Democracy Archives - Page 46 of 56

North America

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

An Evaluation of the House Democratic Leadership’s Performance

December 5, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I have long expressed my exasperation with the timid way in which the House Democratic leadership has only reluctantly moved toward impeachment, even in the face of the damning Mueller Report, and then has proceeded in the most narrow and legalistic way imaginable. Trump is a very dangerous President, and it ...

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

Europe & Central Asia

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

Populism on the retreat

December 5, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Romania was one of the post-communist countries to join the neoliberal bandwagon slower than the Visegrad group and made it to EU membership just when the 2008 global crisis was about to break. For over a decade after the end of the brutal Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship, old communist apparatchiks together ...

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

North America

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

But Pete Buttigieg is not my guy

December 4, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Many remember this loss because of Dean’s cowboy moment at the lectern. Masochists and political junkies can watch the famous “scream” that provoked endless media mockery here. But the swift collapse of the Dean campaign following Iowa also revealed other weaknesses that early polling had not: the excitement of this ...

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

Latin America & Caribbean

Coup, Revolution, or Negotiated Regime Change

What is happening in Bolivia?

December 4, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

At the same time, I fervently hope that what is occurring in Bolivia is not a revolution. Of course that hope may well be disappointed, especially if the right wing (supposedly interim) government seeks to perpetuate itself by blocking the road to genuinely free elections through the repression, media manipulation, ...

Coup, Revolution, or Negotiated Regime Change

North America

A Lesson from Watergate

How Democrats Should Broaden the Impeachment Charges

December 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

That is a very welcome development for two reasons: because Trump’s record of malfeasance extends far beyond “Ukraine,” and because, as I have been arguing for months, impeachment necessarily points beyond impeachment, to November 2020. Democrats thus need to present as strong an overarching narrative of Trump’s malfeasance as possible. ...

Europe & Central Asia

The EU’s University in Exile

December 3, 2019 • by Laszlo Bruszt

On November 15, Central European University (CEU) officially inaugurated its new campus in Vienna, Austria, having been arbitrarily ousted from Hungary. On the same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government opened another large sports stadium in Budapest. Predictably, the government-controlled Hungarian media focused on the latter event and ignored the departure of ...

Democracy

Does academic freedom matter to conservative intellectuals?

Budapest Blues

November 21, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

It’s a dark time for liberals. The leaders of the world’s three most powerful countries—China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and the U.S.’s own Donald J. Trump—are all authoritarians of one kind or another. Each, in his own way, wraps himself in the mantle of “the people,” and targets independent ...

Does academic freedom matter to conservative intellectuals?

North America

Brief Midday Thoughts about Sondland and the Impeachment

Only politics can save us!

November 20, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Only this can save us, if we can yet be saved. I have long argued that impeachment proceedings are one necessary form of resistance to the Trumpist assault on liberal democracy and that such proceedings ought to be understood primarily as political rather than narrowly legal processes. Everything that is now ...

North America

Can Bernie Do It?

An economist takes a hard look at the Sanders platform

November 19, 2019 • by James K. Galbraith

But is he a plausible president? By that, I don't mean in comparison to Donald Trump, as implausible a president as there ever was. Sanders is a lifetime political figure with forty years of elected experience and intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill and of the federal government. But he is ...

North America

A Great Opportunity Missed

The Democrats should’ve exposed Republican Hypocrisy and Cynicism about Corruption

November 14, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The lowest point of the Republican questioning came when efforts were made, by Jordan and others, to suggest that Trump’s insistence on Ukrainian investigations into Biden, Bursima, and Crowd Strike was based on his deep and sincere commitment to fighting corruption in a corrupt country. This suggestion is risible. And yet ...

Latin America & Caribbean

Legitimacy and Democracy in Bolivia

Rejecting Simplistic Readings of the Morales Ouster

November 12, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

It is clear that one important dimension of this polarization was the defection of important elements of the police and the armed forces. The New York Times reported that “Bolivian Military Asks Morales to Resign to Ensure Stability,” quoting General Williams Kaliman, the chief military commander: “"After analyzing the internal conflict situation, ...

Europe & Central Asia

The Roots of Right-Wing Populism in Central and Eastern Europe

At the nexus of neoliberalism and the global culture wars

November 9, 2019 • by Elżbieta Korolczuk

Clearly, the tensions between what was promised in 1989 and what was delivered two decades after were one of the factors that facilitated the victories of right-wing populist parties in the region, but the connection between the two is neither straightforward nor is disillusionment with democracy unique to the post-communist ...