Eastern Europe

Europe’s new democracies – resilient, uncertain and suffering (but at least they’re not Greece)

What if Greece were a Central European country?, asks Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria.
While a year ago many feared that Central Europe was too corrupt and politically unstable and its economies too liberal (too Anglo-Saxon) to survive the crisis, now it has become clear that it was actually [read full story]

Bosnia: ethnic cleansing as state building?

Fourteen years on from the Dayton Accords, Bosnia’s political crisis threatens a renewal of extreme nationalism in the run-up to next year’s elections. The prospect of a referendum on the status of the Republika Srpska could lead to renewed ethnic violence.
Bosniaks and Croats would not accept partition, warns Reuf Bajrovic, a Sarajevo-based political analyst with [read full story]

Democracy jobs

National Endowment for Democracy
Currently available opportunities include: Administrative Assistant – CIMA, Program Assistant – Asia, Program Assistant – Europe, Program Officer for Asia, Program Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, Database/Web Developer, and Senior Director of Finance.  Further details here.  
International Republican Institute
Currently available DC-based opportunities include: Online Communications Specialist, Deputy Press Secretary, Program Assistant [read full story]

Revive the “solidarity of the shaken” – Glucksmann

Twenty years after the collapse of communism, the West should not be complacent about the inevitability of democracy, writes André Glucksmann.
The fall of the Berlin Wall did unleash a “solidarity of the shaken”— a politics of democratic solidarity practiced by those “shaken by totalitarian regimes and devoted to opposing them,” he argues.
The peoples extricating themselves [read full story]

Democratic West needs strategic vision for Europe’s east

The most significant source of dispute between Russia and the West today is not Iran or Afghanistan but Europe’s contested neighborhood, writes Ron Asmus, executive director of the Transatlantic Centre of the German Marshall Fund.
 
The democratic West’s “moral and strategic vision of the 1990s has exhausted itself and come to a grinding halt after the [read full story]

Democracies struggling, dynasties proliferating in Europe’s neighborhood

The European Union’s strategy for supporting democracy in its neighborhood must address two different clusters of states, a new report suggests. But a reluctance to extend the prospect of EU accession has taken the momentum out of the gravity model of democratization.
“In the last five years, there has been a virulent intellectual debate about the [read full story]

With threat of renewed violence, Bosnia again ‘deserves serious attention’ from US and EU

 
In the face of Bosnia’s growing political crisis, the situation in the country is extremely fragile and could lead to renewed conflict, says Ivana Howard, who covers the Balkans for the National Endowment for Democracy.
Fourteen years on from the Dayton Accords, Bosnia again “deserves serious attention”, she says, including a fresh approach from the United [read full story]

Moldova: democratic prospect or black hole in Europe’s landscape?

Moldova is struggling with the legacy of Communist rule. “Grinding poverty, porous borders, corruption, and inadequate rule of law have contributed to widespread human trafficking, human rights abuses, and poor governance,” write Samuel Charap and Yekaterina Chertova.  
The country’s problems are compounded by the frozen conflict in “the unrecognized self-proclaimed pseudo-state” of Transdniestria, they write [read full story]

Bosnia: US and EU need alternative to Butmir

 
Fourteen years on from the Dayton Accords, Bosnia’s political crisis threatens a renewal of extreme nationalism in the run-up to next year’s elections. The U.S. and the E.U. are still committed to the Butmir process, U.S. assistant secretary of state Philip Gordon said this week. But, in this guest posting, Sarajevo-based analyst Reuf Bajrovic argues that [read full story]

Transatlantic democracies ‘never more in synch’

These are heady days for the transatlantic alliance. European support for President Obama’s decision to intensify the war in Afghanistan reflects the “centrality” of the alliance, Philip H. Gordon told the Council on Foreign Relations last night.
The move provides a “profound insight” into the president’s approach to foreign policy, highlighting the importance of “robust cooperation” [read full story]

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