Democracy

For First Time, US joins Brazil and India as “Backsliding Democracy”: GOP is making US a Third World Country

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sweden’s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance finds this year that the United States of America has joined the ranks of “backsliding democracies,” joining India, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The IDEA institute notes, “Democratic backsliding, namely the sustained and deliberate process of subversion of basic democratic tenets by […]

Democracy

In Sudan’s new Revolt, Women and Youth will not settle for less than true Democracy

Open Democracy

By Nazik Awad | (OpenDemocracy.net) – Sudan’s coup on 25 October was both highly anticipated and inevitable. For three months, tension between the civilian and military partners that had ruled Sudan since the 2019 powersharing deal had been intensifying. After the 2019 revolution and the fall of former president Omar al-Bashir, political parties and civil […]

Democracy

In the Middle East, the US was Never about Democracy Promotion

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – How much of the blame should U.S. policy take for the decline of democracy in the twenty-first century, with the reversions to dictatorship and the rise of illiberalism in older democracies? In a fine article at the New York Times, Max Fisher discusses how an NYT team mined data at […]

Democracy

Feeding the Crocodile: Do Any Republicans Still Support Democracy?

Jill Richardson

( Otherwords) – Republicans should heed Churchill’s warning about appeasing authoritarians: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, it will eat him last.” By Jill Richardson | November 3, 2021 Investigative accounts of the Trump administration, like the recent Washington Post feature on the January 6 insurrection, routinely write about three kinds […]

Democracy

The Sudanese people overthrew dictatorship in 2019; Can the Generals undo the Revolution?

The Conversation

By David E Kiwuwa | – This week the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah El Burhan, declared the dissolution of the transitional council, which has been in place since the overthrow of former president Omar el-Bashir in 2019. He also disbanded all the structures that had been set up as part of […]

Democracy

How Billionaires’ Utopias could End American Democracy

Sam Pizzigati

( Inequality.org) – Great wealth can do great damage. Grand personal fortunes, we’ve come to understand, can menace our democracy and distort our economic life. But these fortunes can also wreak a much more hidden havoc: They can mess up the minds of people who hold them. Great fortunes can leave their owners feeling supremely […]

Democracy

How Gerrymandering Threatens Democracy

contributors

By Arnold J. Oliver | – Tiffin, Oh. (Special to Informed Comment) – Right now, Ohio, Michigan and other states are in the process of drawing new legislative boundaries, which takes place every ten years based mostly on information gained from the US census. As this process gets into gear, it appears that once again […]

Democracy

How can America Promote Democracy When the GOP Half of the Country Doesn’t Believe in it?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – America desperately needs a dose of its own medicine of democracy promotion. By John Feffer | August 25, 2021 Arizona’s Maricopa County is ground zero in the continuing debate over election integrity in the United States. The so-called audit of the 2.1 million votes cast in that county in […]

Authoritarianism

Tunisia: the complex issues behind the presidential power-grab

The Conversation

By Mariam Salehi | – Ten years on from the Arab uprisings, Tunisia has often been presented as a rare success story. Elsewhere Egypt sank into an army dictatorship, Syria, Libya and Yemen into bloody civil war. In other countries, meanwhile, such as Bahrain, the protests were put down with ferocity and the old regimes […]