There’s a dark joke that the Polish dissident thinker Adam Michnik likes to tell: If in 1987 God had asked the Poles what their three most fervent wishes were, they would have replied: First, we want to live in a country with no political prisoners. Second, we want a country without censorship and foreign armies. And third, we would like the Soviet Union to fall apart. And the …
There would be no world, this alleyway in the galaxy where love is possible, without small centers of the world. There was once, before time, a great center. Memory of it lays sleeping in the exile of man, in the death of animals and in the silence of plants, in the shells of a broken vessel, in the sparks of light hidden in dark matter, in the suffering …
On April 7 this year, the United Nations voted on a proposal to suspend Russia from its Human Rights Council. By this date, thousands of civilians and soldiers were dead. Millions of Ukrainians – mostly women, children and old men, since working-age men are required to join Ukraine’s defence – were displaced from their homes and desperately seeking entry to neighbouring countries. Humanitarian corridors, set up to allow …
Reflections on the value of alliances for supporters of democracy and their enemies Abyss: The great deep or bottomless gulf believed in old cosmogonies to lie beneath the earth; the infernal pit, the abode of the dead, hell. figurative. An extremity of some condition or quality (usually a negative one); a condition from which recovery is impossible or unlikely. –from the Oxford English Dictionary A few weeks ago, …
How Putin’s assault on Ukraine impacts Poland’s democratic backsliding The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a dramatic impact on Poland’s international position as well as domestic political developments. Poland’s political class as well as the wider public recognized that this war is not just about the future of Ukraine but a direct threat to Poland’s security. The country’s position as a ‘frontline state’ put it in the …
In 2018, most Brazilian citizens decided to live under a government that daily weakens our democracy and attacks its institutions, instilling terror in part of Brazilian society. By electing Jair Bolsonaro, we elect someone who not only openly defends the military dictatorship of 1964 but defends it in its worst aspects: the practice of torture, silencing, and murder of critics and opponents. Jair Bolsonaro is not merely a …
One central concept of contemporary social and political science is that of accountability. The presupposition that popular sovereignty requires that rulers be accountable to the people is a universal tenet of democratic theory. There is less agreement, however, on how to produce governmental accountability. As processes of democratic consolidation unfolded in the third-wave democracies, a liberal model of accountability as limited government gained ground, as many analysts called …
Putin and the Dictator’s Playbook Chinese leader Xi Jinping asserted at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that “China always respects all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Some political commentators interpret the statement as Chinese support for respecting national borders, including that of Ukraine, limiting China’s ability to support Russia’s invasion. However, this may be a misinterpretation of Xi’s meaning, particularly as he does not actually …
Autocratic Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine raises many questions about Taiwan, whose independence is also under existential threat from its larger and more powerful neighbor. Neither Russia nor China sees Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, as independent states. China thinks it is completely consistent that it: (a) “respects and safeguards the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries” including Ukraine, while (b) considering Taiwan a mere province and …
We often hear that in times of war, political divisions should be put aside. As Polish government officials like to say, this isn’t “the right time” to discuss petty domestic issues. Yet, it’s apparently the “right time” for them to continue to dismantle Poland’s democracy. It might seem that the war in Ukraine will change everything about our politics, especially in terms of our approach to the …
