Will the coronavirus usher in lasting changes to our social safety net and welfare policies? Absent an active political effort, history suggests otherwise.

William A. Galston speaks with Jeffrey Gedmin and Charles Davidson to explain how the pandemic raises thorny questions about constitutional authorities and the rule of law—and why it’s essential that this year’s elections not be postponed.

Is China’s brand of coercive “soft power” a contradiction in terms? A new edited volume helps cut through the morass.

The acclaimed author of The Shadow King speaks with TAI about writing historical fiction, the legacy of war in her native Ethiopia, and Western perceptions of African literature.

Miles Davis’s classic jazz-rock hybrid, now celebrating its 50^th anniversary, still has the capacity to astound—and to remind us what real artistic risk-taking looks like.

COVID-19 presents us with both our worst public health crisis in a century and the greatest challenge to our democracy since World War II. Here is a national strategy to address both challenges.

A new book by Ci Jiwei argues that the Communist Party must lead China’s transition to democracy from the top down. But such a process would be a contradiction in terms—and would result in no democracy at all.

The author of “How Should America Deal with Authoritarian States?” responds to his critics. (The final entry in our series.)

The authors of “The End of History” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran” discuss coronavirus, Iran, James Baldwin, campus culture, and why imagination and literature are essential to combatting authoritarianism.

The wartime performances of two musical giants—a conductor and composer on opposite sides of a devastating conflict—affirm that great works of art are so profoundly imagined that they can mold to changing human circumstances.