Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has cracked down on dissidents by force and run roughshod over the country’s democratic institutions. Maduro has handpicked cronies to head a constituent assembly to rewrite… Read more »
Civil society activists have often struggled to make the transition from protest to politics, to effect a shift from social movement to party in power. Illiberal and authoritarian movements –… Read more »
While wars, terrorism, and rapidly changing economic conditions in the Middle East are in the headlines, the close links between these issues and governance challenges are increasingly relegated to the… Read more »
By killing so many Syrians, President Bashar al-Assad also killed the dream of democracy, as well as for plenty of people elsewhere in the Arab world, notes Kamel Daoud, the author… Read more »
Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest is a timely examination of the recent digital era of public protest. Moving through her analyses of the… Read more »
Armed with banners, placards and cigarettes, dozens of protesters gathered in the Tunisian capital Tunis on Sunday for the first-ever demonstration of its kind – the right not to fast for Ramadan. Popular perceptions… Read more »
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s hardliners may want to sideline President Hassan Rouhani as May’s elections approach, but getting there is risky, according to a prominent analyst. Traditionally,… Read more »
Egypt’s new authoritarian regime is rapidly closing the public space—cracking down on autonomous civil society and independent political parties, asphyxiating the practice of pluralist politics, and thwarting citizens’ peaceful and… Read more »
Grainy video images and the screams of a young fishmonger who was crushed to death in a garbage truck while trying to stop police destroying his stock have shocked Moroccans… Read more »
Egypt’s 2011 uprising has become synonymous with the successful use of social media to overthrow an entrenched authoritarian regime, note analysts Sean Aday, Deen Freelon and Marc Lynch. Popular and… Read more »