Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

The Crisis of Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy
Make us preferred on Google

“Democracy is in crisis,” warns a new report from Freedom House, a human rights watchdog. “Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom,” according to the report. (See “Hard Numbers” below for some specifics.)


The report is a sobering read, and its conclusions make clear that we must look beyond the individual abuses of power of today’s strongmen toward longer-term political, economic, cultural and technological trends to understand why rights and freedoms are increasingly under threat.

More For You

The world is on fire. Why are markets so calm?

US President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter prior to signing an executive order on AI next to Sriram Krishnan, Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and David Sacks, chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on December 11, 2025.

REUTERS/Al Drago
It’s a fascinating moment for world politics and global markets. Geopolitically, the world is in turmoil, primarily because the United States, still the superpower, has become a fundamentally unreliable actor. President Donald Trump is actively pulling apart the international order that Washington built and led over the past 80 years. Yet, [...]
Cuba’s old guard gets even older
Will Fitzpatrick
Raúl Castro, younger brother of Fidel, has been synonymous with the Cuban regime that has frustrated and confounded American presidents for decades. Though he stepped back from official duties in 2021, he continues to serve as a symbolic leader and as the general of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. But Castro is ringing in his birthday with an [...]
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung leaving after giving a speech

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung leaves after giving a speech on the Government's first supplemetary budget bill of 2026 at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, 02 April 2026.

JEON HEON-KYUN/Pool via REUTERS
A superb day for South Korea’s LeePresident Lee Jae-myung is set to mark his one-year anniversary in office with an excellent showing in Wednesday’s local elections that were viewed as a referendum on his presidency. Exit polls suggest that his left-leaning Democratic Party is set to win 11 of 16 municipal leadership races, while the conservative [...]
Anthropic prepares for blockbuster public offering
Will Fitzpatrick
The maker of the large-language model Claude became the latest AI giant to file to go public, following a similar move by SpaceX. OpenAI is likely to follow suit. Anthropic’s market debut could arrive as soon as this fall. It’s not clear, though, how many shares it will offer to the public, but the IPO is set to make the company worth above $1 [...]