Category: Analysis

U.S.-ASEAN summit needs more than symbolism

     

  Human rights and democracy advocates are calling on President Barack Obama to use the occasion of this week’s U.S.-ASEAN summit at California’s Sunnylands retreat to publicly raise concerns about… Read more »

Is presidentialist democracy failing?

     

Perplexed by today’s turbulent American political scene? Not to worry: A distinguished political scientist wrote an essay 26 years ago that anticipated our predicament with eerie explanatory power. The only… Read more »

Arab voices address challenges of New Middle East

     

Five years after the Arab Spring, the crisis of legitimacy that helped precipitate it has lost neither its resonance nor its urgency, according to a qualitative survey of Arab experts… Read more »

‘Great Surge’ marks end of the Third World

     

  The assertion that democracy is better than autocracy at facilitating the move into prosperity butts up against the theory that authoritarianism is more conducive to rapid economic growth (as… Read more »

Autocrats’ bag of tricks for staying in power

     

Excluding hereditary monarchies, there are close to 40 countries around the world in which the national leader has been in power for 10 or more years, writes Freedom House analyst… Read more »

Institutionally blind? Human rights abuses in former Soviet Union

     

Are the major international institutions covering the former Soviet Union meeting their human rights commitments?  A new report shows how the independence and integrity of institutions defending human rights in… Read more »

Cuba preparing for ‘probable presidential transition’ in 2018

     

U.S. intelligence services believe Cuba is preparing for a “probable presidential transition in 2018,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday. “Cuban leaders will remain focused on preserving political… Read more »

Baransu case prompts Turkey to lift media bans?

     

  In a move that confirmed the growing restrictions and pressure on the Turkish media, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş has said his government is ready to remove bans that… Read more »

‘Political activity’ an existential issue in Russia

     

Defining “political activity” may seem like an academic exercise, but in Russia, it is an existential one, notes Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director at Human Rights Watch. The definition is… Read more »

Thousands demand inquiry into Cairo death of labor researcher Regeni

     

More than 4,600 academics from across the globe have signed an open letter protesting against the death of Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge PhD student from Italy whose body was found… Read more »