authoritarianism

Waiting for a New Poland

Five weeks after the opposition won Poland’s legislative elections, its supporters are looking ahead to the country’s future.

November 24, 2023

Invasion of the Democracy Snatchers

This week’s indictment details how Trump and his co-conspirators tried to destroy American democracy by creating empty replicas of its procedures and values.

August 4, 2023

The Political Education of William Ruto

Kenya’s new leadership got their start in the 1980s in the youth ranks of Daniel arap Moi’s authoritarian regime. Will they repeat the sins of their mentors?

March 8, 2023

The Return of the Marcoses

The level of support in the Philippines for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. cannot be explained by social media disinformation or sheer coercion alone. 

July 21, 2022

Co-opt & Corrupt

The Republican Party has become a “personalist” ruler’s dream. Politicians like Lindsey Graham need only contemplate the fate of their former peer, Jeff Sessions, to know what happens if they break ranks.

August 12, 2020

Authoritarians’ Covid-19 Crisis Power Grab

For authoritarian-minded leaders, the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power.

March 31, 2020

How Slovakians Beat the Oligarchs

At a time when democracy is under siege around the world, Slovakia’s spirited response is an important counterpoint, a small victory built on luck, guile, and courage. 

January 9, 2019

Trump's Comey Crisis

James Comey is no saint. But thanks to Donald Trump, he is now a martyr.

May 10, 2017

Do China's Village Protests Help the Regime?

Over the past two weeks, the Western press has focused on a striking story out of China: a riveting series of protests in Wukan, a fishing village in the country’s prosperous south. The story is depressingly familiar: Corrupt cadres sell off public land and villagers get nothing. Anger builds and protests erupt. Inept local officials negotiate and then turn to violence, in this case encircling the town with police in hopes of starving the population into submission. What to make of all this? The overall sense in Western reports is that things are spinning out of control in China, that the center can’t hold and the Communist Party can’t manage. We are told that China has tens of thousands of similar protests each year. The exact numbers aren’t clear but official figures show a dramatic increase in “mass incidents” over the past decade from just a few thousand to, by some measures, 80,000. Subconsciously we get the message: protests are a sign of instability, ergo the stability of China under one-party rule is eroding. And yet to a degree this analysis doesn’t add up.

December 22, 2011

Brutality in Belarus

Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus’s sad capital, is one of the most terrifying public spaces in Europe. It is nothing but concrete, steel, glass and fearsome horizons—no benches, shelter, or anything for people who might wish to do something so normal as to assemble and speak together. Where anything vertical rises from the ground, it bears a video camera, ensuring that any gathering can be observed by the Belarusian KGB. And yet, when Aleksandr Lukashenko claimed victory by an improbably large absolute majority in the presidential elections on December 19, people came, in the tens of thousands, to protest the official results.

December 21, 2010