ፍትህ ለሁሉም / Justice for All
Flawed elections and armed conflict contributed to the 18th year of democratic decline. But by drawing strength from diversity, protecting dissent, and building international coalitions to support their own norms and values, democratic forces can still reverse the long decline in global freedom. Key Findings Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The breadth and …
Democracy is the best system of government for protecting human rights and advancing peace, economic prosperity, and freedom, because it is the only one in which governments are accountable to their people. While no democracy is perfect in practice, the system provides citizens with effective tools for course correction and improvement. In the more than …
It could easily happen that the next president of the United States will win a majority of the votes in the Electoral College without winning a majority of the popular vote nationwide. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have each led one or another national poll even when trailing in polls conducted in battleground states. Should …
alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism. The historian Robert Paxton spent Jan. 6, 2021, glued to his television. Paxton was at his apartment in Upper Manhattan when he watched a mob march toward the Capitol, overrun the security barriers and then the police cordons and break inside. Many in the crowd wore …
Liberals have engaged in a lot of catastrophic thinking during this “year of elections.” Many feared that authoritarian and populist politicians, from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to India’s Narendra Modi, would consolidate their gains by increasing their shares of the vote. According to Freedom House’s February 2024 Freedom in the World analysis, the world has been in a …
When U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the United States had just witnessed four of the most turbulent years in recent memory, culminating in the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Without a doubt, American democracy had been shown to be far more fragile than it was when Biden …
Many countries have been roiled in recent years by what is often called a “populist wave.” In the Anglophone world, this new era began in 2016 with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Media and political elites shocked by these events tied …
On August 5, following weeks of mass student protests, a dictator fell in the world’s eighth most populous country. Amid wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the escalating danger of a wider conflict in the Middle East, and the twists and turns of the U.S. presidential race, the sudden resignation and flight into exile of Bangladesh’s …
Ordeal After the October 7 massacres, the obituaries of the long political career of Benjamin Netanyahu, published both in Israel and in the West, became orthodox. He was considered as politically inert as Donald Trump once was after January 6, 2021. The conventional wisdom speculated not if, but only when he would be forced out …
“Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” That was the confident declaration made by Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a 7,000-word essay published in Foreign Affairs one year ago. Unfortunately for Sullivan, the article was sent to the printer on October 2, 2023. Five days later, …