China’s leaders reveal their fears
Once admired by authoritarian governments elsewhere, not to mention some commentators in the West, for its canny balancing of free markets and party control, China’s style of leadership may be… Read more »
Category: Civil Society
#Telema: DRC activists stand up to Kabila’s government
Speaking in a new documentary about the growing Telema youth movement and his imprisonment, activist Fred Bauma hopes that peaceful engagement in the democratic process will help spur change in… Read more »
Russia and China seek new ‘client states’?
U.S. President Barack Obama raised eyebrows around the world with a difficult-to-interpret reference to Ukraine in his final annual State of the Union address that lumped the post-Soviet state and… Read more »
Is Poland a failing democracy?
Poland’s new right-wing government faces international demands to roll back radical changes to the country’s institutions, but the odds that it will suffer any serious punishment from Brussels are close to zero, analyst Jan Cienski… Read more »
Turkey: Erdogan’s ‘dangerous dance with radicalism’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s flirtation with radical Islam in Syria and march from liberal democratic reformer to illiberal populist authoritarian have confused Americans trying to deal with Turkey, which… Read more »
China steps up crackdown on civil society, rights advocates
Chinese authorities have formally arrested China‘s most prominent woman human rights lawyer, Wang Yu, accusing her of subversion, as part of a crackdown on activists who have helped people fight… Read more »
Cuba: still condemned to silence
Dissident artists are no better off post-Fidel, and renewed relations with the US haven’t helped as many hoped or claimed they would, Ryan McChrystal writes for Index on Censorship: The… Read more »
The public sphere’s new enemies
All around the world, it seems, the walls are closing in on the space that people need to assemble, associate, express themselves freely, and register dissent, notes Chris Stone, president… Read more »
The authoritarian hijacking of soft power
A renewed struggle between democracy and authoritarianism has emerged, argues Christopher Walker, executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The decade-long democratic… Read more »
Requiem for the Arab Spring
Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution shook the Middle East, setting off the hopeful uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring, AFP reports: But five years later, the countries… Read more »