Spain is one of the countries hit hardest by the outbreak of the Corona virus. To date, it has recorded close to 15,000 deaths related to Covid-19, one of the highest death rates per capita in the world. In addition to the public health consequences, the virus has also had [...]
The Coronavirus pandemic and its social, political and economic consequences have triggered numerous pessimistic predictions about what the world will look like once this crisis is behind us. Some of the facts are terrifying, indeed. For example, on Monday, Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban pushed a law through parliament that [...]
In the pull between democracy and capitalism, which we discussed at the Graduate Center in Spring 2015, tensions are rising and two camps are forming. Laid bare is the tension between the democratic drive towards inclusion and the capitalist tendency towards class stratification and hierarchy. There are different ways this [...]
As President Trump ramped up war rhetoric this week on the subject of Covid-19, voices on both sides of the political spectrum began speculating about the November 2020 general elections and the president's power to cancel or postpone them. The consensus is that the President lacks the authority to cancel [...]
The Covid-19 outbreak and the ensuing global pandemic has already had far-reaching changes for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Governments have resorted to extraordinary measures. In Italy, the whole country is on lockdown. In Germany, all “non-essential” establishments have been closed by a coordinated action of state [...]
This week, Covid-19 dominated news and social media around the world. The severity of the crisis -- as well as the reliability and quality of reporting -- varies greatly across media sources and from country to country. Wading through complex and contradictory masses of information is difficult and unsettling, even [...]
Civil rights and liberties continued to decline around the world, according to the new annual country-by-country report published on Wednesday by Freedom House. This constitutes the 14th consecutive year of declining democracy in the world. Almost twice as many countries experienced a decline in their democracy scores when compared to [...]
Protesters in the Dominican Republic have taken to the streets after the countries election board abruptly canceled municipal elections on February 16 four hours after they had begun, claiming technical difficulties with the electronic voting system. Voters in the Dominican Republic, however, were alleging sabotage ahead of the countries presidential [...]
The president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, on Friday has signed into law a new bill that could lead the country to hold its first democratic elections in 50 years. The law is set to replace a system in which clan elders nominated delegates who elected members of parliament who [...]
Last week, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has issued its World Social Report 2020. In it, the UNDESA traces the impacts of four megatrends on inequality, namel technological innovation, climate change, urbanization and international migration. In its executive summary, the report states that “the extraordinary [...]