Politics Archives - Page 85 of 112

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 ...

North America

Impeachment Must Be More Than Impeachment

Politics as Performance and Spectacle to Defeat Trumpism

November 8, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

If an avalanche felled the tree, does it make sense to focus only on the fallen tree and to ignore the broader and more terrifying cataclysm that caused it? House Democrats, apparently buoyed by last Tuesday’s election results, are prepared to begin the public hearing phase of their Trump impeachment inquiry. ...

North America

Wall Street Critiques of Progressive Democrats Ring Hollow

November 6, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I’ll save you some time: it’s a nasty, polemical hit job on Elizabeth Warren. Its core claim is neatly summed up in its subtitle: Warren’s “big government plans would damage rather than improve our economy.” Rattner rehearses the conventional criticisms of Warren’s ambitious agenda, with special attention, of course, to ...

Democracy

The Right Terror Threatens Us All

A Call to Uncover Right Extremist Networks In Germany

November 6, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit and Irit Dekel

The murder, on Yom Kippur (October 10th, 2019), of two German citizens in Halle, one outside the synagogue that was the perpetrator’s initial target and another by a nearby Döner bistro, echoed other terror attacks on minorities. These are always described in the German media as acts of an individual ...

Politics

Damage Done

The Trump–Ukraine controversy in perspective

November 4, 2019 • by Nataliya Gumenyuk

‘It’s all for the best’ I used to tell myself whenever the situation in Ukraine became critical. That was before the release of the transcript of the conversation on 25 July between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. How could this be ‘for the best’? Obviously, Ukraine cannot ...

Democracy

Democrats of the World, Unite!

A Report on the First International Meeting of Democracy Seminar 2.0

October 31, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I proposed the seminar more than a year ago. Since then, we have been developing it here on Public Seminar, as I explained earlier this year. The organizers of this “worldwide network of democratic correspondence,” met for our first face-to-face meeting on October 4 and 5. We gathered in New York, at The New School, on the ...

Europe & Central Asia

Democracy in Poland?

From Authoritarian Populism to Populist Authoritarianism

October 30, 2019 • by Jacek Kucharczyk

The intensity and consistency of the PiS attack on democratic institutions came as a surprise to all but the harshest critics of the party. The experience of Kaczynski’s party’s first stint in government from 2005-2007 – when the authoritarian tendencies of PiS were effectively checked by the courts, independent media, ...

Democracy

Open Letter: We Stand with the Kurdish People of Syria!

October 29, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We are writing as scholars and citizens of the world to express our concern for the Kurdish people of Syria, whose fate has been dramatically altered by events that started with a phone call between President Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 6, 2019. Since then, the United ...

Democracy

The Theater of Impeachment

An interview with Brenda Wineapple

October 29, 2019 • by Charlotte Slivka

BW: That’s a lot of questions! I had to have a sense of what the story was in order for the narrative could take shape. The entire book took six years to research and to write, but the story came to me after about two years into the research. In other ...

Democracy

In Her Own Way, She Lived as a Philosopher

Jurgen Habermas Remembers Agnes Heller

October 29, 2019 • by Jurgen Habermas

This year, when with a guilty conscience and much too late I congratulated her for her 90th birthday, Agnes Heller replied without a trace of hurt feelings: “Well wishes are never too late.” Death notices, however, always come too soon. To the very end, Agnes Heller was a person full ...

Democracy

The Impeachers

The Trial Of Andrew Johnson And The Dream Of A Just Nation

October 29, 2019 • by Brenda Wineapple

“Andrew Johnson was the queerest man who ever occupied the White House,” one of his colleagues remembered. As Lincoln’s Vice President, thrust into the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson earned the hatred and opprobrium of most Republicans, particularly those members of Lincoln’s party in Congress who initially hoped that he ...