Eric Chenoweth’s Articles
Eric Chenoweth is co-founder and co-director of IDEE and was also Executive Director of the Committee in Support of Solidarity from 1981–88 (see About the Directors). He is also principal author of Democracy Web, an extracurricular resource web site of the Albert Shanker Institute that includes 12 chapters on basic principles of democracy together with 36 country studies. Mr. Chenoweth has written and published widely on Eastern Europe and democracy issues and below are selected recent articles.
Turning Away From The Election’s Alarming Story: Russian Intervention
by Eric Chenoweth
The following appeared in the Washington Post, November 26, 2016.
In assessing Donald Trump’s presidential victory, Americans continue to look away from this election’s most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion prior to the vote. […]
Can US Democracy Defend Itself?
The following article appeared in The Washington Post, November 2, 2016.
By Eric Chenoweth
Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy has posed many challenges to U.S. media. In at least one frightening respect, it has failed: News outlets are actively abetting an authoritarian and imperialist foreign power’s attempt to manipulate a U.S. presidential election to aid its favored candidate, Trump, and sanctioning an assault on the individual and civil liberties of all American citizens. […]
The Present Danger
Revised October 7, 2016 PDF Version
by Eric Chenoweth
Editorial boards of newspapers have become the most responsible civic voices in this year’s US presidential election. […]
Answering Authoritarian Politics:
An Open Letter to an American Citizen
About the 2016 Presidential Election
September 16, 2016
by Eric Chenoweth PDF Version […]
How Democracies Perish
Revised July 28, 2016 PDF Version
by Eric Chenoweth
“Democracy may, after all, turn out to be an historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes.” — Jean François Revel, How Democracies Perish, 1983
There have been many who prognosticated democracy’s doom. […]The Authoritarian Temptation
June 24, 2016 PDF Version
by Eric Chenoweth
In 1976, the French political theorist Jean François Revel warned of the “totalitarian temptation” in the West at a time when many intellectuals were attacking political democracy, often in favor of Soviet communism. Forty years later, the danger posed by Soviet communism is gone, but political democracy is again under severe threat, this time from an authoritarian temptation that has reached the United States. […]