amateur but very determined historian, Yuri Dmitriev, finally found the gruesome prize he had long been searching for — burial mounds containing the remains of political prisoners executed by… Read more »
‘Beginning of the end’ for Hong Kong? Two systems ‘dead as a Dodo’
Hong Kong activists are planning to take advantage of forthcoming opportunities to counter the recent crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. “We’re only at half-time in the match,” one activist suggested…. Read more »
Reclaiming Democracy: COVID-19 and the Liberal Future
Just over a year ago, opposition candidates won the mayoralties of İstanbul, Ankara, and nine other cities across Turkey in a striking political upset for President Erdoğan, notes the Project… Read more »
COVID-19 pandemic reveals malfeasance, misrule & maladroit propaganda
In the absence of global democratic leadership, China is taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to proclaim the superiority of its authoritarian model, notes Keith B. Richburg, director of the… Read more »
Inside Wuhan: China’s struggle to control the virus — and the narrative
Hao Jun, in his late forties, is one of a small but tight-knit group of dissidents based in Wuhan who took it upon themselves to document the earliest days of… Read more »
Autocratic assertion meets democratic dereliction
The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general… Read more »
The Peronist & the pandemic: Argentina’s new hegemony or social chaos?
Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, and the country he leads are entering a dangerous new phase, the Economist reports. Pressure to ease the lockdown is building before the pandemic has peaked…. Read more »