Who will save Tunisia’s democracy?
Tunisia’s president has been carrying out a creeping coup, demolishing the country’s hard-fought democratic gains bit by bit. With an economy in turmoil and a splintered opposition, is there… Read more »
Russia’s coming post-Putin power struggle
Succession is sometimes said to be the Achilles’ heel of autocracies, especially personalist ones, notes Syracuse University professor Brian D. Taylor, the author of The Code of Putinism. And a nontrivial… Read more »
Will Macron victory stem illiberal tide?
There were sighs of relief throughout the European Union after President Emmanuel Macron beat back a serious challenge in France from the populist far-right champion Marine Le Pen. Then another populist… Read more »
Beijing’s latest export – techno-authoritarianism
China’s authoritarian surveillance state crushed Covid-19 when it first appeared in Wuhan in early 2020 and trumpeted that success to the world. Now, more than two years later, the Omicron variant… Read more »
Lifeline for embattled civil society
The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has joined a civil society consortium led by Freedom House that implements Lifeline the Embattled CSO Assistance Fund. With the support of nineteen governments… Read more »
Treating Russia as ‘a collective Putin will be a strategic blunder’
Is Russia on the road to dictatorship? The immense pressures generated by the war and Western sanctions could eventually bring about domestic political change in Russia, but the conceivable scenarios… Read more »
Helping North Korea’s defectors survive the ‘time machine’
A deeply connected and influential network serving a third of South Korea’s defector community, Woorion is a one-stop information hub, connecting North Koreans with the resources and community they… Read more »
Resilient Ukraine – one of the ‘opening salvos in seismic struggle of our time’
“Ukrainian democracy continues” as Russia is failing to achieve nearly all of its war objectives in Ukraine, a senior White House official said on Sunday. “In our view, Russia has already… Read more »
Will French election reveal ‘dangerous fissures’ in Western democracy?
U.S. officials are anxiously watching the French presidential election, aware that the outcome of the vote on Sunday could reveal dangerous fissures in Western democracy, The New York Times reports: President… Read more »
The Revenge of Power: How malign 3P power made the world safe for autocracy
Savvy autocrats have deployed the three P’s of populism, polarization and post-truth to cultivate ‘stealthocracy’ – maintaining liberal democracy’s institutional architecture while gutting the substance of such norms as accountability,… Read more »