Category: Dictatorships

The authoritarian hijacking of soft power

     

A renewed struggle between democracy and authoritarianism has emerged, argues Christopher Walker, executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The decade-long democratic… Read more »

Requiem for the Arab Spring

     

  Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution shook the Middle East, setting off the hopeful uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring, AFP reports: But five years later, the countries… Read more »

Stephen W. Bosworth, aided transition in Philippines

     

Stephen W. Bosworth, a former American ambassador who pulled off a diplomatic coup in 1986 by persuading the Philippines’ dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos to allow free elections, and then personally… Read more »

Liberal democracies ill-equipped to deal with autocrats’ ‘hybrid warfare’

     

The latest version of Russia’s National Security Strategy is the most specifically anti-Western one to date, Leonid Bershidsky writes for Bloomberg: NATO and the European Union are accused of being… Read more »

China’s labor rights movement gaining momentum

     

  Chinese authorities recently detained seven labor activists in the southern province of Guangdong, alleging that they were “inciting workers to go on strike,” and “disturbing public order,” among other… Read more »

Cuban dissidents freed in rapprochement back in custody

     

President Obama may go to Cuba this year if its government bolsters its human rights record and opens its doors more fully to American business in the coming weeks, a… Read more »