Ivan Krastev Quotes

19 quotes in 278 categories

• Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing.
• [It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand.
• Before, revolutions used to have ideological names. They could be communist, they could be liberal, they could be fascist or Islamic. Now, the revolutions are…
• Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology. There is really no ideological means to attack them.
• A more stable relationship between Poland and Russia based on reconciliation might revive the reunification of Europe.
• For the European Union, Russia is as important politically and economically as China is to the U.S.
• Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground.
• Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled…
• Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders…
• What makes me worry today is the alarming decline in the trust in democratic institutions - political parties, Parliaments, political leaders. Less and less people…
• The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are…
• Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.
• Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.
• For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation.
• The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about…
• Living in truth cannot be reduced to having access to full information.
• As a rule, governments monitor people.
• America is militarily overstretched, politically polarized and financially indebted.
• Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the…

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