Author Archives: DemDigest

Cuban failure: France honors Castro as dissidents beaten

     

Human rights activists and democracy advocates have criticized French president Francois Hollande for receiving Cuban leader Raul Castro – with full honors – as nearly 200 peaceful dissidents were being… Read more »

Challenging Moldova’s pro-Western facade

     

An unknown assailant threw a grenade at the house of the governor of Moldova’s central bank overnight, RFE/RL reports: Bank chief Dorin Dragutanu and his family were asleep when the… Read more »

Killing of Balochistan leader a setback for peace prospects

     

The killing of a pro-independence Balochistan leader, Dr. Manan, on Saturday by the Pakistani security forces in Mastung is a great setback for establishing peace in a volatile region, says… Read more »

Inward-looking EU ‘in hock to authoritarians’

     

Over the last five years, the European Council on Foreign Relations’ annual Scorecard has tracked the European Union’s diminishing ability to influence its neighbors. In 2015, the story became one… Read more »

Egypt’s transition wasn’t doomed to fail

     

The fifth anniversary of Egypt‘s 2011 uprising has produced an oddly structuralist set of reflections in which the failure of its democratic transition has taken on an almost foreordained quality, notes… Read more »

Putinism, Islamism no alternative to liberal democracy

     

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the extremist Islamic State group are both engaged in efforts at state building that share two qualities: each seeks to create a political alternative to… Read more »

Africa: Partnerships for Meaningful Elections

     

More than 15 African countries held national elections in 2015–including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania–and a similar number is set to do so in 2016, notably the… Read more »

China’s Grand Strategy raises ‘world’s most significant foreign policy question’

     

  President Xi Jinping appears to be treading a similar path to the Chinese emperors during the legendary surpluses of the Han dynasty, an age characterized by the first Chinese… Read more »