Elections in South Africa
South Africa’s largest party, the African National Congress (ANC), won an absolute majority of votes in the national parliamentary elections the country held on May 8th. But support for the party fell well short of the 62 percent of votes former president Jacob Zuma was able to secure in the [...]
Tim Snyder: Democracy Is…
"Democracy produces history, and is produced by it. If we have a sense that time flows forward from a past filled with events through a present filled with a possibility to a future defined in part by our choices, democracy is possible. This is why enemies of democracy seek to kill both the past and the future, and keep us trapped in a relentless present. Democracy involves us in a succession principle, reminding us that both continuity (of the state) and change (of its rulers) is possible. This is why enemies of democracy feed us a mythical past in which we were always innocent, and instruct us not to worry about what comes next."
David Gill: Democracy Is…
"Democracy is, when the opinion of the other counts, when the majority decision is upheld but takes the minority point of view into consideration and when there is willingness to compromise for the common good."
The Largest Democracy in the World Goes to the Polls
Today marks the beginning of the biggest election in the history of the world’s largest democracy. Over 900 million eligible voters in India are called upon to decide the composition of a new parliament in an electoral process that will play out over the next five weeks. While the ruling [...]
Anne Applebaum on the Future of Democracy
What is happening to the democratic project, as the democracies established in the post-communist 1990s and elsewhere are under siege? What are the implications of the rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism for the future of democracy? Anne Applebaum, Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, stopped by the Graduate Center's Thought Project to discuss.
What Drives the Rise of Authoritarian Populism? Manu Bhagavan Has Answers
On the Thought Project, Professor Manu Bhagavan - a human rights, modern South Asian history and post-colonial studies scholar at The Graduate Center, CUNY and Hunter College - summarizes one of his essays on the international rise of authoritarian populism, a development driven by a set of overarching factors, Bhagavan says.