Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

Asian democracy: glass half-full or half-empty?

     

  Many observers been assuming that China’s rise is loading the dice against democracy in Asia and is part of a global authoritarian resurgence, notes Maiko Ichihara, an associate professor at… Read more »

Call to ‘strengthen and sustain’ Community of Democracies

     

  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that North Korea’s continuing missile tests threaten the entire world and stressed the United States was working closely with regional… Read more »

Scourge of Russian disinformation aims to undermine democracy

     

Western observers were quick to treat Valery Gerasimov’s articulation of the science of war as the blueprint for a future Russian hybrid attack against the west. From the proliferation of… Read more »

How Russia went wrong: opposition launches ‘political Uber’

     

On Sept. 12, Vladimir Putin quietly passed a landmark date: He had spent 6,602 days as the top leader of Russia, The Washington Post notes: Although not widely acknowledged, this figure… Read more »

Has the West lost it? Is democracy endangered?

     

……..Serge Schmemann asks in The New York Times: Countries rarely embrace democracy as their first choice; they have often tried monarchies, oligarchies or other forms of coercive government first. They… Read more »

Liberia confronts challenges to consolidate its nascent democracy

     

With President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf set to step down after 12 years office, 20 candidates are competing to replace her. On 10 October 2017, Liberia will go to the polls… Read more »

China exploits vulnerability of open democracies

     

Openness, diversity and tolerance are the greatest strengths of the world’s liberal democracies. But to autocratic regimes like China, these same attributes are vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation. As reported by… Read more »

Observers under fire for ‘rubber stamping’ Kenya vote

     

Accused of glossing over flaws in Kenya’s election which later caused the result to be overturned, international observers are under a harsh spotlight ahead of a re-run in October, AFP… Read more »

Did 9/11 trigger democracy’s decline?

     

The 9/11 attacks spawned wars to export democracy abroad, while degrading it at home, according to Jeremi Suri, professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas at… Read more »

Malaysia, soccer highlight corruption’s corrosive impact on democracy

     

  The timing of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s White House visit seems especially questionable, considering that it will come just a month after the Justice Department announced that it was proceeding… Read more »