How to temper idealism with the demands of responsible statecraft—without abandoning our commitment to democracy and human rights? is the question posed by Ivan Krastev, the Henry A. Kissinger Chair… Read more »
The “politics of imitation” is a phrase that recurs innumerable times in The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy by Ivan Krastev (above) and Stephen Holmes,… Read more »
Viewed from today’s perspective, it seems clear that liberalism and nationalism are enemies. But that was not always the case. As recently as 1989, liberalism and nationalism were allies in… Read more »
There’s has been extensive and ongoing debate about “what went wrong in Central and Eastern Europe” and what explains its various forms of illiberalism and democratic decline. A variety of,… Read more »
Central and Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy has not been smooth. But there are grounds for hope, notes Alison Smale. What would Vaclav Havel have made of post-1989 developments? she asked… Read more »
Thirty years after the Berlin Wall fell, ending the Cold War in Europe, new political divisions are rising between East and West. Despite the economic success of German reunification and… Read more »
In Samuel Huntington’s 1991 article on “Democracy’s Third Wave,” he argued that democratic declines are characterized by social and political polarization; the exclusion of populist and leftist movements by the… Read more »
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, central and eastern Europeans believe that democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law are under threat, according to a… Read more »
No empire in history has disintegrated as quickly or as bloodlessly as the Soviet one, in the remarkable year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989…. Read more »
The west’s mistake after 1989 was not that we celebrated what happened in central Europe – and subsequently in the Baltic republics and the former Soviet Union – as a… Read more »