Irit Dekel is guest editor of an ongoing symposium on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s latest book on the retreat of democracy.

As a writer, Slavenka Drakulić sought to evoke the life of the single individual in a way that made empathy possible, writes her friend Marci Shore.

Eyyup Yilmaz, (Loyola University) discusses the nature of debates surrounding Islam and democracy. Starting from a lecture by Ernst Renan, he shows how both Muslim and non-Muslim actors fall into a modernist trap of thought when discussing Islam and democracy.

Robert Austin (University of Toronto) argues that while for some the promise of a $4 billion dollar resort linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump is a sign Albania has finally made it, for others, it caps 35 years of shabby democracy and rampant development devoid of vision or rules.

András Bozóki (Central European University), Andrea Szabó and Zoltán Gábor Szűcs-Zágoni (Eötvös Loránd University) examine TISZA’s electoral strategy and its implications for challenging electoral autocracy without violence.