The Emperor Has No Clothes

Issue Date October 2005
Volume 16
Issue 4
Page Numbers 5-8
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What can be done with regimes that proclaim their devotion to democratic principles but violate them in practice?

About the Author

Václav Havel, a playwright and one of Europe’s most prominent moral and intellectual figures, was a leading dissident during the period of communist rule. He was elected as the first president of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, and later served as president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. From April to June of 2005, he occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

View all work by Václav Havel

Further Reading

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Arabs and Democracy: Illusions of Change

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Decentralization, heralded as a means of increasing state efficiency and improving representation, has fragmented Latin America’s already weak party systems