October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
The Mandarin in the Machine
Beijing is bent on deploying mass surveillance to eliminate threats to its rule. It is terrifying—and the latest example of its determination to remold society.
235 Results
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Beijing is bent on deploying mass surveillance to eliminate threats to its rule. It is terrifying—and the latest example of its determination to remold society.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
A review of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, by Peter Pomerantsev.
Online Exclusive by Patrick Quirk and Jan Surotchak | Establishment parties are flagging. They should learn from political disruptors.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
People obsess over where Russia’s democracy went wrong. The truth is it did not fail: Russia’s democratic transition never got off the starting blocks.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
A group of corrupt authoritarian powerholders has impoverished Sri Lanka and even brought starvation to the island. But behind their misrule lies the deeper and longer-term problem of unconstrained majority rule.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
A half-century after his father declared martial law and made himself a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been elected president of the Philippines by a stunning majority. There is little stopping him from dismantling what remains of the country’s democracy.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
The share of Ukrainians who endorse democracy as the best form of government has risen fast in short order, standing now at more than three-quarters. New data reveal a surprising explanation behind this remarkable shift.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
The Russian leader declared war on his country’s independent journalists. But Russian media outsmarted him by taking their operations overseas. They are now reaching more people than ever before. | Roman Badanin
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Will Russia’s war tip the Kremlin even further toward tyranny while fortifying Ukraine’s democracy? That will depend on Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky as much as on the course of the war itself.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Future state-building missions must learn from the failure of past U.S. interventions: It is critical to work with local power-brokers rather than relying on a centralized state.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Many fear that coups are making a comeback. While this is not true, one thing is alarming: Anti-coup norms are starting to erode.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
A recent wave of wins for abortion rights—the “green tide” in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia—owes its success to framing the issue as a matter of human rights.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
The more determined democracies are to avoid war, the greater the risk that autocracies will wage it.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? And why are Russian forces fighting so poorly? The internal logic of its personalist dictatorship is to blame.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
More than window dressing, public-opinion surveys and elections provide a crucial insight into the Russian people’s relationship with their regime.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
The first two months of the war alone turned the Russian clock back decades, undoing thirty years of post-Soviet economic gains and reducing the country to an international pariah state.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Xi Jinping undercut China’s political norms to cement his own power and brand of rule. But in so doing the “Chairman of Everything” has introduced new vulnerabilities for the regime.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
No state on the planet is more heavily targeted by authoritarians’ information warfare than the Republic of China on Taiwan. And no other state and free society are better at resisting the daily onslaught.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Any open society’s best weapon against Chinese influence operations is its openness—the ability to investigate and expose sharp-power manipulations, diminishing their strength.