Democracy field notes
Displaying 81 - 90 of 105 articles
Look around, or beyond the borders where you live. You’ll probably have noticed that disquiet and disaffection are spreading through the drought fields of democracy. Political parties and legislatures…
Bliss was it in that spring to be alive, and to be young, on the streets, was very heaven. Or so it seemed to millions of women and men in early 2011, shortly after the first protests in Tunisia rocked…
The spirit and institutions of Greek democracy are dying, but who really cares? Kostas Vaxevanis does. His name merits global attention because during the past year Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he owns…
The day before I’m due to interview Somsri Hananuntasuk in steamy downtown Bangkok, mean-faced riot police crushed a public rally of red-shirted pro-government protesters and their yellow-shirted opponents…
India’s most respected public intellectual Ashis Nandy recently appealed to his fellow citizens to recognise and deal with a spreading malady in Indian politics. He calls it ‘psephocracy’. The quality…
Dear reader, don’t let yourselves be fooled: whatever political charlatans, cynics or melancholics say to the contrary, democracy as we know it is turning green. There’s never been a period in the history…
In preparation for an upcoming event at the University of Sydney, I’ve been re-reading ex-diplomat Stefan Halper’s interpretation of contemporary Chinese politics. Like most books by outsiders on the subject…
It was raw, convincing, a two-hour burst of unsmiling defiance, a croaky voice of the not-young, not-old generation to which I happily belong. I’d seen him perform live before. Several times, in fact…
A popular recent joke in China tells of two Communist Party members enjoying drinks in a fancy bar in downtown Shanghai. One says to the other: ‘I think I’ve lost touch with my comrades.’ The second asks…
‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ is a formula made famous during the 1960s by the American scholar Barrington Moore Jr. It’s still frequently quoted in the academic literature. When explaining the connections…