Latest Articles
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Casting a Long Shadow: Trump 2.0’s Impact on Aotearoa New Zealand
This report examines the alarm felt in Aotearoa New Zealand during the first seven months of the second Trump administration as an autocratic President has managed to undermine basic democratic values and institutions, show open disdain for multilateral organisations, and do harm to global trade through his tariff policy. These developments challenge New Zealand’s deeply…
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Reluctant Truth-Tellers and Institutional Fragility
In democracies under strain, the most important truths often arrive too late, uttered hesitantly by those who should have spoken earlier. A striking case occurred on 5 July 2025, when Ty Cobb—former White House special counsel—accidentally revealed, in what he thought was a private Facebook comment, that Donald Trump was “worse than anyone in our…
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Is Trump Adding to the Backsliding of the ‘World’s Biggest Democracy’?
This report examines the consequences for India of a second Trump presidential term. With his steep tariffs and cheap insults, Trump has eroded a decades-old Indian public consensus of a pro-America policy and revived old animosities towards the US. If an estranged India’s strategic engagement with America and the democratic world loosens, it can only…
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The Sultanization of US Politics
This report examines the terminology applied to the second presidency of Donald Trump. It has been called ‘fascist’, a ‘descent into fascism’ or a ‘revolutionary government in the form of an imperial court’. The US itself has been described as a ‘flawed democracy’. What are the arguments for describing Trump’s USA as a plutocracy or…
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Democracy Lighthouse Digest #1
The Democracy Lighthouse Digest is a monthly newsletter that provides updates on our group’s work and information about the important worldwide contributions of the many organisations, activists and scholars currently engaged in the defence and reimagining of the past, present, and future of democracy. In this inaugural edition of the digest we interview one of…
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