China’s sharp power faces ‘major obstacles’
What are the chances of China managing to turn the next three decades into a narrative as powerful as its story since 1978, which contains both a rise to economic… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
Another Arab Spring? Not if, but when
The social history of the MENA region is a history of social mobilization and the emergence of civil society. Across the Arab world, ordinary citizens have collectively engaged in resistance,… Read more »
When protest is not enough: Movements need alternative vision to the status quo
Recent political protests, from Hong Kong to Moscow, Tbilisi to Belgrade, have been the biggest since 1989, the great year of pro-democracy revolutions. But something fundamental has changed in the… Read more »
Revisionists pose ‘civilizational challenge’ to Western liberal democratic order
The resurgence of threats to liberal democracy — external and internal — does not refute the principal thesis of Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” says a prominent analyst…. Read more »
Is Russia’s ‘new civic activism’ testing Putin’s grip on power?
More people in Russia view the late Brezhnev era of the Soviet Union as “close to the people” than they do President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, according to a survey… Read more »
Two scenarios for Venezuela as political stand-off accelerates economic implosion
The United States will bar two Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations from traveling to the U.S. in its latest action to pressure Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro into stepping… Read more »
How China is crushing the Uighurs
China’s Muslim Uighurs face systematic oppression from their own government, The Economist writes. Their home province of Xinjiang has been turned into a police state—an estimated one million of them… Read more »
‘Never-ending state war against civil society’ meets the new face of Russia’s protests
Russian authorities have threatened protesters in Moscow with lengthy jail sentences in an attempt to dampen an unexpected surge in protest mood before a planned opposition rally, The Guardian reports…. Read more »
Cuba: battling economic crisis, escalating attacks on civil society
Communist-run Cuba has imposed sweeping price controls on all state and private businesses as it battles a deepening economic crisis and mounting U.S. sanctions, Reuters reports: Resolutions published in the… Read more »
Democracy vs. kleptocracy
Democracy may be facing a crisis, but…. Now is a time “for resolve, not panic,” says Stanford University’s Larry Diamond. In his latest book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage,… Read more »