
Commentary / World Jan 2, 2021
COVID-19 exposes the cracks in the world's big democracies
The U.S., U.K. and India have suffered at the hands of incompetent leaders and a severe lack of preparedness.
For Pankaj Mishra's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
The U.S., U.K. and India have suffered at the hands of incompetent leaders and a severe lack of preparedness.
It is one thing to defend freedom of expression — an obligation of all democratic leaders. It is quite another to deploy a whole nation behind a particular expression of that freedom.
There is little respite from clownish demagoguery once a long-standing political order loses credibility and legitimacy among a significantly large proportion of the population.
In recent weeks, doctors, nurses and care workers for the British National Health Service — in particular, immigrants — are presently being hailed for their gritty sense of duty, for standing between many people and premature death.
After failing to anticipate the financial crisis, networks and major newspapers have earned a good chance of flourishing in the future.
Much maligned in recent years, big government will come back — and with it, the potential for both greater good and evil. Threatening the world with a long recession, the new coronavirus looks set to inaugurate a turbulent new political and economic era. Its main ...
The COVID-19 pandemic reflects a systemic crisis akin to the seminal crashes of the 20th century.
Free trade turns out to be something that helps a rising great power, until it doesn't.
Mass protests in country after country show how powerful the demand for social equality remains
He's hardly the only politician to realize that ethnic nationalism is a means of creating a cohesive political community.