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"Some democratic countries like Turkey, which has a growing relationship with China, were not invited to the gathering, while democracies with authoritarian tendencies like far-right Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil and Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi's India, which has antagonistic ties with Beijing, were included.  Turkey is both a NATO ally and the Middle East's most powerful democracy. But for Washington, it is not Turkey's democratic system but the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's more independent political mindset - which sees no problem acquiring Russian S-400s against Washington's protests due to Turkey's air defence needs - that is a problem. "

Disagrees with Samuel P. Huntington's thesis

What's Gone Wrong with Democracy?

"The core of CANVAS's work is rather to spread the word of "people power" to the world than to achieve victories against one dictator or another. Our next big mission should obviously be to explain to the world what a powerful tool nonviolent struggle is when it comes to achieving freedom, democracy and human rights."

"More than a quarter of world's population now live in "democratically backsliding countries," says International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance." TRT World (Turkish)

This article from Aljazeera summarizes the response from world leaders with regards to today's attack on capital hill. In general, they all expressed similar sentiments that seemed to condemn the acts of violence, support a peaceful transition of power, and hope America is able to return to being a "temple of democracy."

It is interesting to see such a contrast in rhetorics from outside the US and within. Even after the capital was secured 6 republican senators continued to try and block certification.

I think the fact that other world leaders have to wish for a non violent transition of power shows that America is not a "temple of democracy." Like Ethan said, 6 senators tried to block certification of Joe Biden as the president elect, also showing that democracy in America is struggling

The article reads as "karma" for the US supporting a number of coups in numerous other countries including Thailand.

I agree with Jalen's sentiment but I believe that the quick switch to certifying the election results by some republicans shows that it was nothing more than an attempt to buy political power with their constitutes.

I doubt that our countries leader's will see the irony in this situation, as most of them believe this attempted insurrection was anti-democracy, and all of the coups the U.S. supports are supposedly democratic.

Countries around the world react to events at the capitol. Despite being disappointed in and infuriated by this display, fellow democracies appear confident in the strength of US Democracy. Nondemocratic countries believe this event revealed inherent weaknesses of democracy and served as payback for the US frequently meddling in foreign coups.

Managed Democracies

Russians head to the polls in what is expected to be an easy victory for the ruling United Russia Party. The power of the opposition parties has been significantly reduced thanks to crackdowns on political dissent by Putin and his government. It is interesting to watch Russia fall into authoritarianism while many lesser developed countries are moving towards democracy.

I wonder what it will take for Eastern European "democracies" to hold relatively fair elections (thinking of Belarus here as an example). Based on the corruption detailed in the article, it seems that dictator presidents kind of filled the vacuum left by the fall of the USSR and people haven't been able to break their iron hold since.

Yes, lots of corruption. Yet the 2004-05 orange revolution in Ukraine led to a time of high participation democracy. It's a mixed bag of mostly corrupt regimes, some more so than others, Russia the worst.

This article does a good job of putting our political system in context with the rest of the world, challenging America's self-identification as a leader in democracy. It also highlights the hypocrisy of certain political figures such as Joe Manchin when it comes to restructuring archaic aspects of our legislative process.

A Comparative Politics Professor was interviewed for this article! There are pros and there are cons. . . .

The Turkish president has called on Turks abroad to show their support for his regime in response to the recently attempted coup. This has caused many German Turks to stage rallies, which in turn has caused some Germans to doubt their loyalty to German ideals such as democracy and liberalism.

I thought this was interesting... especially this little tid bit: "Given Egypt's influence in the Arab world, the officials said, its economic recovery and political stability could have a profound influence on other nations in transition and ease wariness in Israel about the tumultuous political changes under way."

I found this topic fascinating because it addresses the internal Chinese conflict of democracy and communism. The general public (those not in the communist party and not in control) is not happy with the governments plan to initiate a national education system. With the national education system teachers and schools will no longer have the choice on how to teach their students. This article questions Communism, Democracy, Nationalism, and Patriotism, all of which are important to China.

I am always drawn to articles that highlight young people being involved in their local governments. They seem to be the most relevant to me and my peers' lives. This article is super interesting because it gave me a lot of information I didn't know regarding Chinese government. The main speaker/ activist at this riot was apparently a small 17 year old boy accompanied by hundreds of students fighting for a democratic election in 2017. You could tell from his words how passionate he was about the topic: "Hong Kong's future belongs to you, you and you..I want to tell C.Y. Leung and Xi Jinping that the mission of fighting for universal suffrage does not rest upon the young people, it is everyone's responsibility..I don't want the fight for democracy to be passed down to the next generation. This is our responsibility." This article was inspiring and reminded me how deeply current political decisions affect the youth; this is why I think it is important for us to at least be educated about all of the crazy world politics going on around us outside of this "American bubble" we continue to contently live in.

Hong Kong's government is not Hong Kong's own, its chief executive has been appointed by the central Chinese government since China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. However, residents of Hong Kong have enjoyed more civil liberty than the residents of mainland China, for example the freedom of speech and it's own separate judiciary system. With residents of Hong Kong fed up with current pro-Beijing chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, and mainland China's current president, Xi Jiping, who are limiting the democratic liberties of the territory. Though mainland China has sovereignty over the domain of offshore Hong Kong, the levels of democracy in mainland China and Hong Kong are very dissimilar. In China, the internet, education systems, communities, and society as a whole are controlled by the central government, allowing the residents few civil liberties. For a while, Hong Kong, has utilized its own judiciary system and maintained its own chief executive to deal with governance, allowing Hong Kong to keep some of its Western democratic roots, from Hong Kong's time as a British colony; more recently the central government has appointed pro-Beijing (mainland) chief executives who have slowly taken more and more democratic liberties from the people. The people have taken to the streets of Hong Kong in protest asking for more democratic power in the appointment of their chief executive, but the iron-fisted Xi Jiping refuses to allow for any compromises. Xi Jiping is a strongly believes previous communist regimes fell apart because they were lax; as a result, Xi Jiping refuses to let these protests flourish or compromise with protestors because he doesn't want this to spark any freedom protests in the mainland. Yet, Xi Jiping can't use the force he would like to, because the level of force necessary to take down protests with such fervor at this scale who be reminiscent to the force used in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Any significant bloodshed would j