Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

Countering Russia’s Super Mafia – a kleptocracy in the making

     

Mark Galeotti’s timely account of the Russian underworld – The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia –  charts its rise from Soviet-era gangsters to Kremlin collaborators under Vladimir Putin, notes analyst Oliver… Read more »

Why liberalism (hasn’t) failed – but hyper-liberalism is a problem

     

In his Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, targets some genuine weaknesses of liberalism, sometimes with considerable eloquence, but never succeeds in presenting… Read more »

The Kremlin’s global challenge: paradoxes of Russian-Western relations

     

Russia appears today as an assertive power ready to weaken international norms and kick over the global chessboard, notes the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies. Even… Read more »

Egypt: Al-Sisi should end rights abuses

     

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi should prioritize reforms to end serious human rights violations during his second term, Human Rights Watch said today: Al-Sisi won the April 2, 2018 election… Read more »

Hungary’s election result ‘disproves resilience of democratic institutions’?

     

  Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party signalled on Monday it could push on with legislation to crack down on organisations promoting migrant rights as soon as parliament reconvenes after Prime Minister… Read more »

Is EU ‘enabling’ Hungary’s authoritarian kleptocracy?

     

Hungary is no longer a democracy, says Nóra Köves, an activist with the pro-democracy Eötvös Károly Institute. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Not, I think, any more. We are heading to… Read more »

Troll state: Russia’s disinformation campaign ‘follows familiar script’

     

OUTGOING NATIONAL security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday became the latest senior Trump administration official to publicly warn that Western governments, including his own, are not doing enough to deter Russia’s “sustained… Read more »

West needs ‘strategic confidence’ to confront revisionist powers

     

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, in his last public remarks as national security adviser, strongly denounced Russia for its increased aggression around the world and declared: “We have failed to impose… Read more »

Democratization is among ‘Armenia’s New Challenges’

     

The U.S. has little leverage to influence developments in Armenia’s shifting political and security landscape, according to experts on the post-Soviet space, Eurasianet’s Grigor Atanesian reports. The current geopolitical shift… Read more »

Why democracies use sanctions: the record and the rewards

     

Sanctions may help advance democratic reform, some suggest, if they are deployed to punish wayward regimes or to incentivize political change. Alongside diplomacy and aid conditionality, sanctions were a key… Read more »