Instead of ushering in an era of enduring peace and partnership, the end of the Cold War was followed by a decade of turmoil, with wars in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, and Chechnya, political violence in Moscow, and controversy over the eastward expansion of NATO. The disappointments and turbulence stemmed in part from the personalities and political choices of top leaders, including the erratic and increasingly autocratic Boris Yeltsin, the skeptical and stingy responses of George H. W. Bush to the reform and collapse of the Soviet Union, and the way Bill Clinton unreservedly embraced Yeltsin while also antagonizing him by deciding to enlarge NATO and wage war against Serbia. As this chapter shows, though, American–Russian relations in the 1990s were also roiled by widely shared popular attitudes, including American triumphalist mythology about how the Cold War ended, unrealistic Russian expectations of massive US aid and respect despite Russian corruption, mismanagement, and weakness. The bright promise of the end of the Cold War was marred both by arrogant American unilateralism and by a Russian slide into depression and authoritarianism.

This chapter focuses on the two Russian revolutions in 1917 and US responses to them. The Wilson administration enthusiastically welcomed the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy in March, quickly recognized the new Provisional Government, and extended large loans in the hope that a democratic Russia would stay in the war against Germany. But after radical, antiwar socialists seized power in November, the United States refused to recognize the new Soviet regime, provided covert aid to anti-Bolshevik (“White”) armies, and sent small military expeditions to Archangel and Vladivostok. Contrary to earlier studies, the chapter shows that the United States sought to speed the demise of the Bolshevik regime. US forces fought directly against the Red Army in northern Russia and battled Red partisans in the Far East, while the American Relief Administration, American Red Cross, and Young Men’s Christian Association all aided White armies. Despite the interventions by the United States and its allies, the Bolsheviks prevailed. The legacies of these events included the US rejection of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia until 1933 and Soviet conceptions of Russia as a “besieged fortress.”

This chapter examines the phenomenon of disinformation in the digital era and its implications for freedom of expression. It explores how the rapid dissemination of false, manipulated, and misleading information – termed a ‘disinfodemic’ – poses threats to human rights, democracy, and public trust. The chapter outlines the historical roots of disinformation, the technological factors that enable it, and the responses by public and private actors to mitigate its harmful effects. The chapter differentiates between disinformation (intentional), misinformation (unintentional), and malinformation (genuine information used to harm), while highlighting their diverse forms, such as fake news, deepfakes, and conspiracy theories. Disinformation erodes public trust, affects electoral integrity, threatens public health, and harms individuals’ rights to information and privacy. The chapter emphasises the necessity of finding a balance between combating disinformation and preserving freedom of expression.

This chapter argues that, as evidenced by EU digital law and EU border management, the EU legislature is complicit in the creation of complex socio-technical systems that undermine core features of the EU’s legal culture. In the case of digital law, while the EU continues to govern by publicly declared and debated legal rules, the legal frameworks – exemplified by the AI Act – are excessively complex and opaque. In the case of border management, the EU increasingly relies not on governance by law but on governance by various kinds of technological instruments. Such striking departures from the EU’s constitutive commitments to the rule of law, democracy and respect for human rights, are more than a cause for concern; they raise profound questions about what it now means to be a European.

An epilogue assesses the impact of the antiwar movement. Both activists and scholars disagree over its significance. Despite common misperceptions of the movement by the public, antiwar activists generally represented mainstream American political values. While the movement did not stop the war by itself, it imposed real limits upon presidential decisions to escalate American military expansion. Movement activists overwhelmingly waged peace using the tools of democracy to align the nation’s practice with its most righteous vision.

The 1973 Paris Accords provided only a temporary respite from the war. As the war between the Vietnamese continued, antiwar forces focused initially on carrying out the agreement, then on ending US military and financial support for the Thieu regime. The Watergate scandal undermined the final obstacle to ending America’s commitment. The war’s 1975 conclusion brought more relief than excitement.

The Vietnam antiwar movement moved along mutually supportive paths; one within the formal political system and one outside. Dissent within the government expanded over time. Distinct elements of the outsider movement exerted greater influence at different points. Liberal reformers dominated until 1967 and after mid-1971, and intermittently during election campaigns and the fall 1969 Moratorium. Leftists were most evident during major coalition events of 1967 through the May Day demonstrations of spring 1971. Massive student protests in both 1968 and 1970 were ideologically ambiguous. Drawing encouragement and political leverage from the “outsider” movement, federal and state legislators and officials in the executive branch played their most significant role in collaboration with the activist core after 1971.

