Pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats’ opportunity in disaster

     

Even as some leaders exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable, the Economist observes…. Read more »

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Call to free Iran’s women political prisoners: Virus ‘exacerbates regime’s legitimacy crisis’

     

The coronavirus is leading Iranians to question the relationship between state and religion, putting the theocratic state in “an unusual and awkward position“, observers suggest. The Islamic Republic had to… Read more »

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COVID-19’s new pretexts for consolidating autocrats’ power

     

Authoritarian-minded leaders around the world have used the coronavirus emergency to consolidate power. In Europe, the governments of Poland and Hungary have done that and more. They have managed to… Read more »

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Covid-19 exposing liberal order’s instabilities and weaknesses

     

The embeddedness of liberal democracies in an interdependent world characterized by relatively free cross-border flows of goods, services, assets and people has amplified the virulent effects of highly contagious deadly… Read more »

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Learn to live with despots or avoid ‘realist’ retreat?

     

Former State Policy Planning Director Steve Krasner (someone we have worked with and respect) has written a piece in Foreign Affairs (“Learning to Live with Despots”) that advocates realism as the… Read more »

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When elections hurt democracy

     

The Algerian government has begun investigating the funding of media organizations and news sources that it claims are using foreign funding to promote anti-government and anti-reform content. The authorities have… Read more »

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How China’s authoritarian model made Covid pandemic worse

     

China must be held accountable for the coronavirus outbreak, as thousands of lives could have been saved if it had acted earlier, says a leading human rights advocate. The Chinese… Read more »

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Russian, Chinese, Iranian disinformation narratives echoing each other

     

China, Iran and Russia are using the coronavirus crisis to launch a propaganda and disinformation onslaught against the United States, the State Department warns in a new analysis, POLITICO’s Betsy… Read more »

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Hong Kong’s constitutional crisis escalates

     

As the world has been engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities in Hong Kong have arrested prominent pro-democracy figures in politics, civil society and the media, waging a broad… Read more »

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