Janina Heaphy
Italy’s new cross-border surrogacy ban is typical of the way democratic nations are adopting authoritarian measures to target citizens who travel abroad to circumvent restrictions at home. The new law targets LGBTQ+ families in particular. Janina Heaphy argues that Italy's actions reflect a global trend of transnational restrictions on personal freedoms and human rights. Read more
Andrea Krizsán
Women and sexual minorities are facing unprecedented levels of targeted political violence. Andrea Krizsan and Conny Roggeband argue that gender-based violence has become a tool for right-wing populist parties and governments to promote and sustain an exclusionary ideal of the nation and the ‘people’ as white, patriarchal, and heteronormative Read more
James Dawson
The EU did not foresee how autocratisation would unfold in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). But political scientists failed to raise the alarm, too. Lise Herman, James Dawson and Aurelia Ananda show that optimistic assumptions about democratisation misled policy makers and researchers alike Read more
Licia Cianetti
Licia Cianetti and Petra Alderman critique the trend for claiming that a 'global' autocratisation is sweeping the world. It is, they argue, not a homogenous process, but many processes that look differently across time and space. Just as we need to better differentiate autocracies, so we also need better language to reflect these differences in autocratisation Read more
Michael Bauer
Populists have risen to executive office worldwide. In this context, Michael W. Bauer argues, we must pay more systematic attention to threats to the state and its institutions; the potential long-term impacts of the damage that populist governments can inflict 'from within' are potentially devastating Read more
Luca Tomini
Resistance to autocratisation is not limited to democracies. In fact, Luca Tomini, Suzan Gibril, and Venelin Bochev demonstrate that the main actors resisting autocratisation and their strategies vary across regime types. Analysing resistance strategies from democracy to fully authoritarian regimes can be invaluable beyond academia to practitioners and activists Read more
Cristina Chiva
Reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights are increasingly under attack across the world. So far, we have a good grasp of the causes and consequences of the backlash against gender equality. What we need to do now, argues Cristina Chiva, is to conceptualise and document democratic resilience against these trends Read more
Eduardo Burkle
Bolsonaro's first term saw a decline in democracy and human rights in Brazil. Recent attacks on the media and judiciary, arguing election fraud, show how a second term for the far-right populist would only enhance Brazilian autocratisation. Democracy is on the line as the run-off elections approach, writes Eduardo Burkle Read more
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