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Category: <span>Dispatches</span>

Dispatches

Category: Dispatches

Reflections on Bolivia’s Coup d’État

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Should we refer to the unfortunate series of events that led to Evo Morales’s downfall as a coup? In his recent contribution to Public Seminar, Andrew Arato hesitates to concede the point. Though it is evident that Morales’s resignation took place under significant pressure from the military, Arato claims that this situation is the consequence of Morales’s extra-constitutional manipulation of presidential term limits. In Arato’s words, “the brief …

30 Years Ago, A Moment of Joy and Hope

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Democracies are not going to defend themselves. It is we, the citizens who have to defend them. I believe it is not too late. And I am convinced that while no victory is ever a final one, no defeats along the way are definitive either. The biographies of dissidents from my part of the world provide the evidence you need. *** I clearly remember that November evening. In …

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

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And why I would support anyone of them Soon after Donald Trump’s election, in an essay entitled “On Trump and Trumpism,” I confessed: “I am devastated. All of my public commitments are under attack. I thought there was progress during my lifetime. Democracy and the positive developments of democratic culture, free speech and expression, social justice and the fight against racism, sexism, class exploitation, xenophobia, and much more, all seemed …

Romania in 2020

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Fighting Corruption Just Got Harder because of Trump Many viewed Romania in the 1990s as one of the slowest to reform and least liberal post-communist countries. Yet, in the past few years, this country has emerged as a more important player in EU and NATO politics. The fall of the Social Democrats (PSD) from government in October 2019 and the re-election of President Klaus Iohannis in November have …

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

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Populism on the retreat On November 24, 2019, Romania performed a rare feat in contemporary European elections. The incumbent, anti-corruption ethnic minority President Klaus Iohannis won 66% of the vote in a contest against the woman who had been, until October, the Prime Minister and the formal leader of the most powerful party in post-communist Romania, the Social Democrats (PSD). The election was unprecedented for the huge number …

Coup, Revolution, or Negotiated Regime Change

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What is happening in Bolivia? All of my Latin American students, as well as quite a few radical friends, strongly claim that what took place in Bolivia was a coup. They, in their analyses, focus on the military’s role. The military indeed has played a role; yet I hesitate to concede the point. This is, in the main, because of President Evo Morales’s previous, extra-constitutional, manipulation of a …

The EU’s University in Exile

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The arbitrary ouster of Central European University from Hungary highlights two realities about the European Union. First, the EU has relatively little power to protect the non-economic rights of the bloc’s citizens, and, second, leading European politicians lack the will to stop autocrats like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. On November 15, Central European University (CEU) officially inaugurated its new campus in Vienna, Austria, having been arbitrarily ousted from Hungary. …

Can Democracy Be Established Undemocratically?

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The Ethical and Political Dilemmas of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution Photo Credit: Jiri Igaz / Shutterstock.com November 17th, 2019 was the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. This revolution, marvelous though it was, and its aftermath, I believe, demonstrates that creating a mature democracy out of thin air is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. The apparent success of the revolution hid flaws that seemed to be …

Democrats of the World, Unite!

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A Report on the First International Meeting of Democracy Seminar 2.0 With authoritarians dominating worldwide – Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Orban, and Kaczynski, among many others – it is time for their democratic critics to unite, or at least carefully compare notes about the authoritarian threats, considering ways to oppose them, and ways to support each other. That is the purpose of Democracy Seminar 2.0. I proposed the seminar more than …

Democracy in Poland?

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From Authoritarian Populism to Populist Authoritarianism Step by step for four years, Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), has been dismantling democracy. Starting almost immediately after it came to power with the assault on the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal in December 2015, a fully consolidated democracy has been deconsolidating. Poland, thus, follows the pattern observed by Zoltán Gábor Szűcs, in his recent post on Hungary, with …