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In Democracy Disrupted, journalist and political scientist Ivan Krastev proposes a provocative interpretation of the "Occupy" movements that have surfaced in the United States, Great Britain, and Spain, as well as the more destabilizing forms of unrest in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Of the many crises that Europe faces today, it is the migration crisis that most profoundly defines the changing nature of European politics. It is also a turning point in central and east European societies' attitudes to the European Union, and it signals the return of the east-west divide in Europe. The article argues that what Brussels describes as a lack of solidarity is actually a clash of solidarities: national, ethnic, and religious solidarity chafing against our moral and legal obligations with respect to the refugees. The east-west divide over migration has its roots in history, demography and the twists of post-communist transition, while at the same time representing an east European version of popular revolt against globalization. The attitude divide between Europe's west and east on issues of diversity and migration strongly resembles the divide between the big cosmopolitan capital cities and the countryside within western societies themselves.

Abstract: In argument with James Dawson and Sean Hanley, the author insists that the current state of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be explained simply by the absence of more value-based democratic politics and the opportunism of liberal elites. In the author's view, what we see in Central and Eastern Europe is not the crisis of democratization but a genuine crisis of liberal democracy caused by a major economic crisis, publics' backlash against globalization and some of the core beliefs of liberal cosmopolitanism, and decline of the role of Europe and the European Union in world politics. In this view, the concept of "backsliding" is not helpful in making sense of the current crisis.

Abstract: From 2009 through 2014, political protests erupted in more than 70 countries around the world, in both democracies and non-democracies. In most cases, the protests were not led by a political party or a trade union, and the protesters themselves were openly anti-institutional, mistrustful of both the market and the state, and lacked a coherent ideology. In this article, the author claims that though these "movements of mistrust" do not claim power and do not offer political alternative to the status quo, they do represent an effective strategy of citizen empowerment in the age of globalization, when the power of citizens derives mainly from their ability to disrupt.