Authoritarianism Goes Global
A new global competition in “soft power” is underway between democracy and autocracy, but only one side seems to be competing seriously, according to Christopher Walker, Marc F. Plattner and Larry Diamond,… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
‘Solved?’: Investigating Boris Nemtsov’s Murder
One year after the public assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, General Alexander Bastrykin, has announced that the case has been “solved.” However,… Read more »
Iraq is not lost to Iran
Iraq is decidedly not lost to Iran—and today U.S. leverage is at a new post-withdrawal high, says Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations…. Read more »
Let Cubans decide
Members of the Christian Liberation (MCL) and the project Movement Cuba Decides delivered Thursday to the National Assembly over 10,000 signatures of citizens requesting a plebiscite for Cubans to decide on the… Read more »
Ukraine’s victory
Even as Ukraine rapidly develops its own historical debate and its own national literature, it is still missing from Western historiography, the Western literary canon, and even from Western political… Read more »
Is Democracy in Decline?
For all the commentary on democratic recession, there has been nothing like the kind of “reverse wave” that Samuel P. Huntington’s The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century… Read more »
U.N. seeks to try North Koreans for rights abuses
The United Nations Human Rights Council decided on Wednesday to appoint a panel of experts to explore legal avenues for prosecuting North Korean leaders for crimes against humanity, The New… Read more »
Obama carpets ‘stone-faced’ Castro
Cuba’s Communist regime should tolerate dissent, criticism and even protests, President Barack Obama told its leaders, in a powerful speech, televised across the island, in which he outlined the benefits… Read more »
Engage civil society in party-building to consolidate democracy
Criticizing U.S. missteps in promoting democracy is certainly reasonable—particularly in light of the debacles in Iraq and Libya—but elevating these criticisms into high doctrine and principled critiques of democracy promotion… Read more »
Egypt’s civil society crackdown: rights defenders at risk of prosecution
Fourteen global human rights groups today urged Egypt to halt a renewed crackdown on civil society and rights defenders. The demand came as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced a cabinet… Read more »