Romania was recently rocked by the annulment of presidential elections in December 2024, a crisis apparently stifled by the March 2025 invalidation of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy in do-over elections. Mr. Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand, styles himself in a MAGA-like fashion as tribune of “the People” and warrior against a “Soros-driven” elite conspiracy. The Hungarian-American billionaire … Read more
Herbert Kitschelt and Silja Häusermann show that structural economic change – rather than parties abandoning traditional left-wing principles – is the root cause of the decline of social democracy. From the 1970s to the present, the political left in western democracies has irreversibly changed. In the 1970s, almost all countries had a single dominant party … Read more
On Tuesday this week, the European Court of Justice rendered two judgments (here and here) on whether Article 22 TFEU gives mobile EU citizens the right to join a national party in order to exercise effectively their right to stand in municipal and European elections. The Court’s judgments are groundbreaking. However, this is not because … Read more
On January 30, 2025, the National Assembly of Nicaragua approved a constitutional reform that significantly strengthens the power of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo. As highlighted by several international actors, the amendments introduced profoundly transform the country’s political system, reinforcing the Executive’s influence over other branches of the state. Many … Read more
How Belarusian “Artivists” Reclaim the past to Forge a Future In the years following the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests in Belarus in 2020 and 2021, a wave of politically engaged Belarusian artists – visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets and novelists – have been driven into exile. Many have been branded as “extremists” by the … Read more
