Whether stated explicitly or implied, the theme that binds much of the pandemic malign influence currently targeting western nations is that democracy, both as a system of government and a set… Read more »
Coronavirus-related pressures are having a detrimental effect on democracies around the world, argues Steven Feldstein, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. “Pandemic-fueled… Read more »
The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general… Read more »
The death of Li Wenliang has shaken China like an earthquake. He was a young doctor who was reprimanded by Chinese police for alerting colleagues to a new virus that has… Read more »
As autocracies have learned to co-opt new technologies, they have become a more formidable threat to democracy. In particular, today’s dictatorships have grown more durable. Between 1946 and 2000—the year… Read more »
In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American… Read more »
Democracy has many advantages, but its pitfalls include a tendency toward short-term return over longer-term interests, being reactive rather than proactive, and being geared towards internal competition rather than cooperation,… Read more »
Democracies are dying at the hands of elected authoritarian populists who neuter or take over the institutions meant to constrain them, notes Stanford’s Larry Diamond. Yet mass prodemocracy protests… Read more »
The last time democracy nearly died all over the world and almost all at once, Americans argued about it, and then they tried to fix it, notes Jill Lepore, a… Read more »
Iran’s president warned Monday of threats to the Islamic Republic’s “democracy and national sovereignty,” after a body dominated by his ultra-conservative rivals disqualified thousands of candidates, weeks before elections, AFP… Read more »
