The Wall Street Journal: The new axis of autocracy
The growing chumminess between Beijing and Moscow, on display last weekend at the meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin, is nothing but bad news for democrats around the world. Though Westerners like to believe that the cause of self-government is ever on the march, democracy has actually been retreating across much of the developing world in recent years. In its latest index of Freedom in the World—a rigorous measure of political rights and civil liberties—the global monitoring group Freedom House (for whom I serve as a consultant on Southeast Asia) notes that 2012 was the seventh consecutive year that the survey has found more declines than gains. For democratic progress around the world, it is the longest losing streak in the past 60 years.