President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promoted himself as a historical figure equal to the great heroes of Mexico’s national mythology. His populist rhetoric denigrates political opponents as enemies of the people. But more than two years into his term, his promises of economic growth have failed to materialize, partly because of his attachment to austerity.

What keeps European states committed to the EU project has not changed: it is economically much better to be inside the bloc than outside.

European democracy has always been playing catch-up with popular aspirations for democratic representation.

“The region has seen a radical shift from widespread unemployment to labor shortages, a historic expansion in higher-education opportunities, and unprecedented mass migration to the West.” Seventh in a series on social mobility around the world .

An ambitious attempt to trace the uneven progress toward liberal democracy over several centuries of European history may have drawn the wrong conclusions for dealing with today's illiberals.

[T]he financial crisis can be best understood as the final catastrophic stage of a process of dismantling the protective institutions that made Western European capitalism politically sustainable …

Is one of Asia's oldest democracies rejecting its tradition of liberalism in exchange for a strongman who can restore self-esteem and bring order to a desperate nation?

Reformasi-era values concerning citizen welfare and the public good remain deeply entrenched among a small but vocal segment of society.

The one bright light in this darkening landscape is that Poles remain committed to democracy.

Despite a collapsing economy, Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian moves to neutralize his opponents seemed to be succeeding–until year-end protests showed the working class was finally fed up.

In Hungary and Poland, populist leaders with authoritarian tendencies have drawn on the cynical power-holding playbooks of the old communist regimes whose traces they vowed to erase.

[H]istory … suggests taking more seriously concerns about inequality and, specifically, the resentment and alienation of once-privileged groups who feel left behind.

[T]he principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seems much better positioned than the Indian National Congress to win power in this year's elections.

The failure of public institutions to rise to the occasion by preventing the economic crisis from mutating into social disaster has bred disillusionment with parliamentary democracy and brought the far right and extreme left into the political mainstream.

[N]either the far right nor the ‘anti-European populists’ are on track to win a significant victory in the upcoming European Parliament elections.