Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

How to halt Tunisia’s descent

     

  Although the revolution upgraded Tunisia’s regime hardware from an authoritarian to a democratic government, its operating system — its state institutions, laws, bureaucracies, courts and police — remained largely… Read more »

USB-armed North Korean defectors subvert info firewall

     

  More than 260 people have studied at a defector-led journalist academy since 2011, some going on to work for radio stations that broadcast into North Korea, or to write… Read more »

Authoritarianism Goes Global

     

  Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries―including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela―have developed new tools… Read more »

Dictators don’t stabilize the Middle East

     

A number of American politicians have suggested that the Arab Spring was a disaster and that the region needs strongmen to stabilize it, but while working on Middle East policy at the… Read more »

Chavista courts eroding Venezuela’s democracy

     

Venezuela’s courts — packed by leftist loyalists of Nicolás Maduro only days before they handed over power — have fiercely chipped away at the new legislature’s efforts, leaving some here wondering… Read more »

What’s next for Iraq?

     

  Iraq is facing a looming economic crisis, with a displaced population of 3.3m people, according to the UN, and renewed sectarian bloodshed which could fuel the very resentments that helped… Read more »

Still a long road ahead for Cuba’s civil society

     

  A leading human rights group has strongly condemned the harassment of Cuban doctor and journalist Eduardo Herrera Duran (above). In March, Herrera — a surgeon at the Calixto García University… Read more »

Can Ukraine achieve a reform breakthrough?

     

  It is easy to characterize Ukraine’s latest attempt to reform as a repeat of the unrealized potential of the 2004 Orange Revolution, analysts John Lough and Iryna Solonenko write… Read more »

What are Khalilzad memoir’s lessons for U.S. policy?

     

Raymond Tanter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, asks in The National Interest: First, regarding theory: recognize bureaucratic principles, as modified by recent research, which is quite critical of… Read more »

U.N. experts decry Egypt’s civil society crackdown

     

Egypt is closing down domestic non-governmental organizations and putting travel bans on their staff in order to obstruct scrutiny of human rights issues, three independent U.N. human rights investigators said… Read more »