Democracy Archives - Page 34 of 55

Poland Slouches On

After a noxious and underhanded campaign, Poland’s incumbent president, representing the country’s illiberal ruling party, has clinched a narrow re-election victory. That gives the government three more years to dismantle the country’s democracy.

July 17, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

WARSAW -- In the second round of Poland’s presidential election, incumbent Andrzej Duda narrowly defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. Though he carried just six provinces in eastern Poland, compared to Trzaskowski’s ten, and lost in medium and large cities, Duda’s support in villages and small towns was just enough to push him over the ...

Democracy

Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong

The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions

July 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer

So I took a new job in a new city and began again. I have been thinking about my decision to speak up, and its costs, in light of The Letter. You know the one: the open letter in Harper’s magazine that praises the “needed reckoning” of the past few months ...

Democracy

The Politics of Small Things Before, During and After the Pandemic

From the Kitchen Table to the Kitchen Cabinet

July 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Between 1973 and 1989, I intensively studied public life behind “The Iron Curtain.” I researched and wrote my dissertation on student theater in Poland. In the late 70s and the 80s, I observed the emergence of an autonomous cultural and political life, and the development of a democratic opposition there ...

Climate & Ecology

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

A webinar view, featuring author Debjani Bhattacharyya and commenter Kasia Paprocki

July 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

The event was hosted and moderated by Claire Potter, co-executive editor at Public Seminar & professor of history at The New School for Social Research. Save the date: our next Public Seminar book talk is on Wednesday, July 22, featuring Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to ...

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

Democracy

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

July 15, 2020 • by Ján Orlovský

Overnight, on Monday, February 26th, 2018, Slovakia became a very different country. The news of the brutal murder of a young investigative journalist and his fiancée in their village house at the outskitrts of the capital shattered all illusions about corruption in the country being remote and harmless. The deaths ...

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

Democracy

Torn Mask of Social Solidarity

Law and Justice response to the economic downturn

July 14, 2020 • by Paweł Marczewski

Although Family 500+ did contribute to a substantial reduction in poverty among Polish families, its extension in 2019 to every child (initially firstborn children, except those from the poorest families, were excluded) not only multiplied costs of the program, but also severely reduced its redistributive effects. Economists from the Polish ...

Democracy

Domestic Violence as Pandemic

July 13, 2020 • by Maria Bucur

The resources available for victims of domestic violence vary greatly from place to place. Democracies generally tend to provide greater support to victims. This has changed with the pandemic. Implementation of national emergencies have resulted in the suspension of regular public services, and shelter-in-place orders have confined people to their ...

Democracy

Fascists in Slovak Politics

Waiting for a new chance in times of the COVID-19 crisis?

July 12, 2020 • by Alexandra Bitušíková

Marian Kotleba, a former IT teacher, is infamous for his open hatred of the Roma minority, Jews, immigrants and the LGBTIQ+ community. He denies the Holocaust and admires the World War Two fascist Slovak State and its president Jozef Tiso, who was hanged in 1947 as a war criminal. Kotleba ...

Democracy

This is Not a Temporary Crisis

Jeffrey C. Isaac in conversation with Tomasz Sawczuk

July 11, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac and Tomasz Sawczuk

Tomasz Sawczuk: The United States faces now a dangerous pandemic, a deep economic crisis, and massive social protests, after a policeman killed George Floyd. On top of that, Donald Trump fuels further division and conflict into the American politics. To begin on a general note, how do you make political ...

Democracy

Authoritarian Appetites versus Local Solidarity

July 10, 2020 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

This piece was originally published in Polish in Res Publica Nowa. The English translation is provided by the author. Commenting on the Covid-19 Pandemic, Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, recently said that Europe is the “world’s beating heart of solidarity.” Indeed, for two months now news ...

Authoritarian Appetites versus Local Solidarity

Democracy

Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?

“That’s not who we are” — or is it?

July 10, 2020 • by Rogers M. Smith

As Plato suggested in The Republic, politics is driven more by stories than facts. As different as they are in all other regards, America’s last two presidents both won wildly improbable electoral victories while telling completely contradictory stories about their country. Barack Obama made his own hopeful story a symbol of ...

Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?

Democracy

Turkey’s Forged Success Story

Re-opening without closing down?

July 9, 2020 • by Nazan Bedirhanoglu

Erdoğan of Turkey was already equipped with extensive powers to exhibit his one-man-show. Even though the two years long post-putsch state of emergency formally ended in July 2018, most of the emergency regulations were codified in a way that essentially kept the country in a perpetual state of emergency well ...