The recent passage of a “foreign agents” law in Hungary is a disturbing reminder of the determination of the world’s autocracies to crush civil society activism. While Prime Minister Viktor Orban has justified the new measure on transparency grounds, the law’s clear purpose is to neutralize NGOs and think tanks as sources of independent thought about democratic renewal. The fact that an EU state adopted a law modeled on Russian legislation makes the matter all the worse.Authoritarian regimes everywhere have sought to neutralize precisely those institutions that serve as the key instruments of democratic change. Civil society is one of …read more
Source: The American Interest
