Why Poland is not Hungary
Contemporary commentary on central and eastern Europe tends to come down with a heavy hand, say analysts Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski and In his recent snapshot, “Poland’s Constitutional Crisis,” Daniel Kelemen… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
The Illiberal Turn? Reasserting Democratic Values in Central and Eastern Europe
Michael Ignatieff begins his new post this fall as president and rector of the famed Central European University – about as politically charged a job there is right now in… Read more »
Rights group rebuts Azerbaijan allegations
A leading pro-democracy group has responded to allegations of bias and misleading reporting by President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan. The regime attacked Freedom House for its reporting on its growing… Read more »
Georgia’s turn to the West no cause for complacency
Democracy has been in retreat across Eurasia in recent years, and in many countries, the lure of Western political models has faded. But Georgia has been an exception, note analysts… Read more »
Sources of the real power of Putin
We needn’t look to the post-Soviet “color revolutions” in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), let alone to the more recent demonstrations in Moscow against election fraud (2011–2012), for the source… Read more »
How to counter autocrats’ soft power
A new global “soft power” ranking recently reported that the democratic states of North America and Western Europe were the most successful at achieving their diplomatic objectives “through attraction and… Read more »
Why Russia is degrading democracy around the world
In the light of Ivan Ilyin’s rehabilitation as Russia’s leading ideologue, Moscow’s manipulations of elections should be seen not so much as a failure to implement democracy but as a… Read more »
Vietnam: free imprisoned bloggers
Vietnam’s Communist authorities should quash the politically motivated convictions of two bloggers and release them from prison, Human Rights Watch said today: On September 22, 2016, the Higher People’s Court… Read more »
Human Rights, Accountability, & Access to Information in North Korea
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announces a Request for Statements of Interest (RSOI) from organizations interested in submitting Statements of Interest (SOI) for programs that support… Read more »
Democracy means legitimacy for Indonesia’s counter-terrorism policy
The case of Indonesia demonstrates that in countering violent extremism, democracy and serious efforts to gain legitimacy from the people before taking action are a necessary part of a… Read more »