Something is dreadfully wrong with Hungary. Worse, what's wrong with Hungary is not unique in Europe. What's eating away at a free society in Hungary has metastasized.
by Daniel Calingaert Executive Vice President Authoritarian regimes around the world are exporting their worst practices and working together to re...
If the president-elect is temporarily absent, Cabello is able to govern for a maximum of 180 days, and if the president-elect is permanently absent, Cabello must call a new election within 30 days. Why has Venezuela ignored these constitutional procedures?
Though conflict and dysfunction seem to be the order of the day on Capitol Hill, congressional negotiators and the president have managed to build jerry-rigged compromises on a range of issues.
There is a demonstrable disposition among base voters on the Republican side, including large numbers of authoritarian-minded folks who see the world as a fight between good and evil, in which fact and truth only matter insofar as they reaffirm these folks' view of reality.
U.S. interests are best served by pushing for reform and building ties with the political opposition and civil society, including possible future leaders. These ties can lay the groundwork for continued influence and facilitate smooth transitions to democracy.
The Olympia Snowes of the world can complain all they want about the lack of middle ground. But plaints like this misapprehend fundamentally the dynamics of American politics. We're polarized largely because one party -- Snowe's own -- has simply gone off the deep end.
2012 begins with the Russian and Chinese constellations once again falling into alignment.
Democracy's greatest challenge is to demonstrate that what may emerge from the process of transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy is a fully functional, truly representative political system that improves living standards, raises incomes, and reduces poverty.
One of the least understood aspects of network interaction concerns negative social capital and links between dictators -- what I would call "dirty networks."
Many factors are conspiring to reinforce and intensify a fundamental rift in Americans' political self-identification based on deep-seated personality characteristics.
As our own history demonstrates, there is a way to seek reform without paralyzing the economy or starting a civil war. It is called democracy.
Five decades of authoritarianism here in Cuba has exceeded its expiration date. Perhaps to avoid our making the comparison, our state media showed caution in dealing with the news from Egypt.
Like Pinochet, Ben Ali traded civil and human rights for economic development -- and lost.
We see candidates employing the unusual tactic of insulating themselves from the rigors of the profession, which should send a cautionary signal to the electorate that maybe they are not up to the task they seek.
The fact that the more and less authoritarian now find homes in opposite political parties has made our politics almost impossibly acrimonious.
So how do you feel when someone talks to you like that? Highly motivated to run right out and vote for them?
Turkey's vote on Sunday further strengthened its credentials as a model of capitalist democracy in the Muslim world -- a model the West needs to promote as an antidote to extremism.
It is one of Russia's oldest traditions to write directly to the Tsar when something goes wrong. Putin did not create this mentality. It is just a symptom of an authoritarian state that rests upon a giant, immovable bureaucracy.
Conservative Republicans passionately believe that they represent a group of people who have been targeted by a popular culture and set of liberal elites.
Most of us don't have the talents or knowledge to make much of a dent in this world; the tempting vice for the unexceptional majority is conformity.
Google is not charged with protecting the greater good of the Chinese citizenry. Beijing is entitled to ask Google to leave, and to take its democracy crusade with it.
Something has broken apart in our society. While testing is a reasonable component of the education process, pretending that evaluation is a hard science -- that you can reduce a child's mental growth to a statistic -- is not.
The growing gravitation of authoritarians to the Republican Party over the past generation is an important determinant in understanding the closed feed-back loop of the current right-wing information environment.
Sometimes high-profile public figures do reveal something meaningful about themselves. John Roberts' concern over the fact that he had to sit "expressionless" while Obama criticized the Citizens' United ruling is one of them.
