Category: National Endowment for Democracy

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 »

Why illiberal democracies?

     

The rise of illiberal democracy in Central Europe is at least partly due to incomplete or inadequate democratic transitions from Communist rule, Le Monde’s Sylvie Kaufmann writes for The New… Read more »

How China shut down the Internet

     

  In 2000, President Bill Clinton gave a speech in which he said that the Chinese government’s efforts to control the Internet would be as successful as efforts to “nail Jello… Read more »

EU surrendering soft power with ‘morally bankrupt’ Turkey deal

     

The EU-Turkey deal lauded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a possible “breakthrough” in the refugee crisis met with considerable criticism after being presented to the European Parliament on Wednesday,… Read more »

UN concerned over crackdown in Egypt’s ‘republic of dread’

     

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression today voiced his concerns regarding the state of freedom of expression… Read more »

How the military changed during Tunisia’s democratic transition

     

Five years after the Arab Spring, only Tunisia remains on the path to democracy. To explain the Tunisian success story, scholars often point to the Tunisian military, which, unlike other… Read more »

Empower women to counter violent extremism

     

A major new study released on International Women’s Day offers insight into how non-violent Islamist ideology overlaps with the violent Islamism of groups including Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda (AQ). The… Read more »

Vietnam: cost of living with trafficking

     

On International Women’s Day, Radio Free Asia (RFA) today released a short documentary, “Vietnam: Cost of Living” — the eighth installment of the online RFA multimedia series “Breaking Free: Stories… Read more »