Forces of change coming to Iran?
Iran‘s president has called on the committee vetting candidates for next month’s parliamentary elections to allow more reformists to stand. In a televised speech, Hassan Rouhani said parliament was… Read more »
Category: Analysis
Brazil rejuvenates democratic governance in digital age
Brazil is in a state of political turmoil, notes Daniel O’Maley, Associate Editor at the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance: An investigation into a decades-old kickback… Read more »
Dismantling Iraq’s social fabric?
For many years Turkey’s recipe for combating Kurdish nationalism was to pretend that Kurds did not exist. Even as Turkish troops battled the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), government propaganda maintained… Read more »
Populist discord threatens democracy
Pick an adjective to describe the current political mood—angry, anxious, populist—and one thing about the descriptor is certain: It will fit the atmosphere on both sides of the Atlantic equally… Read more »
Russians ambivalent on democracy, civil liberties?
Russians are more concerned about economic and political stability than democracy, according to a new poll conducted by the Levada Center: The poll asked 1,600 Russian respondents to rank issues they viewed… Read more »
Rights groups call for restraint in wake of Morocco protests
Morocco should refrain from violence against teacher-trainee protesters and investigate an incident during which Moroccan police attacked and beat peaceful teacher-trainee protesters earlier this month, causing dozens of injuries,… Read more »
Azeri protests highlight political risks of oil price fall
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 »
‘Iranian Spring’ or hard-liners consolidating power?
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 »
Strong presidencies may threaten democracy
Can other countries teach us anything about whether the U.S. president is too strong? asks John Carey, Wentworth professor in the social sciences at Dartmouth College. Many parliamentary democracies, like Germany… Read more »
The revenge of history: authoritarian narratives
Some 25 years after the Cold War, passions grounded in history are increasingly an essential feature of international relations, and dangerously so, argues Bruno Tertrais, a Senior Research Fellow at… Read more »