In this policy brief, constitutional law and human rights expert Gábor Tóth examines the changing face of authoritarianism, warning that this could become known as the century of authoritarianism as a result of the institutional erosion of democracies around the world.

From post-conflict Iraqi federalism to the decentralist teachings of the World Bank in the developing world, comparative federalism has found increasingly vibrant applications in practice, particularly in the writing of federal constitutions for post-conflict societies. In its applied form, New Institutionalism prescribes instant constitutional solutions which fail to account for the more problematic uncodified factors.

In this Policy Brief, Professor of French Government and Politics David S Bell analyses the French presidential election and the constitution of the French Fifth Republic. He charts the extraordinary fall from grace of Republican presidential candidate Francois Fillon, following the scandal known as 'Penelopegate', in which he allegedly paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros of public money for little or no work.