The surprise disclosure on Sunday that the Communist Party was abolishing constitutional limits on presidential terms — effectively allowing President Xi Jinping to lead China indefinitely — was the latest and arguably… Read more »
Authoritarian regimes born of revolutions such as Cuba’s often survive for decades, but they struggle once the revolutionary generation dies off — especially if they cannot find an alternative source of legitimacy,… Read more »
Many scholars and pundits have recently declared that democracy is in crisis. According to analyses that draw on data from the Varieties of Democracy Project, the average level of democracy across the world has not necessary declined,… Read more »
Despite illiberal trends in Europe, surveys suggest citizens are becoming more engaged. The overall picture is one of both crisis and renewal, according to Carnegie analysts Richard Youngs and Sarah… Read more »
A well-known Chinese rights lawyer died suddenly in hospital of liver failure on Monday (Feb 26), Reuters reports: Li Baiguang, a Christian human rights lawyer who had met regularly with high-level officials… Read more »
Vladimir Putin doesn’t tweet and he claims he doesn’t have a smartphone. But he has something likely more important than gadgets — long experience in the KGB and its post-Soviet… Read more »
A “shocking new report” from Canada’s intelligence service cites China’s domestically-focused propaganda as an example of the “total” information warfare posing an existential threat to Western democratic pluralism. Ever… Read more »
In a “shocking new report,” the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is warning that the spread of disinformation online poses an existential threat to “Western democratic pluralism,” according to The… Read more »
The use of disinformation—“active measures”, in the KGB jargon* of Vladimir Putin’s professional past—to weaken the West was a constant of Soviet policy, one that the would-be victims fought back… Read more »
Surveying America’s political history, Larry Diamond of Stanford University divines “a general pattern of resilience, punctuated by dark periods of authoritarian temptation,” The Economist notes: Indeed the two are related;… Read more »