perspectives

How can it be true that the post-Cold War settlement has left an almost universal feeling of aggrievement? That is the question Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes set out to answer in The Light That Failed by examining three case studies: Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia a...

Last month, Russia voted on whether to approve 206 changes to approximately 60% of its Constitution. These changes included political reforms, most notably changing Presidential term limits to 2 overall rather than 2 consecutive and resetting the terms of the current P...

In 2017 Kenya annulled an election. Now Malawi has done the same and it is only the second African country to do so. Following the annulment, in the rerun election, Lazarus Chakwera triumphed against the sitting president of Malawi, Peter Mutharika, in a surprising tur...

South Korea is one of the world’s youngest democracies, and the first country to hold a national election during the Covid-19 pandemic. Coronavirus was able to side-line previous issues such as the weak economy, government corruption and North-South relations in a deep...

On the 30th of March, democracy ended in Hungary. 

Recent liberal commentary concerning the emergence of populism throughout the western world commonly veers into hyperbole, if not outright catastrophising - a tendency which has been keenly ridiculed by political oppone...

With his hand on a gold-embossed copy of the Russian constitution, Putin was sworn in for the fourth time in 2018, when he promised to serve the Russian people faithfully. Today, he is trying to alter and shape that same constitution to suit his own interests and cemen...

As Goebbels stated: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It...

“I condemn this coup against the Bolivian people,” reads a November 10 tweet by Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Party leader wasn’t alone in expressing this sentiment. Bernie Sanders, a US Senator and candidate for the presidency, tweeted “I am very concerned about what appe...

Following the announcement of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s victory in the 2018 election, there is very little indication Zimbabwe is becoming a more democratic and fair nation. Indeed, the allegations of fraud in the election by both the opposition and international monitors s...

Photograph: Flickr, xiamenpx

This is just the beginning of the road… there is a lot more to be done before our people will feel secure enough to celebrate –  Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD)  following the party’s landslide victory at...