Adam Przeworski, Crises of Democracy: A Review
As the title implies, Crises of Democracy is an unwelcomely timely work: as Trump exits in the most Trumpian way imaginable, “democratic backsliding” is present across the world, with his…
Posts by tag
Democracy
25 posts
America Is No Longer One Nation
Another American election has come and gone. And, once again, enlightened pundits on both sides of the Atlantic are scratching their heads. How is it possible that some 70 million…
Authoritarian Populism, Emancipatory Populism: The Italian Constitutional Referendum
The crisis of democracy is rising across Western countries because liberal societies have failed to deliver democracy’s most important pillars that it promised: legitimacy, representation, and sovereignty. Recent literature states…
Of ‘Nazi-Pigs’, ‘Jewish sows’ and ‘bourgeois coalitions’ (A German perspective)
Democracy has a core meaning but it needs to be defined from a vantage point, given that is is a contested concept subject to dynamic framing and reframing processes. According…
Political Globalisation and the Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe (Part II)
In this second part of Pragya Rai’s blog on political globalisation and the populist radical right, Rai looks at the strengths and weaknesses of globalist and anti-globalist arguments – critically…
Political Globalisation and the Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe (Part I)
Introduction Back in 2016, Marine Le Pen announced that the time of the nation state had returned and that the prospects of walls being built across the world showed that…
“Right” roads to “pluralism”
Cultural integration, pluralism, and multiculturalism (sometimes termed “mosaics” or “melting pots”) have been largely studied as processes of democratization, one whereby ethnic confrontation is reduced through tolerance and cooperation. The…
What is tolerance and how much of it do democracies require?
Answering some of the pressing, if not existential questions facing diverse, democratic societies require a clearer understanding of tolerance. Tolerance is vital to the functioning of modern, liberal democracies. In…
This Is What ‘Peaceful Ethnic Cleansing’ Looks Like
White supremacists like Richard Spencer advocate for ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ of people of color. President Trump’s policies serve that objective. In September, reports hit major news outlets that, Bee Love…
How Democracies Collapse: Lessons From Interwar Romania
Tracing the rise of right-wing authoritarianism in interwar Romania reveals a number of key factors that are too familiar for comfort. Almost every state in Europe had a parliamentary democracy…