Tag: democratic erosion
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ICON Volume 18, Issue 2: Editorial
Orbán and the self-asphyxiation of democracy; Publishers, academics and the battles over copyright and your rights, Part I; Festschrift? ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow! That is the whole Torah; the rest is interpretation’ (from the Elder Hillel in Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a); In this issue Orbán and the…
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Tomorrow Knows Better: A New Inflection Point in Brazil’s Democracy?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development Brazil is again in the spotlight, and, as has been a common narrative at least since President Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, not for a good reason.
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Bolsonarism and COVID-19: Truth Strikes Back
—Thomas da Rosa de Bustamante & Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Federal University of Minas Gerais and Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) In response to the personal offenses and criticism of her critically acclaimed documentary “The Edge of Democracy”, in comments by President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa published an opinion…
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The “Rationality of Fear” on the Edge of Brazilian Democracy: Another Shield Against Authoritarianism?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development[1] In a period of about two months, a series of protests in South America brought the region again into the spotlight. Except for the Bolivian case,[2] whose causes were mostly related to the presidential election process, the protests in Chile, Ecuador,…
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JHH Weiler, Co-Editor in Chief, in Conversation with Professor Wojciech Sadurski
—J.H.H. Weiler, Co-Editor in Chief, ICON, and Wojciech Sadurski, University of Sydney One of the more ‘elegant’ ways of restricting freedom of political speech and academic freedom is to use libel and defamation laws. It has increasingly become the weapon of choice of various political actors and regimes.
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The Rule of Law and the Judicial Retirement Age in Poland: Is the ECJ Judgment the End of the Story?
—Matteo Mastracci, Koç University On June 24, 2019, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice delivered its long hoped for judgment over the retirement age dispute introduced by the Polish legislator through the so-called “Law on the Supreme Court.”
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The News Media and Democracy under Bolsonaro: A “Trump of the Tropics”?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development Democratic backsliding is certainly a hot topic in Brazil, especially after the election of the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Such a trend could already be observed in an empirical study Zachary Elkins wrote based on the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) Index…
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Brazil’s New Government: Risks to Constitutional Democracy
–Antonio Moreira Maués, Federal University of Pará With the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President, Brazil definitively joined the list of countries in which constitutional democracy is in danger. Although the 1988 Constitution had marked the transition to democracy, and had functioned decently for over two decades, the system has been under serious strain since…
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We Should Learn from Historians: Seeing the Future in Brazil’s Political Landscape
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development The election of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s next President has sparked a fruitful debate over the expansion of an illiberal mindset across the globe, now reaching the biggest economy in Latin America and world’s fourth largest democracy.
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Memory and Forgetfulness in the Brazilian Dictatorship: Can New Revelations Help Brazil Expiate its Sins?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília For a long time in Brazil, it has been taught that, in the final years of the dictatorship, during the presidency of General Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979) and General João Baptista Figueiredo (1979-1985), the repression and the human rights violations were gradually left aside in favor of a conciliatory discourse…