Poland’s anti-constitutional breakdown triggers three major questions: what exactly has happened, why it has happened, and what are the prospects of a return to liberal democracy? These answers are formulated… Read more »
Democratic politics is under attack – this time from populist nationalists, authoritarian regimes and new forms of political communication. It was not meant to be like this, according to Rethinking… Read more »
In both Eastern and Western Europe, social-democratic parties have shifted to the center on economic policy, not only sapping the electoral strength of these parties, but also opening up political… Read more »
Western populism is impossible to understand as a direct result of domestic problems. Rather, it is a reaction to the global redistribution of power that is still taking shape, argues… Read more »
There’s no such thing as an illiberal democracy. It’s a contradiction in terms, according to Central European University’s Michael Ignatieff, You either have a democracy with those institutions or you… Read more »
Faced with the dispiriting state of global democracy,* worried observers fret over three basic questions: Why is this democratic recession happening? How bad is it? And where is it heading?… Read more »
Democracy’s global travails continue to mount, notes a leading observer. What looked as recently as a decade ago to be real democratic progress in countries as diverse as Brazil, Hungary, South Africa, and Turkey has… Read more »
The emergence of authoritarian capitalism and illiberal populism is raising fresh questions about the relationship between democracy, predicated on political equality, and the market, a driver of socio-economic inequality. But… Read more »
Just as optimism over communism’s collapse and liberal democracy’s triumph masked underlying realities, so does Robert Kagan’s pessimism that strongmen are striking back warp understanding, argues Sheri Berman, a professor of political… Read more »
It is easy to be complacent about democracy, to imagine that it has become permanent and irreversible. But in politics nothing is guaranteed to last for ever, and what seems… Read more »
