Democratic Erosion University Course Student Blog

Flash forward to 2026, and that humble narrative has completely eroded away. Advertisements for cryptocurrency exchanges line sports arenas. The POTUS has several personal cryptocurrencies that they flaunt at every opportunity. You’ve almost certainly had at least one unbearable acquaintance or family member “try to get you in on the ground floor” of some “totally radical new cryptocurrency that’s going to shake up the ecosystem”, much to your chagrin. There’s a lot of narratives regarding crypto, but one that I particularly loathe is that cryptocurrency will eventually be a useful, positive tool for the purposes of democracy. It won’t. We’re gonna spend a lot of time talking about just how “won’t” it will be. 

Hungary’s 21st century shift from liberal democracy into a “hybrid regime” – or a competitive authoritarianist state, as the phenomenon is also sometimes known – has been well-studied and quite heavily maligned by political science thinkers while it has been...

In March 2022, El Salvador declared a state of emergency that would reshape not only the country's political landscape but also their legal foundation. Under the current President Nayib Bukele, the government launched an extreme and shocking crackdown on gang...