China’s future: Xi’s ‘great rejuvenation’ is radical and risky
“China is simply not turning out as many had expected and have worked so long and hard to realize — a liberal China,” notes David Shambaugh, a professor of political… Read more »
Category: Authoritarianism
West and allies neglecting threat of Salafi jihadism
The war against Islamist extremism is a war against a triumphalist religious ideology that cloaks itself in the sanctity of the sacred and the history of “authentic” Islam, argues Robert… Read more »
Can US prod countries like Vietnam toward change?
When U.S. President Barack Obama met with Vietnamese civil society members during his recently concluded official visit to the Communist Party-led country, half of the chairs at the appointed venue… Read more »
Muslim Democrats? How to explain shift in Tunisia’s Ennahda
In a move widely reported as a landmark separation of mosque and state, Ennahda announced it was separating politics from preaching, notes Oxford University researcher Monica Marks. It also unveiled… Read more »
Azerbaijan court frees campaigning journalist Khadija Ismayilova
A top Azerbaijan investigative journalist, in jail since December 2014, has been freed on the order of the country’s supreme court, the BBC reports: Khadija Ismayilova‘s seven-and-a-half year sentence… Read more »
Kremlin to fund patriotic ‘anti-extremist’ films
Russia’s Ministry of Culture is looking to produce films to spread Russian values, celebrate the country’s history and tackle “crime, terrorism and extremism,” Newsweek’s Damien Sharkov writes: The Ministry… Read more »
Why the experts get Russia wrong
Why has divining Russia’s political future been so hard? asks Timothy Frye, the Director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. It is a challenge not because of the supposedly… Read more »
Why Tunisia’s Ennahda rejected Islamist ‘ideology of failure’
How to explain the shift in Tunisia’s Ennahda movement, which has formally stepped away from the radical Islamism of its past to divide itself into a civil political party and… Read more »
Obama chides Vietnam on political freedoms
U.S. President Barack Obama chided Vietnam on political freedoms on Tuesday after critics of the communist-run government were prevented from meeting him in Hanoi, a discordant note on a… Read more »
US-Cuba rapprochement benefits regime, not people
The rapprochement between the United States and Cuba – one of the world’s most authoritarian tourist destinations – will benefit the Cuban people little and its fruits will not reach… Read more »