The abortive coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev twenty-five years ago this week and its aftermath have echoes today, argues Stephen Sestanovich, a Columbia University professor and senior fellow at… Read more »
Resisting the Tyranny of the Possible. This was moral revolution, a revolution of conscience rooted in cultural reclamation, and it resonated through the region because it was entirely congruent with… Read more »
“We are suffering more arrests. They [state security forces] are beating us hard,” dissident Antonio Rodiles tells The Guardian’s Naomi Larson: It seems he has become desensitised to this violence…. Read more »
Veteran Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas was briefly hospitalized in Santa Clara on Friday after losing consciousness in his home on the 16th day of a hunger strike to protest government… Read more »
After a quarter-century, the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union looks like a de-democratizing event. Leading up to that fateful year, Mikhail Gorbachev had been one of the world’s great… Read more »
Tunisia’s fledgling democracy has weathered a parliamentary-prompted transfer of power. On Saturday, the parliament passed an unprecedented vote of no confidence in former Prime Minister Habib Essid, disbanding his government…. Read more »
The West does not need to back down from its view that the inclusion of Central and Eastern Europe into NATO and the EU promoted strategic interests and values, notes… Read more »
Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has oscillated between weak democratic governments and military dictatorships. In 2013, for the first time, there was a peaceful transfer of power from… Read more »
The invasion of Iraq has had a huge impact on the debate about democracy in the Middle East—and almost entirely a detrimental one, notes Jane Kinninmont, senior research fellow… Read more »
The Arab Spring opened a window of opportunity to revise democracy support in a direction that better reflects local interpretations of citizenship and rights, but external actors have yet to… Read more »