Kazakhstan’s leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is the country’s only president since independence — elected five times with 97.5 percent of the vote. Nazarbayev has created a kind of “authoritarian lite” system… Read more »
A growing majority of French voters see Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front as a threat to democracy, but a third approve of its ideas, a poll showed on Tuesday, Reuters… Read more »
Canadians should be “prepared” for Russian attempts to destabilize the country’s political system says Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin’s authoritarian kleptocracy. The proliferation of… Read more »
Russia “is up to all sorts of no good,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said today, two days after announcing a plan to visit Moscow. “They are, I’m afraid, engaged… Read more »
A grand bargain over Syria’s reconstruction and transition may become possible at some point in the future; for now, the reconstruction debate sounds like wishful thinking, analyst Roula Khalaf writes… Read more »
When Turkey’s children returned to school in September, there was something new on the curriculum: a week-by-week syllabus, mandated by the minister of education, celebrating what many call Turkey’s “second… Read more »
A film about The White Helmets, Syria’s “largest civil society organization operating in areas outside of government control,” last night won an Oscar for best documentary short. The award coincides… Read more »
In the year since Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) submitted its formal application to join the European Union, little has gone according to plan for the fragile country, writes Sanford Henry,… Read more »
Kazakhstan’s authorities have been abusing tax issues to harass human rights groups. Two prominent human rights organizations, the International Legal Initiative Foundation and Liberty, have had tax audits, and the… Read more »
Democracy today is being challenged as never before since the end of the Cold War, says Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy. The crisis has many dimensions,… Read more »