South America

We are living in an age of mass political participation, and civil resistance has emerged as a mainstay of the many social movements active around the world. On this episode of "Behind the Book", we speak with Erica Chenoweth, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, about their new book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, which provides a robust introduction to the theory and practice of civil resistance.

On March 29, the Future of Diplomacy Project hosted Nestor Forster Jr., Ambassador of Brazil to the U.S., who spoke about the bilateral relationship between the two largest economies and democracies in the Western Hemisphere: Brazil and the United States. He discussed the political and economic ties between the two countries in various areas, such as defense cooperation, trade policy, sustainable economic growth, environment, and science and technology. Faculty Chair, Nicholas Burns, introduced the event. Senior Fellow and former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon Jr., and Project Coordinator, Erika Manouselis co-moderated this discussion.

Authoritarian modes of governing have steadily increased over the past 10 years. A number of autocracies have intensified their repressive tactics, while several democracies – many of which were once classified as consolidated – have tampered with fundamental rights and the rule of law. Despite a few developments to the contrary, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) 2020 highlights the ongoing decline of democracy around the globe.

The presentation of BTI results focused on the resembling patterns of dismantling democracy in (highly) defective democracies such as Hungary, Moldova, the Philippines, Serbia or Zambia and regimes in which this process has been so pronounced that they are now categorized as autocracies in the BTI, such as Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Turkey or Uganda. It looked at the typical sequence to an authoritarian deconstruction of democratic institutions from within, from the purposeful undermining of oversight institutions, attacking the media and civil society to manipulating the electoral system, in order to examine the resonance of these trends in the United States. The goal of the discussion is to identify the features and underlying causes of this erosion, and to suggest promising counter-strategies.

The panel considers how the US, UK and EU can contribute to a global response. It also asks what a global response to the health and economic crisis in the developing world would look like.

Jacqueline Hazelton challenges the conventional wisdom that states must make liberalizing reforms and win the population’s “hearts and minds” to defeat insurgencies.