Five ways China is more repressive
Respect for human-rights and rule of law have deteriorated markedly during the term of Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a new U.S. government report, which blames an ideological tightening… Read more »
Category: Asia
Expelling HK activist, Thailand ‘fits a global pattern’
Thailand on Wednesday barred entry to a Hong Kong student activist who helped organize pro-democracy protests in the Chinese-ruled city in 2014, with a Thai newspaper saying he had been… Read more »
Why referendums are messy tools of democracy
The voters of the world have had quite a year: They rejected Colombia’s peace deal; split Britain from the European Union; endorsed a Thai Constitution that curtails democracy; and, in… Read more »
‘Disciplined democracy’ – Myanmar’s lessons for Cuba
In many ways, Cuba today resembles the Burma (Myanmar) of 10 years ago, argues Casey Cagley, Program Officer of the Latin America and Caribbean Division of the International Republican Institute…. Read more »
Promoting labor rights in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is one of the rare developing countries in the region that has had in place, by law, a pension and social safety net for workers. But a recent… Read more »
Cambodia’s velvet glove frays
Hun Sen (left), Cambodia’s longtime strongman, faces local elections next year and a national contest in 2018. On his recent provincial swing he pressed flesh, announced local infrastructure projects as… Read more »
China’s repression ‘buries rule of law’, erodes implicit pact
After being expelled from court while trying to defend a client who said he had been tortured, Chinese lawyer Li Jinxing wrote: “Is this what being a lawyer is like…?… Read more »
Thai junta allows ‘culture of torture’ to flourish
Officials in Thailand on Wednesday prevented Amnesty International from publicly presenting a report that accuses the ruling military junta of torture and abuse, the group said. Minutes before the briefing… Read more »
Does China invalidate Lipset thesis?
Does economic development eventually lead to democratic reform, as Seymour Martin Lipset (left) and other political scientists proposed in the decades after World War II? The New York Times asks…. Read more »
How to counter autocrats’ soft power
A new global “soft power” ranking recently reported that the democratic states of North America and Western Europe were the most successful at achieving their diplomatic objectives “through attraction and… Read more »