“Syria with a smile” is how Tunisia is often described. Relatively liberal and open in cultural and social terms, presenting a benign face to tourists and visiting journalists, it is nevertheless rigorously authoritarian in its politics – and …

The ongoing protests in Iran have complicated the Obama administration’s policy of engaging the Islamic Republic on its nuclear ambitions.  “To the nuclear clock has been added a democracy clock, complicating every diplomatic equation,” writes Roger Cohen, in a must-read …

An administration can support democracy internationally in three ways – through what it says, what it spends and what it does, writes Damian Murphy, Senior Program Manager at Freedom House. President Obama is making the right noises, he …

Further to yesterday’s posting on the Kyrgyzstan election, “massive ballot box stuffing, often by members of election commissions”, government officials pressuring voters, and a surprising number of absentee ballots were just a few of the poll’s irregularities and abuses …

International news agencies have seized on the death of a senior steel plant manager in northeastern China at the hands of angry workers, and the mass brawl at a Shaoguan toy factory between Uighur and Han employees that prompted the …

Usam Baysaev, a former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy,  remembers his friend, human rights activist Natasha Estemirova.

If a Chechen man tried to go into Chechnya, he would be suspected of being a …

Police today broke up opposition demonstrations protesting the outcome of Kyrgyzstan’s recent presidential election which saw incumbent Kurmanbek Bakiyev claim reelection with 76.4 percent of the vote.

The poll was far from free and fair, observers confirm. Despite concerns that …

Adam Michnik is the 2009 Recipient of the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award, says an announcement by the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Ratiu Democracy Center, and the Ratiu Charitable Foundation. The award will be presented to the Workers’ Defense Committee (…

The Obama administration’s laudable attempt to develop a new “carrot and stick”  approach to dealing with Burma has potential, argues Ko Bo Kyi. But the U.S. must insist that the ruling junta “shows at least a modicum of respect …

More interesting  appreciations of Leszek Kolakowski, who argued Stalinism was not an aberration of Marxism, but its natural consequence,  in the LA Times … London Times … Slate … Telegraph … NY Times … Dædalus (PDF) … Open Democracy…