Azeri protests highlight political risks of oil price fall
Azerbaijan is to impose a 20 per cent tax on taking money out of the country, as the oil-dependent government scrambles to respond to a currency collapse that has triggered… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
‘Iranian Spring’ or hard-liners consolidating power?
Two Iranian poets who face lashings and prison sentences have fled Iran in a rare escape for local artists and activists ensnared in an ongoing crackdown on expression in… Read more »
Poison Puzzle: Kremlin Critic’s Mysterious Illness
Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr., is the latest of several Kremlin antagonists, both at home and abroad, who have died or become violently ill in suspected deliberate poisonings during Vladimir… Read more »
Call for Proposals – Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum
The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF) Secretariat is launching a 2nd Call for Proposals in order to support projects of the EaP CSF members with a regional dimension that… Read more »
Strong presidencies may threaten democracy
Can other countries teach us anything about whether the U.S. president is too strong? asks John Carey, Wentworth professor in the social sciences at Dartmouth College. Many parliamentary democracies, like Germany… Read more »
Alexey Navalny’s very strange form of freedom
The strangest thing about Alexey Navalny is that he is walking around Moscow, still, Masha Gessen writes for The New Yorker: Here is what has happened to the other men… Read more »
The revenge of history: authoritarian narratives
Some 25 years after the Cold War, passions grounded in history are increasingly an essential feature of international relations, and dangerously so, argues Bruno Tertrais, a Senior Research Fellow at… Read more »
Democracy’s continuing struggles
After the end of the Cold War, experts who closely studied trends in democratization believed that democracy was destined to sweep the globe. But predictions of democratic triumph did… Read more »
Civil resistance in the Arab Spring: what went wrong?
The overriding lesson of the abortive Arab Spring is that getting rid of a dictatorial and corrupt ruler is not enough. Building democratic institutions, and restoring confidence in a flawed… Read more »
Tunisia’s democratic experiment ‘still up for grabs’?
Thousands gathered in Tunisia’s capital Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of the uprising that inspired the Arab Spring. Tunisians thronged Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the main thoroughfare in central Tunis… Read more »