This chapter examines the evolution of freedom of expression doctrines in the context of digital media. It focuses on how the European Court of Human Rights has adapted traditional doctrines, rooted in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to address challenges in the new media environment. The authors explore how freedom of expression, vital to democracy, must balance individual rights, societal interests, and the regulation of disinformation and hate speech in the digital age. The Court’s defence of democracy has evolved from responding to authoritarian threats in Europe’s past to addressing new risks in the digital realm. Principles such as proportionality, the prohibition of abuse of rights (Article 17), and preventing the misuse of democratic freedoms (Article 18) guide limitations on expression, ensuring they are justified and not misused for political suppression. Social media has expanded the concept of ‘public watchdogs’ beyond traditional media to include non-governmental organisations, bloggers, and activists. This evolution demands rethinking the liability and freedom of expression doctrines for platforms.

In this chapter we apply the theoretical model we introduced earlier to the behaviour of leaders to find out what alarms them, and under what conditions they are able and willing to order repression. We do not argue that we can accurately predict and explain every act of violence and repression. But we show how it helps us understand empirical patterns of repression. This model can inform our assessment of when we are most likely to observe human rights violations. To explain how context shapes human rights violations, we concentrate on why political regimes influence leaders’ threat perceptions and why democracies have the best human rights records, and why they do not always guarantee the protection of everyone’s basic rights. We outline the influence of mass dissent and of socio-economic factors. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how context shaped respect for human rights in six countries.

This chapter draws on original data on church activism in defense of democracy to test various theories of why churches engage in democratic activism. It demonstrates that churches with more involvement in providing education are more likely to speak out in defense of liberal democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, independent of country-level or denominational trends. In contrast, the data provide limited support for alternative explanations.

This chapter explains how liberal democratic institutions provide a solution to the problem that rulers cannot otherwise credibly commit to forgoing the introduction of regulations that increase state control over church activities. In particular, churches have greater autocratic risk when they have historically invested in activities, such as church schools, that the state has high capacity to regulate. As a result, churches with significant education systems have greater incentive to speak out in support of liberal democratic institutions, although this incentive is mitigated when their schools are fiscally dependent on the government to operate.

This chapter considers the political effects of church activism in support of liberal democracy, contrasting the effects of church activism in Zambia and Tanzania between 2016 and 2021. Drawing on interviews, survey data, and combined endorsement/conjoint candidate experiments in both countries, I show how churches in Zambia have galvanized international actors, domestic elites, and public opinion in support of democratic institutions, while churches in Tanzania have had more limited success.

After his visa extension was denied, the mission’s leader, Cline Paden, made unsuccessful attempts to return to Italy. He moved to Denmark for a few years before eventually settling back in Texas, where he established a missionary school in Abilene – the Sunset International Bible Institute (SIBI) – and became a prominent figure in the Churches of Christ. Meanwhile, the Italian mission continued its precarious existence, never achieving the status of a major religious player as it had hoped and attracting only a few hundred members. One of the defining features of its story was the stark contrast between the mission’s limited success and the disproportionate political and diplomatic attention its activities garnered. Yet, thanks to their “Americanness” and the ability to leverage the United States’ unique power and influence over its junior Italian ally, the Texans played a significant role in advancing religious pluralism and freedom in Italy – a fact acknowledged even by other long-established Protestant churches such as the Waldensians that had little or no political or theological sympathy for the Church of Christ.

Prior to the Enlightenment, citizens viewed themselves as subjects of their governments, obligated to obey the mandates of the ruling class. Enlightenment thinkers argued that governments should serve their citizens, rather than citizens being servants of their governments. This had a constraining effect on the abuse of authority, but also led to a romantic notion of democratic governments being accountable to their citizens and acting in their interests, legitimizing the exercise of authority by the ruling class. This chapter discusses the historical evolution of democratic institutions to show how they emerged as a result of negotiations in a political marketplace. One advantage of democratic institutions is that the exercise of authority tends to rest with the positions people hold rather than with those people themselves. This mechanism for peacefully replacing those in authority constrains their ability to abuse their power.

This chapter discusses the implications of the book for understanding democracy and democratic activism beyond churches in sub-Saharan Africa. It emphasizes that some churches employ coalitional strategies to advance their interests, and, in such cases, their attitudes toward liberal democracy are contingent on whether doing so will advance or hinder the power of their preferred parties. It also shows that some churches rely on liberal democracy as an institutional guarantee of their interests, suggesting that my argument applies to churches beyond Africa. It concludes by explaining how the theory can be applied to other types of actors in other regions of the world.

This chapter demonstrates that churches have often engaged in activism for liberal democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet existing scholarship provides little guidance in explaining why churches sometimes engage in this type of activism while others do not. It sketches out an argument for why some churches have an interest in liberal democratic institutions because they protect them from rulers unilaterally introducing regulations that reduce their control of key church activities. It argues that church schools have particular risk of regulation by rulers, giving churches that run greater number of schools particular incentives to support liberal democratic institutions. It also argues that this risk is mitigated when churches are highly dependent on the state for financing activities.