Latest in authoritarianism
Brazilian Supreme Court justices recently decided to intervene to prevent an authoritarian government, which could be the first move in a process of democratic consolidation or, by contrast, the seeds of a later autocracy using judicial authority in its favor.
Digital transnational repression has a chilling effect on exiled and diaspora activists and dissidents who find themselves repressed by authoritarian states, even in places where they assumed they had a relative degree of safety and freedom.
Time is growing short to craft a vision for safeguarding the information environment that enables democracy and to prepare concrete proposals that will counter the authoritarian vision of central control.
Openness need not empower authoritarian abuse of international institutions. Democratic leadership can contest the erosion of liberal values.
The world should treat such power grabs like a coup d’état.
A Review of “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday, 2020)
On April 23, Egypt’s National Election Authority announced that a package of amendments to the country’s 2014 constitution had been approved in a national referendum.
Editor’s Note: Immigrants are often portrayed as a threat to democracy, particularly if they come from "shithole" countries as our president has so charmingly put it. This view, however, ignores the very power of democracy and the attractiveness of its values for those who have only known tyranny. Margaret Peters of UCLA and Michael Miller of GWU find that an excellent way to spread democracy is to take in more migrants from dictatorships.
BERLIN – We live in an age when autocracies could be ushered in by the most fundamental expression of democratic participation—voting.
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A review of Oleg Khlevniuk's Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (Yale University Press, reprint edition, 2016).
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