Category: Democratic Transitions

Poll shows radical Islamization challenging Indonesia’s democracy

     

The Christian governor of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, lost a bitterly contested race on Wednesday that was widely seen as a test of religious and ethnic tolerance in the world’s… Read more »

What the beginning of the end of democracy looks like

     

The United States has been the modern world’s most influential country and has promoted democracy passively by serving as a model and actively through its diplomatic efforts, aid, and even military and covert action… Read more »

Russia’s latest victim in Ukraine — reform

     

Russian-sponsored unrest could threaten not only Ukraine’s reform process, but Kiev’s post-revolutionary order, argues analyst Molly McKew. The real influence of Russian banks in Ukraine is hard to measure, but… Read more »

Locate middle ground between autocrats and extremists in Syria

     

Six years after the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, the parties involved, whether aligned with the Assad regime, the Sunni jihadists, or others, have increasingly wielded extreme tactics to pursue… Read more »

Deconstruction of the West? The real challenges to the liberal world order

     

In both developed and developing states, challenges to the liberal order are converging on a single main competitor, populist nationalism, which is a response to the tension between two central… Read more »

Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support

     

Although most would agree that US interests are better served in the long run by the spread of democracy abroad, some argue that “hard” security interests must always take precedence,… Read more »

Burma’s transition: ‘yet to give substance to strategy’

     

A senior Myanmar government official on Tuesday denied there was ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in the troubled northwestern state of Rakhine, where a military operation aimed at the minority… Read more »

Will Syria strikes trigger political transition?

     

The American strike on Shayrat air base in Syria is an appropriate response to mass homicide by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, said Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Senior Fellow with… Read more »

After the Miracle: The End of the Asian Century?

     

  East Timor is voting for a new president in an election that will test Asia‘s newest and poorest nation, VOA reports. Meanwhile, Cambodia’s ongoing crackdown against opposition politicians and… Read more »

How to preserve Tunisia’s fragile democracy

     

Tunisia’s top diplomat wants the U.S. to “reach out more” to the tiny North African nation for collaboration against the evolving threat posed by the Islamic State — and to… Read more »