Policy Briefs on Global Challenges to Democracy

This Policy Brief addresses the question: How can right-wing populism be electorally reversed, and is democracy automatically restored when it is? A southern state in Modi’s India has important lessons as the world’s biggest election plays out.

This Policy Brief examines the rise to power of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim – a story of political perseverance and hope with few parallels – and how he has fared in handling the Southeast Asian country's many challenges in his first year in office. A rare intellectual-politician, his career has careened from street protests to the centre of power, back to street protests, incarceration, custodial torture, repression, then slow progression back to high politics, and eventually the apex of political power. Becoming the fifth prime minister in as many years in 2022, stability has been his priority, complicating his dual task of revving up the economy and battling the ever-lengthening shadow of Islamist conservatism over Malaysia. Anwar’s report card after a year is hence a mixed bag of some hits and many misses amid abounding constraints.

This Policy Brief examines the relationship between the Indian government and India’s mainstream national-level media. When we think of the global epidemic of media capture, we usually think of intimidation and coercion by neo-authoritarians to gain control over the narrative. India shows how media can also be co-opted through financial inducements, and how institutional norms internal to the media industry are instrumental in this wilful capitulation rather than the fear of the demagogue. This highly evolved model of media control is far more effective in that it not only makes the media fall in line but turns it into an enthusiastic cheerleader of the government, as India’s once vibrant and now dismal media landscape shows.

This Policy Brief analyses how the global landscape has shifted from post-Cold War optimism to current fragmentation, requiring changes in the approach of the United Nations to sustaining peace. It examines the priorities and limitations of the proposed New Agenda for Peace, while analysing issues like sovereignty, development, and enhanced UN integration. This Policy Brief offers concrete, practical recommendations to translate the ambitious sustaining peace vision into reality through continued reforms, recommitment to multilateral solidarity and collaboration, and the political courage to upgrade UN mechanisms for peace.

This Policy Brief explores the concept of resilience which has risen to become a key concept in science and society. As a scientific concept, resilience is, on the one hand, an analytical category that seeks to grasp empirically "what is" (what resilience potential does a particular democratic system have?) and, on the other hand, postulates normatively "what should be" (how is a desirable resilient democracy to be established?). This Policy Brief wants to transform the simple use of the term “democratic resilience” into an analytical concept which allows us to explore the state of resilience of real existing democracies and to discuss the methods, instruments, and ways to strengthen it in times of multiple challenges