Saudi Arabia has emerged as the leading countervailing power to the democratic thrust of the Arab Spring, writes Princeton University’s Bernard Haykel (left). But the kingdom – a “self-proclaimed bulwark of Islamic conservatism, where popular democracy has never been …

A leading Nepalese rights activist was killed in a traffic accident yesterday en route from Dulles International Airport on the outskirts of Washington, DC.

Suvash Darnal (right), the founder and managing director of the Samata Foundation, was returning from a …

As Libya’s opposition prepares for a post-Gadhafi transition, the importance of democratic consolidation and the threat of authoritarian countervailing forces comes in a sobering reminder of the eventual trajectory of the last “Arab Spring” – in 2005.

“The …

As international isolation and air strikes erode Col. Muammar Gadhafi’s support base and Libyan rebels claim to have entered the strategically significant city of Brega, the opposition Benghazi-based National Transitional Council has released a transition blueprint in “an effort to …

Azerbaijani authorities have torn down the Baku offices of a leading rights and democracy group in an apparent reprisal for Western media coverage highlighting the group’s anti-corruption campaigns.

The building, an “activist hub“, was home to the …

Do growing international isolation and widening internal divisions indicate that Syria’s Baathist regime is facing its endgame?

“We are now entering a process of the gradual delegitimisation of the regime,” says Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre, …

In authoritarian states like Azerbaijan “there is little prospect of taking on the system and winning,” according to this BBC report.

But that doesn’t stop civil society activists like Leyla Yunus, head of the Institute of Peace and Democracy…

As Egypt and Tunisia enter a dangerous phase of their transitions, democracy advocates are becoming alarmed at the increasingly xenophobic and illiberal tone of political discourse, especially in Cairo.

International democracy assistance initiatives and civil society groups that receive foreign …

Russia is planning to ban US citizens from visiting the country in retaliation for a visa blacklist on officials complicit in the killing of imprisoned lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The move threatens to undermine the Obama administration’s reset of US-Russian relations that …

What are China’s leaders afraid of?

“Something big is happening in China,” writes The Atlantic’s James Fallows (above). The regime’s unprecedented crackdown on dissidents, rights activists and democracy advocates belies the international image of a government confidently presiding over …