The corrupting of democracy THE ECONOMIST

Cynicism is gnawing at Western democracies

The Anatomy of Illiberal States | Brookings Report

"After decades of expansion, democracy—its consolidation, promotion, and global appeal—is entering a period of retrenchment. Liberal principles—political ideas that espouse the importance of individual liberties, minority rights, and the separation of power across levers of government—and democratic institutions—processes that translate popular will into public policy through legitimate elections—are being pulled apart. " (pdf)

Populist Attitudes, Political Trust, and External Political Efficacy: Old Wine in New Bottles?

via https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/08/21/is-populism-about-more-than-discontent/

Abstract: Substantial scholarly attention has been devoted to explaining why voters support populist parties. Recently, a new concept has been introduced to gauge populism among voters and to explain voting for populist parties: populist attitudes. However, some researchers regard populist attitudes as simply another measurement of existing and established concepts such as political trust and external political efficacy. Using data from the Netherlands (2018), this article addresses the relationship between these concepts, both theoretically and empirically. This article examines whether political trust, external political efficacy, and populist attitudes tap into different latent dimensions. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we show that populist attitudes are not old wine in new bottles and that they tap into different underlying attitudes than political trust and external political efficacy. Furthermore, we show that the three measures are not only different constructs but also relate differently to populist voting preferences.

ERDOĞAN’S ‘OTTOMANIA’ | Roos Feringa

Recep Erdoğan, the president of theTurkish Republic uses Ottoman revival architecture in, what I would say, a two-fold political strategy. Namely, he uses nostalgia to the ‘great’, ‘powerful’, ‘tolerant’Ottomans as a tool, internationally and domestically, for his plan to create a strong and important Turkey. ...

The Political Economy of Liberal Democracy | D. Rodrik & S.Mukand

This paper develops a taxonomy of political regimes that distinguishes between three sets of rights - property rights, political rights and civil rights. The truly distinctive nature of liberal democracy is ... (pdf)

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion

Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman

International Security

Volume 44 | Issue 1 | Summer 2019 
p.42-79

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec_a_00351