Latest Articles
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Democracy Lighthouse Digest #6
This edition includes an extract from a lecture on ‘Democracy and Dictators’ given by Yogendra Yadav, an Indian activist and academic. It also includes a short commentary from Professor John Keane on America’s abandonment of democracy in the world.
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Electoral Integrity and the 2026 United States Midterm Elections
This policy brief examines four interconnected threats to electoral integrity: the dismantling of US federal election security infrastructure, the Department of Justice campaign to obtain state voter files, the erosion of redistricting norms through mid-decade partisan gerrymandering, and the appointment of election deniers to key US federal positions. With the 2026 United States midterm elections…
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Middle Powers After Davos
At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech that cut against the prevailing diplomatic instinct to soften uncomfortable truths. Speaking at a gathering long associated with affirming confidence in the global economic order, Carney argued that the “rules-based international order” no longer operates as advertised, and…
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Commercialising Peace: A Strategic Risk
The Trump administration’s reported proposal for a new international ‘Board of Peace’ is presented, at least in concept, as a corrective to what its proponents describe as the failures of existing multilateral diplomacy. As outlined in investigative reporting, the initiative is framed as a vehicle for delivering peace agreements more decisively than the United Nations…
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The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance
The Trump administration’s recent announcement of its withdrawal from 66 international organisations has been met with a mixture of alarm and applause. While the headline number suggests a dramatic retreat from the world stage, a closer look reveals a more nuanced, and perhaps more insidious, strategy. The move is less a wholesale abandonment of the United Nations…
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