Category: Civil Society

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 »

What’s next for Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution?

     

  Tunisia’s main Islamist party, Ennahda, re-emerged as the dominant faction in Parliament on Monday as mass resignations from President Béji Caïd Essebsi’s secular party continued, largely to protest his… Read more »

Ukraine: the good, the bad, the irreversible

     

  Ordinary Ukrainians, Euromaidan activists and military veterans are despondent at the complete lack of progress in the fight against high-level corruption and the dominance of Ukraine’s oligarchs, says a… Read more »