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Promoting democracy – a Democratic imperative?

“Is it really possible that in a Democratic administration the championship of human rights and the promotion of democracy will no longer figure conspicuously in the foreign policy of the United States?,” asks The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier. Or is idealism in foreign policy now so 2003?
Like other observers, he cautions against a wholesale and [read full story]

The Internet undermines democracy?

The Internet has had a polarizing effect on democracies, argues Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, who is scheduled to join the Obama administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
He laments the decline of newspapers, magazines, television, and radio which play a vital role as “general-interest intermediaries”, and believes a healthy democracy requires not just free [read full story]

Report urges new approach to ‘democracy support’

The United States should make democracy consolidation a principal strategic objective in order to prevent a “reverse wave” of state implosions, a new report suggests. The Obama administration should ditch the “toxic” concept of democracy promotion with its implication of coercive democratization and instead create greater incentives for democratic reform, according to an analysis from [read full story]

Film fest celebrates road to freedom

Check out this entertaining trailer for the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, an official cultural event of the Czech EU presidency, which takes place in Prague from 11th to 19th March. A selection of the movies will then be shown in Brussels and Washington, D.C.
One World reports:
In 2009, the Czech Republic and [read full story]

Upgrade likely for State’s democracy and global affairs?

Potentially encouraging news for democracy advocates is emerging from the State Department, if The New Republic’s Michael Crowley is to be believed. He quotes the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbott suggesting that Hillary Clinton is “likely to elevate the oft-neglected posts of undersecretary for democracy and global affairs and undersecretary for economic affairs (the latter post [read full story]

Events

February 17, 2009. 10:30 a.m. – The National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) Center for International Media Assistance and the Africa Program, the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, and Mano River Media Forum/Democracy Media hold a workshop on “Support for Independent Media in Liberia’s New Democracy”. NED, 1025 F Street NW, [read full story]

Promoting democracy – a targeted, bipartisan approach

Democracy assistance should target transitional democracies, particularly strengthening representative institutions, a Washington meeting heard yesterday. “Don’t pull the rug” from emerging fragile democracies – especially in sub-Saharan Africa – while providing assistance to  non-democracies lie Ethiopia, said Representative David Price (D-NC), co-chair of the House Democracy Assistance Commission (H-DAC).
Institutions, not individuals should be the focus as [read full story]

Resilient democracies better placed to weather economic crisis

The political consequences of the global financial crisis remain unclear, but established liberal market states appear better placed to prevail than authoritarian regimes and fledgling democracies. Russia is the biggest loser of the crisis thus far, according to a must-read analysis by Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations, lacking the institutional resilience [read full story]

Young democracies – difficult, not doomed

Assistance to young democracies during their difficult years greatly increases their chances of success, new research suggests.  ”Difficult initial conditions do not necessarily mean democratization is doomed,” argues Ethan Kapstein, co-author of The Fate of Young Democracies.
Examining emerging democracies against a backdrop of an anti-democratic backlash and deteriorating quality of democracy even within free [read full story]

Democracy remains a potent foreign policy weapon – Biden

Defense and diplomacy are necessary but insufficient priorities of US foreign policy, Vice President Joe Biden said this past weekend. The new administration will place see a renewed emphasis on development and democracy, “two of the most powerful weapons in our collective arsenals”, he told the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy.
Some observers contend that [read full story]

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