Giovanni Capoccia
The Italian right, led by the Brothers of Italy, is likely to be in government after the September 2022 elections. Despite its public statements expressing ‘full support’ for the European integration process, Giovanni Capoccia says that there are good reasons to question the exact nature of this commitment and what it means Read more
Timothy Hellwig
Timothy Hellwig explores the political crises in three European democracies (France, Italy and the UK) to argue that failures in constitutional design are at the root of their problems. These failures, moreover, are not dissimilar to those experienced in the United States, suggesting this is a current affliction of western democracies Read more
Hager Ali
When democracies’ most basic features lose their distinctive edge, differentiating regime types becomes a problem for scholars of democracy and autocracy alike. Hager Ali wants to redraw demarcations between regimes across the political spectrum. To do so, she argues that civilian control over militaries is just as fundamental as suffrage Read more
Nahla El-Menshawy
Legitimacy is as vital to the consolidation of authoritarian regimes as it is in democracies, where it is more studied. Nahla El-Menshawy illustrates how regime type, ideology, and historical legacies influence autocratic legitimation strategies Read more
Paul Emiljanowicz
Paul Emiljanowicz manages Participedia, the largest database documenting democratic innovations from around the world. To prevent reproducing coloniality, Paul writes, we must commit to expanding our knowledge about democracy and recognising the experiences and knowledges of all peoples Read more
Nitesh Anchan
Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine mainly on political grounds, but also claimed a cultural reason: the construction of a Eurasian civilisation. To Nitesh Anchan and Priya Vijaykumar Poojary, the Russia-Ukraine war signifies that global politics in the 21st century will be dominated by the rhetoric of the civilisation state Read more
Henry Giroux
Henry Giroux takes stock of the sciences of the democracies to argue that they offer helpful tools to contest the neoliberalisation of education and the teaching of democracy. The words of democracy, the ideas imbued in them, are vital resources for an age characterised by the desertification of public spheres Read more
Edward Goldring
Hager Ali launched this series by pointing out that 'we lack the terminology to do anything beyond counting non-democracies'. Yet Edward Goldring argues that we sometimes struggle to accurately do that. This raises troubling questions for analyses of non-democracies – and emphasises the importance of studying history Read more
