On the ninth anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising, the Project on Middle East Democracy* invited fourteen experts to respond to the question, “Why Did Egyptian Democratization Fail?” Forces within… Read more »
We’re living at a transformational moment in history. The survival of open societies is endangered, according to George Soros, founder and chair of the Open Society Foundations. “As I… Read more »
Understanding the deep roots of Taiwan’s democracy helps to explain the resolve of contemporary Taiwanese, according to analysts Evan Dawley and Wayne Soon. Taiwan’s 2020 elections produced a landslide… Read more »
If it is not to lose its strategic struggle with China in Asia and globally, the United States needs to present an alternative model to Beijing’s authoritarian archetype, says a… Read more »
A vibrant protest movement is visible in Iran and across the Middle East — but it isn’t calling for Islamic revolution, much less the tired misrule of the mullahs, The… Read more »
America used to try to design the world, Russia used to try to sabotage those plans. Now things almost look the other way around, analyst Asli Aydintasbas observes. The decline… Read more »
There have been fresh protests in Tehran more than three days after the Iranian authorities admitted they accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner on January 8, killing 176 people, RFE/RL’s… Read more »
For the past twelve years or so, democracy around the world has been in a funk, notes Stanford University’s Larry Diamond. The long democracy slump has seen a surge in… Read more »
The “politics of imitation” is a phrase that recurs innumerable times in The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy by Ivan Krastev (above) and Stephen Holmes,… Read more »
….or will algorithms someday be used to optimize the ballot box, The Economist asks in a must-read long essay: @TheEconomist When it comes to eroding an existing democracy, rather than… Read more »