Ecuador: ‘succession politics get ugly’
When the government candidate eked out a victory in the bitter runoff for president of Ecuador in April, incumbent Rafael Correa was ebullient. The willful populist who ran the small Andean… Read more »
Search Results for: Brazil
Labor rights deteriorate, democracy diminished
Democratic institutions deteriorate when labor rights diminish, research suggests. Similarly, unions serve as what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam calls “schools for democracy” and also tend to enhance democratization. In which… Read more »
Sliding into civil war? Venezuela’s ‘drama threatens to turn from farce to tragedy’
Venezuela’s government hunted on Wednesday for rogue policemen who attacked key installations by helicopter, but critics of President Nicolas Maduro suspected the raid may have been staged to justify… Read more »
Russia’s test lab for cyberwar: social media ‘democratize propaganda’
In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality in Ukraine, Andy Greenberg writes for Wired: And the blackouts weren’t just… Read more »
Bolivia’s resource windfall squandered by populist mismanagement, hyper-corruption
Across Latin America, one high-level scandal after another has tainted current or recent presidents or vice-presidents in Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Mexico, among others, Simeon Tegel writes for US News:… Read more »
Kleptocracy ‘not a domestic problem’: corruption’s devastating consequences
Massive protests in Venezuela, Tunisia, Brazil, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic [and Slovakia, left] over the last few weeks have highlighted political graft around the globe, and the ensuing instability… Read more »
Slovakia’s corruption undermining democracy, fueling extremism
Thousands of Slovaks rallied in Bratislava on Monday to protest against corruption and demand the resignation of the interior minister over his ties with a developer under investigation for tax… Read more »
Kleptocratic networks: corruption’s operating system
In some five dozen countries worldwide, corruption can no longer be understood as merely the iniquitous doings of individuals. Rather, it is the operating system of sophisticated networks that cross… Read more »
Fragile states an early-warning signal for potential conflict
2016 was a dismal year for liberal internationalism. But a new index of global “fragility” by the Fund for Peace (FfP) think-tank suggests that, overall, the world did not become… Read more »
Angola ignores corruption links as activist threatened
Angola’s authorities have ignored a Brazilian firm’s admission that it paid $50m in bribes to secure contracts in the country, despite demands from watchdogs that it join international investigations into… Read more »