Tag: Iran

Potemkin elections an ill omen for global democracy

     

This week’s tsumani-sized election shock in Malaysia does not necessarily augur well for forthcoming electoral contests elsewhere, observers suggest. In less than two weeks, Venezuela will conduct the latest in… Read more »

Iran decision: ’empowers undemocratic forces’ or gives scope for aiding civil society?

     

The sense of crisis in Iran runs deep and wide. The economy is in free fall. The currency is plummeting. Rising prices are squeezing city dwellers. A five-year drought is… Read more »

Public protests and prospects for reform in Iran

     

Over the last few months, Iran has experienced a series of street protests in rural areas and social arenas once seen as the key support base for the Islamic Republic,… Read more »

Iran’s economic crisis a consequence of political malaise: creates options for shift in regime?

     

All this week panicked Iranians have gathered in throngs outside banks and other financial businesses hoping to buy dollars, as the government seeks to head off a collapse in the… Read more »

Iran heading toward ‘explosion’ as serial abuser addresses UN human rights council

     

  He was a prosecutor of Iran’s Islamic revolution and acquired a notorious reputation for the arbitrary executions of thousands of opponents. A few decades later he oversaw the judiciary’s… Read more »

Rohani and the reformists’ role in Iran’s popular uprising

     

  The protestors in last month’s uprising shouted slogans not only against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian revolutionary regime, but also against President Rohani and the reformists…. Read more »

What the Iran protests were not

     

Iran’s most significant protests in almost a decade may have calmed, but anger that fueled the nationwide demonstrations lingers and could erupt again at any time, according to experts. Siavush… Read more »

Iran ‘outsmarted itself’ in silencing civil society?

     

Iran in large part considers peaceful activism a “threat to national security,” and those who warn about festering popular grievances and rampant corruption are treated as seditionists, notes Tara Sepehri… Read more »

Political Islam After the Arab Spring: Between Jihad and Democracy?

     

  Around 1,000 Indonesians, led by hardline Islamist groups, protested outside parliament on Tuesday as lawmakers approved a presidential decree banning civil organizations deemed to go against the country’s secular… Read more »

How illiberals, uncivil society transition from protest to power

     

Civil society activists have often struggled to make the transition from protest to politics, to effect a shift from social movement to party in power. Illiberal and authoritarian movements –… Read more »