Central Asia’s authoritarian governments have rarely found it easy to keep a lid on social discontent or to inoculate their countries against chronic instability in Afghanistan. Ethnic tensions and religious… Read more »
The fearful era in which we live is not conducive to defending democratic standards or extending democracy’s reach, according to the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index…. Read more »
Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party opened an eight-day congress Thursday to name the country’s new set of leaders, who will determine the pace of critical economic reforms, the fight against corruption… Read more »
It has become fashionable in some circles to pooh-pooh support for democracy, but Tunisia provides the Arab Spring’s “one encouraging success story”, even if its success is fragile, its economy… Read more »
Poland’s turn toward authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and within NATO, notes Jan-Werner Mueller, Professor of Politics at Princeton University. But as long as… Read more »
The alternatives to U.S. leadership are few, according to former senators Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who jointly worked on the American Internationalism Project, an impressive bipartisan undertaking… Read more »
While Algeria escaped the worst excesses of the Arab uprisings, the multiple challenges that it has confronted in the past five years since those events remain unchanged, notes John P…. Read more »
Azerbaijan is to impose a 20 per cent tax on taking money out of the country, as the oil-dependent government scrambles to respond to a currency collapse that has triggered… Read more »
Two Iranian poets who face lashings and prison sentences have fled Iran in a rare escape for local artists and activists ensnared in an ongoing crackdown on expression in… Read more »
After the end of the Cold War, experts who closely studied trends in democratization believed that democracy was destined to sweep the globe. But predictions of democratic triumph did… Read more »