Latest Articles
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Party Like Mamdani
This report discusses the important lessons that the New York mayor-elect’s campaign masterclass has for India’s flailing democracy, particularly its ineffectual opposition parties that have failed to mount any meaningful pushback against Modi’s monopoly over power in more than a decade. Indian-born Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech laced with quotes of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal…
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The Empire Has No Clothes: America’s Democratic Sermons and the Authoritarian Boomerang
For decades, the United States stood on the world stage delivering sermons on democracy, capitalism, and human rights. It lectured nations into adopting its model under the banner of American exceptionalism. In 2025, a startling spectacle emerges: the nation that proclaimed itself democracy’s global arbiter now displays the very symptoms of authoritarianism it once denounced.…
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Democracy Lighthouse Digest #3
This edition of the Democracy Lighthouse Digest includes the latest publications from our research team. The October feature article examines a democratic erosions systems map, the result of a joint project between the Lowy Institute and the Toda Peace Institute. This issue also includes Alpa Shah’s recently published ‘The Incarcerations’ and a short commentary by…
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Weaponisation of Law: Assault on Democracy
This policy brief examines the growing instrumentalisation of legal and administrative mechanisms to target and suppress civil society organisations. Drawing on recent developments in the United States and global patterns of democratic backsliding, it explores how national security and counter-terrorism rhetoric are being repurposed to silence dissent and constrict civic space. The brief argues that…
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Is Street-Level Hostility a Challenge to Liberal Democracy? Reflections from Australia
Public anxiety about immigration has become a powerful political currency across many liberal democracies. In Australia, as elsewhere, legitimate concerns about housing and economic fairness can be, and increasingly are exploited by anti-democratic actors who frame migration not as a policy issue but as a cultural threat. When these narratives move from online spaces to…
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