The Once and Future Putincon?
With the reelection of Russian president Vladimir Putin a foregone conclusion, chess champion Garry Kasparov, chair of the Human Rights Foundation, was inspired to convene Putincon, a day-long conference to… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
Is there a Path to Democracy in the Arab World?
The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (above) is an exemplar of Palestinian civil society, notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Elliott Abrams. The group, which monitors corruption in Gaza and… Read more »
Suicide of the West: tribalism threatens liberal-democratic ‘miracle’
The bloody mess that is Syria stands as Exhibit A of what is happening to global order with the retreat of American leadership, notes the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl. In… Read more »
Democracies under duress from ‘global menace’ of populism
The populist threat to democracy “would be sure to grow” unless policy-makers address changes in the nature of employment and “rebuild the links among work, opportunity, and economic security,” according… Read more »
What happened in Hungary?
The self-appointed champion of illiberalism, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán did much to engineer this week’s election result in Hungary. But as Réka Kinga Papp notes in her take on the… Read more »
Trouble brewing in the Balkans
It has been more than two decades since I worked with Richard Holbrooke and our team to negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia. NATO deployed and then acted… Read more »
Iran’s economic crisis a consequence of political malaise: creates options for shift in regime?
All this week panicked Iranians have gathered in throngs outside banks and other financial businesses hoping to buy dollars, as the government seeks to head off a collapse in the… Read more »
Specious narrative equates political warfare with democracy assistance
A specious narrative has come back into circulation: that Moscow’s campaign of political warfare is no different from U.S.-supported democracy assistance, note Daniel Twining and Kenneth Wollack, president of the International… Read more »
Venezuela on edge of precipice: Maduro using food as ‘tool of political coercion’
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) traveled to Venezuela on Wednesday as pressure mounted on President Nicolas Maduro to hand over a Utah man jailed in the turbulent South American country for nearly two years,… Read more »
‘Messing with the Enemy’: US lacks consistent narrative to counter weaponized information
Social media plays a bigger role in bringing people to fake news sites than it plays in bringing them to real news sites. More than 40 percent of visits to… Read more »