The West’s Weimar moment?
The emergence of a virulent new strain of authoritarian populism on both sides of the Atlantic has prompted many observers to draw (largely inappropriate and far-fetched) analogies with the… Read more »
China’s future: Xi’s ‘great rejuvenation’ is radical and risky
“China is simply not turning out as many had expected and have worked so long and hard to realize — a liberal China,” notes David Shambaugh, a professor of political… Read more »
West and allies neglecting threat of Salafi jihadism
The war against Islamist extremism is a war against a triumphalist religious ideology that cloaks itself in the sanctity of the sacred and the history of “authentic” Islam, argues Robert… Read more »
Can US prod countries like Vietnam toward change?
When U.S. President Barack Obama met with Vietnamese civil society members during his recently concluded official visit to the Communist Party-led country, half of the chairs at the appointed venue… Read more »
Muslim Democrats? How to explain shift in Tunisia’s Ennahda
In a move widely reported as a landmark separation of mosque and state, Ennahda announced it was separating politics from preaching, notes Oxford University researcher Monica Marks. It also unveiled… Read more »
Cambodia’s democracy ‘in retreat’?
The Cambodian government should ask the United Nations to help it carry out a full and independent investigation into the October 26, 2015 attack on two opposition members of… Read more »
Violence against Morocco’s women poses constitutional test
After more than three decades of advocacy, the women’s movement in Morocco, supported by a large segment of civil society, has had high expectations that the long awaited Combating Violence… Read more »
Azerbaijan court frees campaigning journalist Khadija Ismayilova
A top Azerbaijan investigative journalist, in jail since December 2014, has been freed on the order of the country’s supreme court, the BBC reports: Khadija Ismayilova‘s seven-and-a-half year sentence… Read more »
Kremlin to fund patriotic ‘anti-extremist’ films
Russia’s Ministry of Culture is looking to produce films to spread Russian values, celebrate the country’s history and tackle “crime, terrorism and extremism,” Newsweek’s Damien Sharkov writes: The Ministry… Read more »
Youthful dissent challenges Angola’s elite
Angola’s ruling elites are no more or less corrupt than their Western counterparts. Or that at least was the claim of H.E. Antonio Luvualu de Carvalho, the regime’s Roaming Ambassador,… Read more »