Politics

Democracy Goes Out with a Whimper

February 15, 2012 by Natalie Bowlus

Viktor Orban is killing Hungarian democracy. In 2010, his center conservative Fidesz party won a landslide victory. They had an overwhelming popular mandate to clean up the country after eight years of mismanagement under MSZP, the sclerotic socialist party run by holdovers from Hungary’s communist days. Excitement was real and palpable – Hungarians I knew [...]

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An Interview with Alec Ross, State Department Senior Advisor for Innovation

December 3, 2011 by Meghan Healy Luecke
Thumbnail image for An Interview with Alec Ross, State Department Senior Advisor for Innovation

Alec Ross joined the State Department in April 2009 after coordinating hundreds of policy advisers for the Obama campaign. This month, he spoke with us about his job, the limitations of new media tools for governance, and how the Arab Spring is changing 21st century statecraft.

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Croatia’s European Future: A Conversation with Croatia’s President Ivo Josipović

May 15, 2011 by Ivo Josipović

Professor Ivo Josipovic, President of the Republic of Croatia, assesses the political situation in Southeast Europe as stable, though fraught with continuing challenges. Serbia is attempting to balance regional cooperation with Kosovo’s independence, while Bosnia and Herzegovnia is enacting constitutional changes to transcend the imperfections of the Dayton Agreement. Against this dramatic regional backdrop, Croatia is entering the final stage of its EU accession talks while navigating painful political, economic, and social reforms.

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Libya: Explosive Tinderbox of the Middle East

February 21, 2011 by Sarah Charlton

The recent bloodshed in Libya, coupled with a “business as usual” speech from Libya’s so-called lead reformer, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, should be drawing more international attention to potentially explosive fate of Muammar Gaddafi’s literally crazy Jamahiriya regime. Since voluntarily giving up its WMD program in 2003, around the time of the invasion of Iraq, Libya [...]

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21st Century Resistance Movements

February 16, 2011 by Christopher Tunnard

A question on many people’s minds is to what extent the success of current political and social resistance movements is (or is becoming) dependent on Facebook, Twitter, mobile texting, and the like. It seems fair to say, as Secretary Clinton did today, that social media, networked by new technologies, have facilitated the formation of resistance [...]

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The Hardening of Soft Power

February 2, 2011 by Brittany Gleixner Hayat

Perhaps the most dominant narrative in contemporary international political discourse is a heightened sense of vulnerability to terror which has impacted every part of the world and linked small states to large in new ways. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, concern has risen that so–called “failed states,” losing the struggle to maintain [...]

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Venezuela’s Legislative Elections: Arm Wrestling with Hugo Chávez

January 20, 2011 by Alejandro Tarre

While President Hugo Chávez and his incumbent party won 60 percent of the seats in Venezuela’s recent legislative election, journalist Alejandro Tarre says this nonetheless constitutes a victory for the opposition. Tarre details how the opposition was able to gain seats despite unfair electoral laws and the
government’s abuse of power. He discusses developments since the election and strikes an optimistic note about the opposition’s future prospects.

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