The Bush administration launched several initiatives to “encourage reform, democratization, and political openness” in the Middle East, notes Oussama Safa, general director of the Beirut-based Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut, a grantee of the National Endowment for …

The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt has a must-read article on Chee Soon Juan. The authoritarian mentality of Singapore’s ruling elite is exposed in a rather chilling metaphor from the city-state’s ambassador to the United States, attempting to justify …

The National Democratic Institute will confer the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award on Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and also honor the Women’s League of Burma at NDI’s 2008 NDI Democracy Luncheon.

A representative of the Women’s …

The new administration should not downgrade democracy assistance in the Arab world, argues Carnegie’s Michelle Dunne in an article in next month’s Washington Quarterly. The Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda opened up political space in the likes of Egypt, Morocco …

The byzantine politics of Ukraine’s dysfunctional elite may be undermining the country’s international reputation and playing into the hands of its Russian detractors. But it is still evolving in a democratic direction, albeit toward “Italian-style politics…with systemic snags and never-ending …

The New Republic carries an interesting article by David Keyes, coordinator for democracy programs at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. The work of Jameel Aldweek, director of the Al-Razi Association, gives an insight onto the challenges and …

Elections do little to enhance democratic development if state institutions are ineffective or unresponsive, argues Rep. David Price (D-NC) in a forthcoming issue of The Washington Quarterly. The new administration should sustain the U.S. commitment to democracy promotion, …

Masked law enforcement officers today sealed and searched the offices of Memorial, one of Russia’s leading human rights organization, RFE-RL reports. Telephone lines were cut and the hard discs extracted from the group’s computers.

The incident is the latest …

We often read references to democracy and human rights activists operating in adverse or difficult circumstances. But, as a report from the Dr. Ismail Jumale Human Rights Organization indicates, few environments can be as challenging as that of Somalia (for …

The Economist carries a thought-provoking item disputing Jürgen Habermas’s contention that the 1989 revolutions were characterized by a “total lack of ideas that are either innovative or orientated towards the future”.

Totalitarianism is gone, but milder doses of repression, apathy, …