Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

Responding to threats from Venezuela’s ‘criminal state’

     

Venezuela’s humanitarian, economic, and political crisis has forced millions of citizens to flee, created a lawless environment where crime rates are astronomically high, and has given rise to the presence… Read more »

Renewal or revanche? Ukraine election starts a ‘test for benevolent populism’

     

Preliminary results in Ukraine’s parliamentary election suggest President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party is on course to win big as Ukrainians endorse his reform agenda. The Central Election Commission… Read more »

Protecting the roots of Putin’s power: Kremlin drops all pretense of democracy

     

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies claims that the Kremlin used disinformation and other tactics in the 2016 presidential election, Reuters reports: In an… Read more »

Dictators are ascendant. But democracy is still in demand.

     

Recent protests – from Hong Kong and Sudan to Central and Eastern Europe – demonstrate that large numbers of people around the world still want democracy enough to take to… Read more »

Latin America: monitoring media freedom, boosting civil society engagement

     

The past year has witnessed stark changes in the state of media freedom across Latin America, from a precipitous decline in Nicaragua to glimmers of improvement in Ecuador. But can… Read more »

Existential threat? Iran and opposition ‘locked in lopsided confrontation’

     

At a time of rising tensions between the United States and Iran, various opposition factions within the Iran diaspora are competing to position themselves as a credible alternative to the… Read more »

Will the EU be a player or a playground? Solidarity of democratic West ‘matters as much as ever’

     

Today, the cohesion of the West matters as much as ever in the face of a newly assertive Russia and China, argues David Reynolds, professor of international history at the… Read more »

Meeting global challenges requires profound renovation to democracy support

     

The decline of U.S. leadership represents a hard blow to democracy support efforts, but it does not signal their demise, argues Thomas Carothers, a leading authority on international support for… Read more »

Does the China Model challenge democracy’s global appeal?

     

With its economic success, China seems to convey to the world that democracy is not a prerequisite for prosperity and social well-being, says analyst Emily S. Chen. At least for… Read more »

How China’s ‘malign influence’ is corroding democracies

     

The primaries for Taiwan’s forthcoming presidential election are highlighting fears over China’s political influence. Pro-Beijing media are being credited with populist Han Kuo-Yu’s victory to lead the opposition, The Financial… Read more »