Politics / Democracy

Rebel chefs are on a mission to decolonize diets across sub-Saharan Africa. Kareem Arthur goes in search of new ingredients.

The topic is vast, the aspects covered in this issue limited, but there are many ways to take action on democracy.

Rich Wilson and Claire Mellier explain how citizens’ assemblies have the potential to restart the beating heart of democracy.

We must be able to see the secret, algorithmic methods of Google, Facebook and other digital titans if we are to tackle disinformation and toxic polarization, says propaganda expert Peter Pomerantsev.

Funds from hidden sources are warping democracy with increasing and devastating effect. Peter Geoghegan follows the money.

Our privacy and freedom of thought is routinely and pervasively breached by the masters of surveillance capitalism. What is this doing to us as humans and to our democratic choices in life? Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips talks to Vanessa Baird.

India is not short of divisive and harmful conspiracy theories. Now one, called ‘love jihad’, has been given legal teeth. Laxmi Murthy reports.

We make our political judgements based on the information we get – and the internet is brimming with it. That can be part of the problem...

More fragile than we thought, liberal democracy seems to be under attack from many sides. Are these death throes – or growing pains? Vanessa Baird explores.

We had binding quotas for women in politics? Vanessa Baird looks at what gender parity can do.

Update from Bolivia by Amy Booth.

A socialist became president of the USA? Richard Swift ponders a pipedream – or a possibility.

Report from Bahrain by Phil Miller.

We put the track record of Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea – and a liberation fighter turned ruthless dictator – under the spotlight.

Wame Molefhe profiles Botswana, where prosperity has morphed into corruption and inequality. But will the country’s future see it regain the sparkle its diamonds offer to the rich?

So many voices online. Surely that means more diversity and media democracy? Not really, explains Laura Basu.

After decades of denuding privatization policies, the green shoots of a public takeback are finally appearing. Dinyar Godrej on the promise and the threat.

The treatment of Myanmar’s Rohingya people has been seen as a genocide in the making. Parsa Sanjana Sajid visits those trapped on the Bangladeshi border.

Mass starvation is making a comeback as a weapon of war. To tackle this great evil we must stop talking about food and over-population, and engage with the politics, argues Alex de Waal.

Paraguayan democracy may have come a long way since the end of dictatorship, but terror is sweeping its agricultural heartlands where farmers and indigenous communities are resisting attempts to take away what little land they have left.