The Arab Spring confirms the bankruptcy of violent Jihadist groups and the Islamist narrative that stresses religion as the basis of political identity, says a new report on Muslim modernism.

“In recent years, the voices of extremists have dominated Muslim …

The United Nations should suspend China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council, several leading dissidents and former political prisoners said today.

In a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights commissioner Navi Pillay …

Does Putin’s Kremlin return threaten the re-set of US-Russian relations?

“There will not be a rollback of the major accomplishments of the reset,” says Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But …

Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency is a fatal blow to Russia’s managed democracy and to prospects for establishing a form of authoritarianism based on Chinese-style performance-based legitimacy. The verdict comes from both a leading architect of the system and …

Is a Libyan scenario emerging in Syria as opposition activists begin to take up arms against the Baathist regime and troop defections raise the risk of civil war?

Syrian security forces reportedly killed 17 protesters, while a pro-government …

Efforts to establish a European Endowment for Democracy reflect the European Union’s intent to create a “new normal” in its relations with its eastern neighbors and a commitment to increase EU investment in ‘people power’ across the region, leading politicians …

Combatants on all sides of the conflict in the Congo use rape and sexual violence as “weapons of war,” says a prominent campaigning journalist. The epidemic of sexual violence cannot be divorced from the issue of conflict minerals, said Chouchou …

Al-Jazeera’s political orientation has changed since the mid-2000s when its owner, the Emir of Qatar, and “allowed the network to carry anti-authoritarian voices.” During the Arab Spring, the station acquired a reputation for promoting change through its broadcasts …

A recent election may signal a significant generational shift in “a region arguably in as much need of genuine political reform and civic participation as the Arab world.”

It is not often enough that elections in sub-Saharan Africa witness a …

We’ve heard about the new authoritarianism, the rise of the rest, the reputed appeal of the China model, and other challenges to the liberal democratic idea. But is it really the case that the world’s leading …