Category: Democracy and security

As Cuba’s dissident crackdown peaks, Obama trip ‘could be a subversive moment’

     

  Even some supporters of President Barack Obama’s moves to strengthen relations with Cuba are questioning the timing of his planned visit to the Communist island next month, after arrests… Read more »

Turkey’s Erdogan getting off democracy train?

     

Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) presented itself as a Western, reformist, neo-liberal and secular party, and, as late as 2012, 16 EU… Read more »

Dawning of a new era? Geopolitical and vox populi risks converge

     

Once largely confined to less-transparent emerging market economies, the post-global financial crisis saw the return of political risks to the advanced democracies as well, while challengers to Western liberalism continue… Read more »

Egypt’s transition wasn’t doomed to fail

     

The fifth anniversary of Egypt‘s 2011 uprising has produced an oddly structuralist set of reflections in which the failure of its democratic transition has taken on an almost foreordained quality, notes… Read more »

Egypt’s durable Arab Spring: fear explains revolution’s failure?

     

  Today’s anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian revolution—which led in quick succession to the overthrow of longtime President Hosni Mubarak, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated candidate Mohamed Morsi, and… Read more »

10 questions for Francis Fukuyama

     

Is a pessimist simply a well-informed optimist? Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous 1989 essay, “The End of History,” offers his thoughts about the importance of optimism and how so… Read more »

Deriding support for democracy is counterproductive

     

It has become fashionable in some circles to pooh-pooh support for democracy, but Tunisia provides the Arab Spring’s “one encouraging success story”, even if its success is fragile, its economy… Read more »

Supporting internationalism in a dangerous world

     

The alternatives to U.S. leadership are few, according to former senators Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who jointly worked on the American Internationalism Project, an impressive bipartisan undertaking… Read more »

Democracy’s continuing struggles

     

  After the end of the Cold War, experts who closely studied trends in democratization believed that democracy was destined to sweep the globe. But predictions of democratic triumph did… Read more »