Use soft power to challenge Pyongyang’s grip on information, top North Korea defector says

     

A high-ranking North Korean defector is recommending that U.S. lawmakers greatly increase the dissemination of information inside the isolated country, saying funding for such efforts pales in comparison to U.S. military… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Culture or economics? What is populism and how did it happen?

     

  In the face of populist fantasists and authoritarians, liberal democrats must draw inspiration from Cicero and Jefferson and reaffirm the wonders of democracy, argues Philip Collins, the author of… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Why Catalonia does not deserve independence – an established constitutional democracy attacked

     

Separatists across Europe, from Scotland to Silesia, have been watching the independence bid launched this month by Catalan secessionists with interest, so too have European leaders, who feared it might… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Time to contest China’s vision of global leadership

     

At the 19th Communist Party Congress, China’s President Xi Jinping declared that a “new era” had begun. Xi set out a vision of a political system directly opposed to Western values of democracy… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Ideas and prospects for democratic renewal

     

The assumption that autocracy is a feasible alternative to liberal democracy is understandable. When representative democracy fell before, it fell in that direction. It also fits the trend of events… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Testing Latin America’s democratic resilience

     

Latin America is about to embark on an extended series of critical electoral contests that will tell us a lot about the state of democracy in the region, notes Ted… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

DRC needs citizen-led transition, civil society tells Nikki Haley

     

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told the Democratic Republic of Congo to hold elections next year, rather than delay them until 2019, if it wanted to… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Countdown to Annihilation: Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide

     

  It was already evident in October 2015 that the Rohingya were experiencing genocide in Myanmar, according to Alicia de la Cour Venning, Thomas MacManus and Penny Green, researchers at the International State Crime… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

China’s secret ‘magic weapon’ for global soft power

     

Xi Jinping is quietly ramping up the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party in a push for global “soft power”, The FT’s James Kynge writes in a… Read more »

Print Friendly, PDF & Email