Category: Elections

Autocracies Failed and Unfailed: strategies for ‘good enough governance’

     

Successful democratization attempts depend mostly on the interests of local elites, Stanford University’s Stephen D. Krasner argues in Autocracies Failed and Unfailed: Limited Strategies for State Building, the third of the Atlantic… Read more »

Money and media problems marred elections in 2015

     

  Flawed and failed elections around the world last year were manipulated through vote rigging and corruption, intimidation, and violence, according to new evidence from the Electoral Integrity Project: Political… Read more »

What Works in Preventing Election Violence

     

Targeted peacebuilding efforts are frequently used to prevent election violence, notes Jonas Claes (right), a senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace, conducting research and analysis on the prevention… Read more »

Iran trying to shut down UN Human Rights investigation

     

Iran executed nearly 1,000 prisoners last year, the highest number in two decades, and hundreds of journalists, activists and opposition figures languish in custody, a United Nations investigator said on… Read more »

Moderates’ election gains ‘a setback to Iranian democracy’

     

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday hailed last month’s elections that saw gains for allies of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, denying they lacked competition, AFP reports: The February… Read more »

Iran’s election wasn’t about moderation or democracy

     

The elections in Iran confirm that the Syrian crisis has taught Iranians who are otherwise eager for change a few lessons, Harvard University researcher Amir Mahdavi writes for The Washington… Read more »

Iran election underscores rejection of hardliners

     

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and his allies appeared Monday to have made strong gains in two national elections, the first to be held since Tehran completed a sweeping nuclear deal with… Read more »

Iran poll balances ‘external loosening’ with ‘internal stiffening’

     

Iranians headed to the polls Friday in elections made easy for conservatives after sweeping bans that left many pro-reform candidates off the ballots, adding further political pressures on Hassan Rouhani,… Read more »

Morales defeat lifts hopes for Latin American democracy

     

The blocking of Evo Morales’ desire to run for a fourth consecutive presidential term in Bolivia didn’t only put a stop to his creeping authoritarianism. It is also an encouraging… Read more »

Myanmar’s Burden of High Expectations

     

By April 1 Myanmar will have elected its new president, heralding the end of over six decades of authoritarianism, Carnegie Endowment writes. But the new administration—burdened with high expectations, little… Read more »