Democracy Archives - Page 30 of 97

Feature

A Regional Approach for Central American Asylum Seekers

The U.S. should pursue a policy that strengthens ties with neighbors

June 11, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

The White House leaked documents to the Washington Post yesterdaytrying to show that Mexico has in fact agreed to a significant crackdown on its southern border and that Trump remains ready to impose the tariffs, or insist on the safe third country agreement, if the numbers at the U.S. border do not decline ...

Feature

The People’s Vote That Ended Communism

Lessons from Poland on the role of elections

June 8, 2019 • by Jim Bjork

On June 4th, 1989, Polish voters went to the polls to elect new members to the national legislature. The election was designed to produce a managed, incremental modification of the Communist regime’s four-decade-long rule. Only a third of seats in the lower house (the Sejm) were contested, and the newly ...

Democracy

The People’s Vote That Ended Communism

Lessons from Poland on the role of elections

June 8, 2019 • by Jim Bjork

On June 4th, 1989, Polish voters went to the polls to elect new members to the national legislature. The election was designed to produce a managed, incremental modification of the Communist regime’s four-decade-long rule. Only a third of seats in the lower house (the Sejm) were contested, and the newly ...

Feature

Letter One to Germany: Visiting New York City Under Trump

In February 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes the State of the Union from NYC

June 4, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on February 20, 2019 and has been slightly revised. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- A man on West 14th Street in Manhattan is handing out free phone cards. A small line has formed of those in ...

Blue Monday

Trump, Impeachment, and the Question of Democratic Legitimacy

To allow Trump to continue to act as if he has legitimacy is simply to continue to legitimate him and his party

June 3, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Trump declares boldly and angrily that he is President because he won the election; that as President he is entitled to disparage long-standing governmental norms, break the law, declare national emergencies on a whim, assault the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, minorities, and women, and treat his critics, in ...

Feature

On Capitalism

The worst there Is, except for all the others

May 30, 2019 • by Daniel Rose

Winston Churchill’s famous comment on democracy as a political system applies equally to free enterprise capitalism as an economic system. No other economic form provides the incentives to economic innovation and creativity, relates the desires of the consumer to the efforts of the producer, encourages the voluntary savings and investment ...

Feature

White Men Running (For President)

The DNC’s nostalgic embrace of familiar, and obsolete, white male leadership

May 28, 2019 • by Aaron Landsman

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy.” Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and its Discontents.” In this 2020 Democratic primary reality TV season, Biden, O’Rourke, Buttigieg, and Sanders all seem to be performing different facets of a kind of idealized white male type. ...

North America

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

May 24, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Yesterday (Thursday) the White House announced that Donald Trump has authorized Attorney General William Barr to unilaterally declassify any documents necessary to perform an investigation of the Mueller investigation. The New York Times headline accurately summarized the move: “ Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry .” Today (Friday) Trump ...

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

North America

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

That is all that can be expected, and it is enough!

May 22, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Trump administration continues to refuse all Congressional oversight and make a mockery of the rule of law, while Trump himself continues to denounce the Mueller team and his political opponents as “traitors” and to rally his mobs against “enemies of the people.” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues ...

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

Feature

Civil War by Other Means

Or: Somewhere, Carl Schmitt is Smiling

May 21, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

In a piece I wrote for Public Seminar in September 2015, I argued that Donald Trump’s campaign augured a turn to the kind of “Friends/Enemies” political imaginary cooked up by the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was unimpressed by the niceties of liberal democratic practice, and saw politics as a Kampf between irreconcilable parties, where ...

Feature

What Will Leftists Do if Biden Wins?

Nothing, probably, except vote for him in the general election.

May 19, 2019 • by John Stoehr

Bill Scher was my guest last night for a civics program in New Haven. We discussed and debated the ins and outs of impeaching Donald Trump. We disagreed, mostly, but I appreciated Bill’s take, because he works hard to see things with clear eyes. A contributing editor to Politico Magazine, Bill argued there’s little ...

Feature

The Trap Trump is Laying

Defer, deflect and delay

May 18, 2019 • by John Lawrence

Subtlety has never been one of Donald Trump’s strong suits, and I must confess, I have been loathe to attribute great strategic skills to this most incoherent and incompetent of presidents. Yet increasingly, one must begrudgingly acknowledge Trump’s strategy for countering the enhanced congressional oversight resulting from last November’s election. There ...