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Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, November 26, 2012
Mohamed El Dahshan laments the fate of Gaza. David Keyes contends that the rhetoric of Hamas is fueling conflict with Israel and also suppressing Palestinian democracy. Ben Bland argues that Vietnam's...
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Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, December 3, 2012
Cristina Odone profiles Carne Ross, the crusader who's trying to save diplomacy from itself. And Willam Lloyd-George offers a portrait of Shwe Mann, the Burmese politician who's now being wooed by the...
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Uganda celebrates its tech entrepreneurs
Three students from the Makerere University College of Computing and Information Sciences have won the Microsoft Imagine Cup Grant worth $50,000 for their project WinSenga, a smartphone app that...
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Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, December 10, 2012
Michael Cecire defends the new Georgian government of Prime Minster Bidzina Ivanishvili against allegations of undemocratic behavior.[[BREAK]] Sarah Kendzior argues that using the term "civil society"...
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Indonesian workers up the ante
Labor unions in Indonesia are becoming more militant -- at times aided by the government -- in demanding higher salaries and in claiming their share of the national economic pie that has grown so...
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Democracy Lab Weekly Brief , December 17, 2012
Jakub Wisniewski gives the background to Poland's remarkable economic success story. In our latest case study published in conjunction with Princeton's Innovations for Successful Societies, Laura...
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Why Indonesia’s anti-graft drive is backfiring on the president
Cleaning up corruption in Indonesia could be the main legacy that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be remembered for when he steps down after ten years as president in 2014. It looks increasingly likely,...
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Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, January 07, 2013
Rick Rowden argues that recent accounts of "Africa's rise" are fundamentally flawed. In his column, Christian Caryl explains why 2012 was a good year for elections, but a bad one for democracy. Juan...
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Maduro vs the economy
Rumors about President Hugo Chávez's health continue unabated. Most are bad for the president, who has not been seen or heard from in more than a month. If they are true, Venezuela is headed for a...
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A pyramid scheme called Venezuela
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's embattled president, is living on borrowed time. The real problem for Venezuelans, though, is that their economy is also living on borrowed time, and the day of fiscal...
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Laotian enigmas
The video has no sound, just several minutes of footage shot on a busy street in the sallow sulfur glow of Vientiane streetlights. Two blurry figures approach the passenger's side of a jeep stopped at...
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Democracy on the cheap
The arrest last week of the top leader of the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) on corruption charges is a reminder of the precarious financial situation that all Indonesian political parties...
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Venezuela's Devaluation has China written all over it
In a widely expected move, the Venezuelan government announced last Friday that it would devalue its currency by 32 percent. The Venezuela Bolívar (BsF) will now trade at 6.3 BsF per U.S. dollar, up...
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Libya's year to come
In last week's post, I mentioned how Libyans were planning to use the second anniversary of their revolution to exercise their democratic right to peacefully protest and hold their elected government...
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Living through Venezuela’s currency madness
The U.S. dollar is facing competition from other currencies, but there is still one place, ironically, where the greenback is king: the streets of socialist, anti-imperialist Caracas. Everyone here...
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Finding the right note
Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate trying to replace the late Hugo Chávez in next week's special election, made "a big announcement" last Tuesday. One of his main campaign spokesmen, Ramón...
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The shocker in Caracas
Venezuela's vice president, Nicolás Maduro, has just barely managed to ride a wave of emotion triggered by the death of the late ex-president Hugo Chávez to claim victory as his successor. On Sunday,...
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Venezuela’s economy is a tangled mess
Venezuela's economy is in an endless state of disarray. Inflation is soaring, and basic staples are increasingly harder to find. Electricity blackouts are frequent, and crime presents an enormous...
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The latest plot twist in Egypt's IMF soap opera
Lately I've found myself thinking back to those horrible American soap operas (the "Bold and the Beautiful," etc.) that my late grandmother used to watch. She managed to find interest in what seemed...
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Is Venezuela becoming a failed state?
Venezuela remains mired in a political and economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up. But while street protests, soaring inflation, scarcity, and skyrocketing crime are massive headaches, the...
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