Author Archives: DemDigest

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 »

The Obama Doctrine: advancing democracy, but….

     

President Barack Obama is a democratic internationalist, he tells The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, but experience has also taught him to temper his idealism with a pragmatic, realist approach to foreign… 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 »

Cuba says Obama trip won’t alter `revolutionary’ regime

     

The Cuban government today said it won’t renounce its “revolutionary and anti-imperialist” ideals as relations with the U.S. thaw ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to the Communist island this… Read more »

Central Europe’s fascist revival

     

Slovakia’s March 6 general elections have catapulted a neo-fascist party into parliament and strengthened the position of another ultra-nationalist formation, notes analyst Janusz Bugajski. The results highlight a broader European… 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 »

Why can’t Ukraine establish the rule of law?

     

Why is Ukraine having so much trouble establishing a state governed by the rule of law? According to analyst Susan Stewart, maintaining a legal vacuum obviously serves the interests of… Read more »

Russia’s Bad Example

     

    For decades Russia remained a country without an ideology to export. Now Putin’s Russia has realized that it can capitalize on its foreign policy goals of sowing democratic… 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 »