In a time of public impatience and online mobilization, the region’s governments are feeding frustrations with an outdated leadership approach.
Tag: democracy
As the world is distracted by COVID-19 and regional leftists turn a blind eye, the Cuban regime relaunches its secretive practice of civil-society repression.
China may be relieved to see their bitter adversary withdraw from power. But President Donald Trump was also Exhibit A for the Chinese regime to show the Western democratic system on the verge of collapse.
Reflections on an election from far away, but still so close.
PARIS — Watching the non-stop coverage of the U.S. election, a line from Shakespeare kept flicking at my mind. It’s a grim image from that tragic tale of love, hate and disinformation, Romeo and Juliet: “A plague o” both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me.” Now, the graphic allegory was unfolding on […]
By prematurely declaring victory, while the counting of votes is still ongoing, Donald Trump is taking a leaf out of an autocrat’s playbook.
-Analysis- PARIS — It was the kind of headline that risks fading into your news feed as if it were barely news: “Ivory Coast: As Presidential Election Approaches, International Criminal Court Worries About Violence,” Jeune Afrique magazine announced last week. And so it followed, as votes were cast this past weekend in President Alassane Ouattara’s […]
Sweden’s youth see caring for the old and sick as the business of the public sector. But as the welfare state gets weaker, the elderly can rely on neither the system nor the family.
-Essay- PARIS —The rendez-vous was for last January 21, on the anniversary of Louis XVI’s death. A friend had tipped me off that hundreds of French citizens gather each year in Paris to honor their last king and lament their fallen monarchy. Les Royalistes held mass for Louis and Marie-Antoinette, followed by pro-monarchy street protests. […]
Every U.S. election carries consequences beyond America’s borders. But Nov. 3 stands out for multiple reasons: a lethal pandemic has killed more than one million people across the world, once thriving economies are in tatters, U.S. isolationism has created an international power vacuum that is allowing right-wing autocrats to thrive across continents. And then, there’s […]
The questions continue to pile up around the U.S. social media giant’s role in undermining public discourse and the proper functioning of society.
Though it may undermine free speech, Ethiopians seem accepting of government-ordered Internet shutdowns to curb rioting fomented online.
After the Aug. 18 coup d’état in Mali, a growing popular protest movement that emerged in June may be quickly forgotten.
Few outside his native Italy had heard of Matteo Salvini before he emerged in 2018 as the new global star of far-right populism. Catapulted by the election success of his League party, the scruffy and sardonic northerner had grown into Italy’s most talked-about and incendiary politician, solidifying power in his role as interior minister in […]
Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong on May 28 to counteract its secessionist tendencies. What is at stake here for the former British colony?
President López Obrador has failed spectacularly to manage the pandemic and its economic repercussions.
President Trump’s scuppered impeachment may provide a cue to regional leaders working to undermine their own democracies.
Welcome to Monday, where the army seizes power in Myanmar coup, weekend protests rock Russia and it’s revealed that Messi scored really big in Barcelona. We also take a look at Big Brother in China, and how citizens have had enough of the country’s ubiquitous surveillance system. The fragility of American democracy is nothing new […]
With automated electronic surveillance systems, suspicion does not precede data collection but is generated by the analysis of the data itself.
Welcome to Monday, where AMLO gets COVID, Chinese miners are rescued, and King Kong finds a worthy opponent. Les Echos also takes us to Syria, where coronavirus and a crumbling economy are wreaking havoc in a country already devastated by 10 years of civil war. Viktor Orban, Xi Jinping and a simple question for the […]
The island nation hasn’t had a free election for more than 70 years. And yet, as millions take to the streets across the region, the Cuban regime keeps getting a pass.
New tech may soon be able to predict future political problems and independently develop solutions before issues even arise. But what does that mean for democracy?
If societies really want to tackle inequality, they’ll need to do more than just improve access to new technologies.
The weakness of institutions in Mexico once gave its presidents leeway to reform the state. Today President López Obrador is using it as a tool to accumulate more and more power of his own.
The editor of Mada Masr, a Worldcrunch partner publication based in Cairo, explains how they wound up making news itself last month.
From Venezuela to Hungary, populist leaders are carving away at fundamental checks and balances in slow and often subtle ways.
CAIRO — Something big — that we do not yet fully understand — is happening in Egypt’s halls of power. Maybe we know some of it, and will get to know more with time. Perhaps we won’t learn more at any time in the near future. What we do know is that the build-up to […]
Partisans of political moderation are mistaken if they are looking for the ideals of the European liberal tradition in today’s neoliberalism.
Compared to measures being taken in the Kashmir Valley, China’s handling of the Hong Kong protests seems remarkably permissive.
A traditional party and a populist movement may join forces to get Italy out of its political crisis and avoid yet another election.
Ekrem Imamoglu’s victory in the recent rerun election in Istanbul was a breath of fresh air for Turkish democracy. But to really recover lost ground, the country needs a new set of rules, writes Yakup Kepenek.
For the first time in 25 years, the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not be running Turkey’s biggest city. With his landmark victory in Sunday’s election rerun, Ekrem Imamoglu will be the new mayor of Istanbul, with significance that reaches well beyond the city’s 15 million residents. Imamoglu, who won easily 54% to […]
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Why Sudan Should Matter To Us All
Beyond the geopolitical ramifications, what’s happening in Sudan is our problem too. Between the violence from those in charge and the meaning of citizen movements, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Opinion shapers have a habit these days of disregarding facts, be they scientific or economic. Opinions matter, of course, but shouldn’t supersede well-founded knoweldge.
Unless Argentina finds the right leaders to undertake crucial reforms of the state and public life, it may face mass anger and democratic degradation seen elsewhere.
Venezuela’s fate is becoming a strategic stake and source of conflict between Western democracies and increasingly aligned rivals, China and Russia.
PARIS — European history has shown, time and again, that anti-Semitism is an indicator that the social state has become unstable. It’s therefore not shocking that it’s developing today in France, linked in particular to fringes of the anti-establishment yellow vest movement. The paths laid between a society in crisis and anti-Semitism have been laid […]
With the rise of social networking, fake news and changing psychologies, political parties have little use now for traditional campaigns.
As evidenced by this year’s elections in Mexico and Brazil, people across the region are increasingly disenchanted with traditional parties and the democratic status quo.
Even as it contends still with Brexit and the rise of right-wing populists, the European Union did enjoy some ‘almost good news’ this year.