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 »
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the extremist Islamic State group are both engaged in efforts at state building that share two qualities: each seeks to create a political alternative to… Read more »
More than 15 African countries held national elections in 2015–including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania–and a similar number is set to do so in 2016, notably the… Read more »
President Xi Jinping appears to be treading a similar path to the Chinese emperors during the legendary surpluses of the Han dynasty, an age characterized by the first Chinese… Read more »
Iran has excluded Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic republic and a cleric with ties to reformist politicians, from contesting elections to the country’s powerful Assembly of… Read more »
After a tense year marked by widely-criticized elections in which Ethiopia’s ruling party won 100 percent of parliamentary seats, 2015 concluded with yet more repression in the East African nation,… Read more »
The politics of fear led to a global roll-back of human rights and a great civil society choke-out during 2015, according to the 659-page World Report 2016 from Human… Read more »
Giving advice to people in another country about how to organize their political life is always a sensitive endeavor, notes Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment… Read more »
China’s Communist authorities are intensifying a crackdown on dissent, civil society and growing labor unrest, reflecting the ruling party’s concern that economic restructuring and dislocation will “threaten social stability.” “If… Read more »
Uganda, one of the West’s most important African military allies, will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on February 18, notes analyst Helen Epstein: Despite strong opposition, this election may be… Read more »