18 June 2025
Standing in the Face of Illiberal Elections
Venezuela held local and parliamentary elections on May 25th which Maduro’s allies won with an overwhelming majority. Even though Maduro had severely tilted the playing field in his favor, the regime did not have to alter the results from what was evident in the exit polls. This was partly because an important part of the opposition called for a boycott of the elections. We argue that for a beleaguered opposition, the question whether to boycott an election should reflect both pragmatic and strategic considerations of the prospects for democratic resistance. Continue reading >>
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18 February 2024
The Triumph of Evil
Putin's regime finally murdered Alexei Navalny, a Russian patriot and freedom fighter. Regardless of how the events on 16 February unfolded, his death is a direct result of the actions of Russian state agents who had long been working towards his death. Putin’s belief in his absolute impunity, reinforced by appeasement, was a decisive factor that facilitated Alexei Navalny's murder. However, what happened to Navalny must not happen to Vladimir Kara-Murza, Aleksei Gorinov, Ilya Yashin, and many others. Navalny’s death is a huge loss for all Russians who believe in a free and peaceful future for their country, but also for Europe and the world. Continue reading >>
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29 November 2022
Conflating the Powers of the Commissarial and the Sovereign Dictator in Tunisia
On July 25, 2022, a year after Tunisian President Kais Saied declared a state of emergency and with only 28 percent of eligible voters participating, Tunisia ratified its new Constitution. Saied’s use of wide emergency powers to help sideline parliamentary opposition and support the constitution-making process, contradicts the underlying rational that emergency powers are needed in democratic states to defend the existing constitutional order against urgent and exceptional threats to the state. To preclude the potential misuse of emergency powers a state’s constitution should be designed to prevent the entity exercising emergency powers from simultaneously claiming that they represent the ‘broad popular will’ of the people. Continue reading >>
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