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Global Challenges
Issue no. 2 | September 2017
Democracy at Risk
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Articles for this issue
Global Challenges
Issue no. 2 | September 2017
Democracy at Risk

While the 20th century has been characterised by the generalisation of democratisation processes, the 21st century seems to have started with the reverse trend. An authoritarian-populist nexus is threatening liberal democracy on a global scale, including in its American and European heartlands. Charismatic leaders – thriving on electoral majorities and popular referenda – methodically undermine the rule of law and constitutional safeguards in order to consolidate their own power basis. Coupling inflammatory rhetoric with modern communication technologies, they short-circuit traditional elites and refuse to abide by international norms. Agitating contemporary scourges such as insecurity, loss of identity, mass migration and corrupt elites, they put in place new laws and mechanisms to harness civil society and political opponents. In order to better understand the novelty, permanence and global reach of “illiberal democracy”, this second issue of Global Challenges proposes seven case studies (Russia, Hungary, Turkey, the Middle East, Uganda, Venezuela and the United States) complemented by a series of expert interviews, maps and infographics.

Articles for this issue

Democracy at Risk
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Issue no. 16 | November 2024
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Elections – What For?
Global Challenges
Issue no. 16 | November 2024
Elections – What For?

In 2024, nearly half the world’s population, including citizens of the eight most populous nations, voted or will vote in elections. While this signals democratic engagement, many elections are run by autocratic or illiberal regimes pursuing self-serving agendas. Paradoxically thus, as elections are generalising as a practice, democracy is met with growing defiance. On closer scrutiny, however, it appears that it is not only the indicators of democracy but also those of elections that have been declining over the past decade. This dossier, produced with the Albert Hirschman Centre for Democracy, examines the essential role of elections in the construction of democracy today.

Special Issue no. 3 | October 2025
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Arts and the Study of the International
Global Challenges
Special Issue no. 3 | October 2025
Arts and the Study of the International

What does the experience of combining art and science bring to the study of international relations? Why blend sensibility with reason to think about the evolution of the world? How does aesthetic and/or creative performance nourish the production of academic knowledge? If thinking about creation and integrating art with the Humanities and Social Sciences is nothing new, the challenges of the 21st century call for new analyses and creative approaches that give a voice to frequently neglected perspectives, and contribute to a more nuanced and multidimensional understanding of the world. The dialectic of art and research can be approached through the artistic dimension of the object of study, proximity to artists, experimentation with new forms of fieldwork and writing, or through the cultural mediation of the results. In this special issue of the digital magazine Global Challenges, jointly produced by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva Graduate Institute) and the Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po), the contributors shed light on the role of art in research.

Issue no. 9 | March 2021
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The Moving Fault Lines of Inequality
Global Challenges
Issue no. 9 | March 2021
The Moving Fault Lines of Inequality

While poverty has been diminishing in absolute terms and relative income has been growing on a global scale for over two centuries, inequality – as measured by instruments such as the Gini coefficient – has been increasing steadily since the early 1980s. With the financial crisis of 2007, the growing digitalisation of the economy and the current pandemic, global inequality has further worsened, seeing the fortunes of the superrich attaining unprecedented levels and revenue concentrating in the top percentiles of societies.

Concurrently to the aggravation of the social fracture, additional fault lines have been opening or hardening along logics of race, gender, ethnicity and religion. Identarian revendications and logics of difference and exclusion have come to complement, compete with or supersede more traditional struggles for equality in a postmodern and neoliberal context that has normalised inequality, homogenised societies and done away with earlier grand narratives and collective agendas. 

The consequences of inequality(ies) are dramatic, as reflected in the polarisation and fragmentation of societies, worsening health and mortality indicators, political tensions and violence, a decline in democracy, and mistrust in state institutions. The objective of the current issue of Global Challenges is therefore – by reverting to the analytical tools of social science – to reflect on the causes behind the multifaceted growth of inequality(ies), anticipate their noxious fallouts and explore potential remedies.