Voters in Kazakhstan voted in favor of a proposed new Constitution on March 15, 2026. Some analysts argue that the new Constitution upholds and strengthens the existing “superpresidential” model, making it difficult for the public to scrutinize or even participate in politics. The People’s Council will have the right to propose legislation and suggest referendums on any issue.
Autocracies are collaborating with each other to target dissenters abroad. East Africa and East Asia are responsible for the majority of incidents of autocracies collaborating across borders. Most of those targeted are accused of terrorism or other “anti-state” activities in their home countries.
In the wake of Viktor Orbán's landslide election defeat, some conservative thinkers are defending the outgoing leader. Orbán transformed Hungary into what he called an "illiberal democracy" through a 16-year process of extreme gerrymandering, the weakening of checks and balances, and the dragooning of independent media.
Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary raises questions about the market for autocratic strongmen. The allure of strongman rule was a predictable response to the missteps that mainstream democratic leaders had made over the previous few decades. Today’s strongmen are facing a rockier future for the same reason.
The world is nearly evenly divided between democracies and autocracies. The share of the global population living under autocratic regimes has surged from 50% to 72% in just two decades. Science and scholarship are among the first targets of autocrats when they seek to dismantle democracy. In its first 15 months, the Trump administration has taken more than 300 documented actions against science. On Thursday, May 28, Vera Kempe, Christina Pagel and I will host a four-hour interactive workshop for scholars to discuss the 3 Ps of autocracy.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists submitted a report on the state of press freedom in Tajikistan to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of November’s 53rd Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session. Since 2022, nine journalists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms of up to 20 years. Eight of the nine journalists were convicted on apparently baseless charges of extremism and terrorism. The report documents an uptick in transnational repression of exiled journalists, particularly in absentia.
After Donald Trump won the election, I asked Hungarian political analysts what the future of the U.S. might look like. Viktor Orbán had rigged the electoral and legislative systems for his party’s benefit, control 80 percent of the media and hobbled most independent institutions. There had been smaller, almost imperceptible rumblings of the kind that usually portend profound political change in Hungary a year and a half ago. Civic groups were forming in places where civil society had all but disappeared.
Recent developments in Iran show that external pressure tends to consolidate internal political systems rather than weaken them. External intervention reframes political identity from internal contestation to collective defence. It compresses political space and narrows the range of acceptable positions. In doing so, it often delays or disrupts the very internal changes that external actors claim to support.