The world is not moving “back” toward some regimes familiar from the past, nor moving by “accident’ COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | It seems that 2023 will be another dismal year for democracy. There have been several coups in Africa. Tunisia long touted as the Arab Spring’s one democratic success story …
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Why the climate emergency requires serious democratic ideals to avoid it becoming a disaster COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | This summer with its record temperatures, deadly floods, and raging wildfires, which in Canada alone destroyed the equivalent of all the trees in Germany might have felt like a final warning: without …
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No business model has emerged as a replacement for advertising revenue, but alternatives exist COMMENT | JAN – WERNER MUELLER | “All politics is local,” proclaims an old American saying. That might partly explain why democratic politics is going so badly especially, but not only, in the United States. For local government …
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A parliamentary space should help citizens comprehend who stands for what in political conflicts COMMENT | JAN- WERNER MUELLER | Is there an ideal design for parliament buildings and legislative chambers? The question seems abstract, but it comes up surprisingly often as a very concrete challenge. It arose in the 1990s, …
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All fascists are nationalists who promise national rebirth but not all nationalists are fascists COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | Almost exactly a century after Fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome and ascent to the Italian premiership, a politician whose party descends from the original Fascists, Giorgia Meloni, has …
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They cry fraud because they base on the claim that they, and only they, represent `the real people’ COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | In the run-up to Brazil’s presidential election next month, President Jair Bolsonaro is crafting his own version of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie”: the claim …
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Why plenty of observers are confident that workers who feel ignored will become a far-right constituency COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | A few victories by center-left parties in large countries hardly makes for an international trend. Nonetheless, wins by the U.S. Democrats in 2020 and the German Social Democrats …
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The lack of transparency about how algorithms sort people into groups and prioritise messages COMMENT | JAN-WERNER MUELLER | Donald Trump’s presidency was bookended by the White House pushing “alternative facts” about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration at the US Capitol and his violent supporters scrawling “Murder …
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The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price