Democracy Archives - Page 39 of 55

Democracy

Blaming Trump, Blaming Biden, Saving Ourselves

Can we save ourselves, from the plague that is COVID or the plague that is Trump?

April 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This shouldn’t be a controversial point. Everyone from presumptive Democratic nominee former vice president Joe Biden to prominent columnists like Michelle Goldberg believes it. But it’s proved harder to do than it would seem. Even as Trump lies, promotes unproven cures, and continues to carry out petty personal vendettas at the expense of saving lives, ...

Blaming Trump, Blaming Biden, Saving Ourselves

Democracy

In Praise of Bureaucracy

How our patrimonial presidency endangers us all

April 2, 2020 • by Jeffrey Kopstein

But we’ve mostly disregarded one danger and it’s the one I believe is the most significant: Trump’s attack on the administrative state. The novel coronavirus bug revealed the American state, so impressive on the global stage with its ability to project unparalleled military force anywhere in the world, as shockingly unable ...

Democracy

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

A humane society doesn’t trade some lives for others

March 28, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

Nonsense. In February, when he had a chance to take decisive action to get ahead of the virus, Trump told his advisors not to “do or say anything that would further spook the markets.” Trump’s weeks of downplaying the crisis, and his failure to prepare for the looming pandemic, deepened the problem. But having finally acknowledged the ...

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

Democracy

Gray is Beautiful, Part 3

How do we balance the agendas of progressive and moderate voters?

March 27, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

What is to be done, in the face of the present crisis of democracy in America -- and far beyond -- in the midst of a pandemic? I think that we have a clear goal: all democrats -- small “d” -- have to work together against Trump and Trumpism. I agree ...

Democracy

Over 900 U.S. Political Scientists are Worried about Democratic Elections in November

Here’s Why

March 25, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac and William Kindred Winecoff

In the spirit of reflexive inquiry, we offer the following hypotheses: The current COVID pandemic is a global health crisis and an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, and such crises always place stress on democracy. Political scientists understand that such crises can place extraordinary strain on even the most functional and legitimate ...

Over 900 U.S. Political Scientists are Worried about Democratic Elections in November

Democracy

Gray is Beautiful, Part 2

On the Social Condition and Fractured Society in Donald Trump’s America

March 24, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Gray Beauty I came to appreciate the beauty of the gray listening to a lecture by Adam Michnik at The New School for Social Research in 1996. In his lecture, likewise entitled “Gray is Beautiful,” Michnik declared: “Radical movements -- whether under black or red banners -- gladly use democracy in order ...

Democracy

Gray is Beautiful, Part 1

On the Social Condition and Fractured Society in Donald Trump’s America

March 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This is the first part of a three-part post, originally drafted as a lecture, drawn from my published and unpublished writings over the past decade, to be presented to Democracy Seminar participants in Gdansk, Warsaw, Budapest, and Berlin (to a group of Turkish exiles). Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ...

Europe & Central Asia

Labor Rights in the Time of Pandemic

Hungary’s return to the 19th Century in response to Covid 19

March 23, 2020 • by Laszlo Bruszt

This step is unprecedented in the post-second World War continental law that uses Labor Codes to provide guaranteed rights to employees. It also deviates from the more recent treatment of labor relations during the pandemic in the OECD countries. This move back to absolute ‘freedom of contract’ is reminiscent of ...

North America

For the Love of Humanity, We Should Never Stop Talking About “Bernie Bros”

A response to Jesse Singal

March 19, 2020 • by Anne Taylor

In the 2016 election cycle, I worked for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Those months are a blur. In October 2015 I was an eager volunteer in a student group at the University of Colorado Boulder; within two months the campaign hired me as their first field organizer in the ...

For the Love of Humanity, We Should Never Stop Talking About “Bernie Bros”

Activism

Life and Protest in Hong Kong Amid COVID-19

An Interview with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Author of Vigil: Hong Kong On The Brink

March 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Mark Frazier

Mark W. Frazier [MF]: Your book was released on February 11, in the midst of a public health crisis in mainland China that has meant massive disruptions to life and work in Hong Kong, the cancellation of a major international arts festival, and the cessation (for now at least) of ...

Life and Protest in Hong Kong Amid COVID-19

North America

The Great Immobility

March 17, 2020 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Less obvious is the lesson we could come to learn about mobility. At first glance, the restrictions on travel to the United States seem to affirm a common trope: our borders need to be sealed against immigrants who would do us harm. Build the Wall; stop the germs! But there is another ...

North America

Confessions in a Time of Plague

Or, the Virtues of Ideological Inconsistency

March 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A revised version of my doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Robert Dahl while I was a grad student at Yale, my book was titled Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist View. In it, I offered an earnest defense of neo-Marxist theories of power circa 1986 (drawing on the work of theorists such ...