Author Archives: DemDigest

Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook: new tools to counter online disinformation

     

Last week’s elections in the Indian state of Karnataka caught the world’s attention as headlines called out the prodigious use and misuse of WhatsApp messaging. But it is not the first… Read more »

Russia’s disinformation reveals, exploits democratic deficits

     

  Russian finance threatens to undermine democratic institutions and national security, according to a new report from an influential parliamentary committee in the UK. “The government cannot afford to turn… Read more »

Sub-Saharan Africa’s diverging democratization trends

     

The last decade has seen the standing of democracy in Africa improve, argues Natasha Ezrow, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex. In the early 1980s, only five countries… Read more »

Mustafa Dzhemilev: Crimean Tatars ‘known for history of nonviolent resistance’

     

Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, this week claimed to have discovered and terminated the activity of a so-called ‘extremist group’, allegedly created by Crimean Tatar leaders Mustafa Dzhemilev (above)… Read more »

Bernard Lewis, R.I.P. – opposed Arab autocrats, studied Islam-democracy relationship

     

Bernard Lewis, an eminent historian of Islam who traced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a declining Islamic civilization, a controversial view that influenced world opinion and helped… Read more »

North Korea: civil society groups confront abysmal rights climate

     

The South Korean government should press the United States to discuss the appalling human rights situation in North Korea when US President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim… Read more »

Impatient dictators: ‘How to Rig an Election’

     

Authoritarian states are using all-too familiar constitutional mechanisms to consolidate power, according to activist-journalists Tamara Grigoryeva and Ismail Djalilov. Across Eurasia, snap elections happen rather frequently, they write for Open… Read more »

Activist’s trial highlights Angola’s reputation for nepotism and corruption

     

Angola’s new government must tackle the country’s reputation for nepotism and corruption, both at home and abroad, analysts suggest. President João Lourenço has made a positive start in challenging the… Read more »