“Always prepared!” For decades, it was a catchphrase of the Pioneers, an outdoorsy youth group that was a hallmark of communist indoctrination efforts targeting schoolchildren throughout the U.S.S.R. and its… Read more »
After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central and eastern Europe were never fully realized – and now we are seeing the backlash, argue Ivan Krastev and Stephen… Read more »
Like 1776, 1789 and 1917, the year 1989 was one of those rare moments that mark a decisive turning point in human history. So, at least, it seemed at the… Read more »
Russian government-backed cyber aggression is heightening concerns from the west following a spate of high-profile incidents, prompting threats of countermeasures from the likes of Nato, the EU and UK, the… Read more »
For countries emerging from communism, the post-1989 imperative to ‘be like the West’ has generated discontent and even a ‘return of the repressed’, as the region feels old nationalist stirrings… Read more »
The recent European parliamentary elections offered some optimistic liberals a chance to gloat, Ishaan Tharoor writes for The Washington Post: “The so-called populist wave, I think it was contained,” declared… Read more »
The only way for the European Union to survive as a liberal actor in an increasingly illiberal environment is by transforming itself from a missionary who wants to shape the… Read more »
A new analysis challenges the “enduring myth” that the European Union’s eastern member states are less favorable to the democratic values set out in Article Two of the Treaties of… Read more »
Conventional wisdom has long held that democratic consolidation is a one-way street and that democratic states, once reaching a certain level of GDP per capita, are immune to democratic breakdown…. Read more »
The Balkans has once again become a playground for great power politics, says analyst Ivan Krastev. European Union policy toward the Balkans is more driven by ideology than in any other… Read more »