A whole cottage industry of punditry has sprung up in the last four years to lament and, occasionally, attempt to explain the global rise of illiberalism. There is broad agreement that, in many countries, press freedoms, civil liberties and democratic norms are eroding. What’s less clear is why it is happening in so many places at the same time. In the next two editions of Deep Dive, we’ll look at new research on how policies that restrict civic life spread.

The latest issue of International Studies Quarterly features an article by Marlies Glasius, Jelmer Schalk, and Meta De Lange that investigates the rise of laws that restrict nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which are often key elements of broader government efforts to repress civil society in a country. Glasius et al. identified two popular theories about how NGO restriction policies become popular among national governments around the world. The first, and probably most obvious explanation is that governments restrict NGOs in response to particular dangers NGOs pose to the government. For example, if a human rights group was about to expose state security force abuses, an illiberal government might pass a law banning the group before it could embarrass the state’s security apparatus. Glasius et al. call that explanation “learning from threats.”

The second explanation relies on governments being at once lazier and more aware of their peers. In this explanation, NGO restrictions come not from any specific anti-government action by NGOs, but instead from copying restrictions imposed in other countries in the region. For example, if a hypothetical Jones regime instituted a high fee that NGOs had to pay to be allowed to operate in the country the Joneses governed, a neighboring country might institute a similar fee, just to keep up with… well, you get it. Glasius et al. call this second explanation “learning from examples.”

Using a dataset of legislative restrictions on NGOs from 1992 to 2016, the researchers tested both of the theories against the data. If states were, in fact, learning from threats when instituting NGO restrictions, you might think there would be some correlation between the number of potential threats — that is, the number of NGOs in a country — and the number of restrictions. In reality, there is little correlation. Starting in 1997, the number of NGO restrictions worldwide began to rise at a far faster rate than the number of NGOs, a trend that continues all the way through 2016. What’s more, when the researchers isolated particular threats — mass mobilization in a region — they found that the presence of threats had basically no effect on the number of NGO restrictions in that region.

The existence of NGO restrictions in one country in a region, in contrast, was highly correlated to other countries in the region adopting similar policies, suggesting that states do learn from examples rather than from threats. In fact, in regions where the number of NGOs increased, the likelihood of additional NGO restrictions actually went down.

To demonstrate their theory at work, Glasius et al. pointed out that various NGO restrictions spread quickly across the Middle East, with nearby countries sharing not just policies but actual language in their laws. Bahrain’s Law of Associations, passed in 1989, is essentially a verbatim copy of Egypt’s law from 1964, and Oman’s NGO law, passed in 2000, is strikingly similar to Oman’s. It even repeats a typo in the Bahrain law. Similarly, laws restricting foreign NGO activities in Egypt and Yemen in the early 2000s mandate the exact same procedures for foreign groups hoping to operate in both countries.

Rather than any sort of popular uprising in favor of illiberal policies, the Glasius et al. paper suggests, many illiberal reforms come as a result of states — democratic, autocratic, or somewhere in between — reacting to other states. The state-to-state vector helps explain the mystery of how waves of policies seem to arise out of dramatically different polities.

Shirin Jaafari reported on a push by humanitarian aid agencies to get the United Nations to reopen a crucial border crossing between Syria and Iraq. The UN Security Council’s decision in January to prevent humanitarian aid from passing through the Al Yarubiyah border crossing led to it closing, leaving 1.4 million Syrians with no realistic way to access food and health aid. With the crossing closed, most aid distribution in Syria is regulated by Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus, which is known to withhold aid from certain populations for political reasons.

Raymond Wang reflected on the loss he feels now that China has implemented a national security law in Hong Kong that severely restricts Hongkongers’ political and civil rights. Wang grew up in Hong Kong, and to him the widespread protests that preceded the law’s implementation offered possibilities for Hong Kong’s future that are closed. Today, the atmosphere in Hong Kong is very different. As Wang wrote, “the [protesters’] slogans and demands have turned fatalistic. Now, we hear about 攬炒 (laam chau — ‘if we burn, you burn with us’).”

Lydia Emmanouilidou spoke to refugees who are being threatened with eviction in Greece due to a Greek law adopted earlier this year. The law gives thousands of refugees currently living in housing provided by the European Union’s Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation program until July 1 to transition to private housing. Ostensibly, the purpose of the law is to make room in formal housing for other refugees who are awaiting processing of their asylum applications in overcrowded camps on Greek islands. But, as one activist told Emmanouilidou, “it’s not right to take out the already vulnerable so that we can bring the people from the islands. It needs to work another way.”

One of the great virtues of John Philip Sousa’s music is that, if you play it while in military uniform, no matter the circumstances, you’re unlikely to beclown yourself.

True story: When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, it was all in the name of crustacean literacy.

Former Mozambican Defence Minister Atanasio M’tumuke has been in hot water after journalists highlighted a public bank account M’tumuke set up to take in fees that energy companies paid in exchange for government forces providing security on their project sites. The Mozambican government was incensed, and indicted two newspaper executives publishing information on the account, alleging that the information was secret. In order to demonstrate that the information was actually public, journalist Armando Nenane deposited 20 meticais (about $0.30) into the account, and received a deposit slip confirming that the account was still in M’tumuke’s name. The story, featuring a picture of the deposit slip, ran under the headline “Journalist Armando Nenane supports the Mozambican military in its fight against terrorism.” Nenane, tongue planted firmly in cheek, told a reporter, “we must all help our army by contributing as we can.”

The bookcase flex has become a major feature of Zoom office life during the pandemic, but sometimes it can go horribly wrong.

When it’s the only kind of theater you can go to, security theater takes on a new cultural cachet.

July 4, a time for the US military to demonstrate its remarkable capacity for speed, strength and, uh, stealth.

Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, was the sole vote against a mask mandate in the county during a county health board meeting last week. Not very big news, unless you remember Jacobs from his previous job, as famed mask-wearer and WWE wrestler Kane.

This is a triumph of open-source intelligence, and it’s also exactly how the real thing works.

Great Power Competition is: “I think we should really look at it through the lens of uh… competition." — a real life security expert.

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