Democracy Archives - Page 39 of 56

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

But this time, the protests were against a new imperial power: China

April 22, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

Protesters demanded electoral reforms, investigations of police conduct during the protests, and the preservation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, under which Beijing had promised to maintain “one country, two systems” after Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997. The protests have continued online — including anti-government slogans in a popular video ...

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

North America

“There Go the People….”

By endorsing protesters who demand that states reopen, Donald Trump reveals himself as a leader of a movement, not a party or a nation

April 21, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. No one could be further from Donald Trump in either ideology or personal biography than Ledru-Rollin, who was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, a well-known quack doctor under the Old Regime. But the celebrated quote attributed to the radical French ...

Democracy

Donald Trump Advocates the Overthrow of (State) Governments

Is Republican populism approaching its Thermidor moment?

April 20, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” The media has been on fire ever since. A president advocating a violent overthrow of three states with Democratic governors is unprecedented and quite possibly illegal—Mary McCord, acting US assistant attorney general for national security from 2016-2017 ...

Donald Trump Advocates the Overthrow of (State) Governments

Democracy

Donald Trump Has Been in Politics for Decades

As a new book by Andrea Bernstein details, creating a 20th-century real estate empire demanded it

April 19, 2020 • by Claire Potter

As early as 1987, rumor had it that Donald Trump was considering a presidential bid. In October 1987, as both parties began to assemble the 1988 field, Trump took a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where a crowd bearing “Trump for President” signs greeted him. He decided not to run ...

Donald Trump Has Been in Politics for Decades

Democracy

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Why populist-nationalist movements detest international cooperation

April 16, 2020 • by Robert Wright

But however grave Bannon’s crimes, to write him off back then—to assume he would never again be a significant force within Trumpism—would have been to underestimate his resourcefulness and determination. A pandemic is a time of opportunity as well as tragedy, and Bannon is seizing the moment. And the way ...

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Europe & Central Asia

Hungary Is on the Edge of Dictatorship

Viktor Orbán’s coronavirus power grab

April 11, 2020 • by Kim Lane Scheppele

Orbán sought an expedited procedure to ram through this law when the parliament opened on Monday 24 March. The opposition united and denied Orbán the 4/5ths vote he needed to pass the law without the requisite parliamentary procedure. The coronavirus emergency law -- called by its critics the “Enabling Act” with ...

Democracy

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

How Erving Goffman helps us understand the hidden power of Biden, Sanders, and the Democratic governors

April 10, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We can appreciate this by drawing upon the insights of the pioneering ethnographer of social interaction, Erving Goffman. There is irony in this. Goffman is not usually considered a political thinker, nor did he think of himself as such, but his creative examination of the details of social interaction, in my judgment, illuminates an ...

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

Democracy

#Orbanistan

Democracy in lockdown

April 7, 2020 • by Kriszta Kovács

A month later, a subsequent “Enabling Act” allowed the new German government led by Adolf Hitler to issue decrees independently of both Parliament and the President. In effect, it turned Hitler into a dictator. On 23 March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament debated a piece of legislation so similarly sweeping that some Hungarians informally now call it ...

Democracy

Unlimited Power for an Indefinite Period

Coronavirus becomes an opportunity for Viktor Orbán to extend his power

April 6, 2020 • by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger

On March 30, 2020, the Hungarian Parliament passed the so-called “Enabling Act”. In the future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will, therefore, be able to govern by decree without parliamentary approval. The law does not have a time limit. The Hungarian government claims that the massive spread of the novel coronavirus is the ...

Unlimited Power for an Indefinite Period

Democracy

Populists Love the Pandemic

Populist rulers are exploiting this crisis to the fullest

April 3, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

WARSAW – Threats to national security invariably limit domestic political disputes. Now that governments have assumed a leading role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the political opposition in countries under populist rule is quickly being marginalized. In theory, the authorities in these countries could use the crisis to invoke a ...

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 ...