Publications
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Democracy and the Spaces We Can No Longer Shape
Democracy does not live only in constitutions, elections and courts. It also lives in the places where people meet, wait, argue, rest, organise and remain without permission. When those spaces become harder to shape, harder to inhabit, or harder to use without paying, democracy weakens long before anyone announces its decline. Much of the debate about…
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Resources on Systems Thinking
CDA Collaborative Learning Projects. Designing Strategic Initiatives to Impact Conflict Systems: Systems Approaches to Peacebuilding. A Resource Manual. Cambridge, MA, 2016. https://www.cdacollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Designing-Strategic-Initiatives-to-Impact-Conflict-Systems-Systems-Approaches-to-Peacebuilding-Final.pdf Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Diana Wright (ed.) White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2009. Online resource: Donella Meadows Institute, http://www.donellameadows.org/systems-thinking-resources Omidyar Group, Systems Practice Workbook, accessed at https://docs.kumu.io/disciplines/systems-practice…
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A White Supremacist’s Passage to India
This report examines transnational far-right alliances which are exacerbating existing challenges to democracy by creating a networked infrastructure that amplifies extremist ideologies, creates replicable authoritarian playbooks, and normalizes democratic erosion and hateful rhetoric. The report focuses on celebrity MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer who, despite issuing slurs and rants against India and Indians…
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Democracy Lighthouse DIgest #8
In this edition of the Democracy Lighthouse Digest, Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist, asks us to fall in love with the future. Ria Shibata examines the role of youth in the recent Japanese election, and Jordan Ryan discusses the UN’s “moment of truth.” This issue also includes the latest book from Ciro Murayama “The…
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The UN’s Moment of Truth
The United Nations is being defunded in the middle of a crisis it was built to prevent. I have watched the United Nations do what no other institution could. As UN Resident Co-ordinator in Viet Nam, I saw the organisation convene the government, agencies and civil society around HIV/AIDS prevention when no bilateral actor had…
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