Assistant Professor Dr. Tena Prelec, from the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Rijeka, gave an extensive interview to Večernji list, in which she warns about the increasingly visible democratic backsliding worldwide and the rise of populist and authoritarian tendencies.
In the interview published in the Obzor supplement, Prelec points out that modern democracies rarely collapse through sudden military coups; instead, they most often erode gradually through what political scientists describe as “creeping authoritarianism.” She pays particular attention to the situation in the United States, where deep polarization and the normalization of political violence seriously threaten democratic institutions. She also emphasized that the international liberal order has lost credibility, as global norms are increasingly applied selectively and states no longer even attempt to maintain the appearance of consistency.
The full article (in Croatian) is available through the following three links to PDF documents.