Category: Democracy Assistance and Promotion

‘Dangerous backsliding’: radicals use Indonesia’s democracy to undermine it

     

  Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and former military general Prabowo Subianto will face off in a presidential election on Wednesday (Nikkei/CFR), with official results expected take up to a month to… Read more »

Illiberal democracy’s ‘existential threat’ to values and institutions

     

There is no democracy without liberty, and “illiberal democracy” poses an existential threat to European values and institutions, according to a new analysis. Popular discontent is fueled by a pervasive… Read more »

30 years after Tiananmen massacre, Taiwan shows another way for China

     

America’s most potent weapon in its emerging contest for supremacy with China is not its economy, nor its aircraft carriers, but its ideas, says a prominent analyst. The notion that abstract… Read more »

‘Hacked World Order’: digital authoritarianism’s ‘profound threat’

     

  In the hands of competent and exploitative forces such as the People’s Republic of China or Facebook, the long march toward enslavement by technology continues apace. …As Richard Fontaine and… Read more »

Ethiopia’s transition: ‘change at the top is not enough’

     

It has been a whirlwind year for Ethiopia since Abiy Ahmed became prime minister, say analysts Ahmed Soliman and Abel Abate Demissie. He has initiated a raft of reforms to… Read more »

Mini-Arab Spring? ‘Khashoggi was right: Arabs still want democracy’

     

Before his death, the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was trying to set up several organizations to promote the cause of democracy in the region — particularly one that aimed, among… Read more »

Humanitarian aid agreement ‘could facilitate Venezuela’s transition’

     

  The United States has called on the United Nations to revoke the U.N. credentials of the government of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and to instead recognize Juan Guaidó… Read more »

Democracies divided over Venezuela’s ‘Mafia State’

     

The power outage that left most of Venezuela without electricity for five days in early March seemed eerily symbolic of the mood among many people there. Living through one of… Read more »

Egypt’s Sisi seeks approval to ‘further institutionalize authoritarianism’

     

Egypt’s military leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is in some ways trying to turn the clock back, restoring the six-year presidential term and exempting himself from term limits—which, by the way,… Read more »

Testing resilience: ‘democracy not in question – the way we practice it is’

     

Democracy is not in question, but the way we practice it is, according to a new analysis, which gathers available evidence for a European reality-check. “One of the many drivers… Read more »