Challenging the myth of moral equivalence
The headline: “U.S. investigates potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections.” To those unused to this kind of story, I can imagine that headline, from The Post this week,… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
Resource curse feeds Mongolia’s ‘deepest collective fear’
Mongolia’s efforts to extricate itself from the “resource curse” highlight the dangers that countries blessed with tremendous natural resources face when they find themselves at the mercy of wealth-destroying… Read more »
S Sudan to take action over kleptocracy report
South Sudan’s government says it will take legal action against a US-based watchdog that has accused the leaders of the country’s warring sides of amassing fortunes during a nearly three-year… Read more »
Venezuela crisis prompts austerity in Cuba: three sad scenarios
Cuba is seeing a surge in tourism, helped in part by the arrival of Americans. But it is suffering economically, in part because of its reliance on fuel from Venezuela,… Read more »
Mali’s youth left out of progress?
The West African nation of Mali has undergone an extraordinary transformation since 2012. Events have included a military coup, a foreign military operation to battle Islamist insurgents in the north… Read more »
Russia – poster child for electoral authoritarianism
Russia is the poster child for a type of governance termed electoral, or competitive, authoritarianism, analysts Erik C. Nisbet and Elizabeth Stoycheff write for The Washington Post: These autocratic governments… Read more »
Tunisia – lost in transition?
Tunisia has been a rare and extraordinary exception to the nearly universal culture of impunity across the Arab world, notes George Washington University’s Marc Lynch. Tunisians made transitional justice—the judicial… Read more »
South Sudan conflict calls for firm intervention
A peace plan for South Sudan that was intended to end three years of fighting in the world’s newest nation has failed largely because it “depends on the cooperation of… Read more »
South Africa lurching between democracy and despotism
Jacob Zuma presides over a political paradox, argues Richard Calland, associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town. The nation he leads is at long last becoming… Read more »
Time to act on Azerbaijan
Earlier this year, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan looked like he was softening his authoritarian grip on his country, note David J. Kramer and Richard Kauzlarich. But since President Obama’s… Read more »