Building Global Democracy

The United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global "unipolar" state. This extraordinary imbalance has triggered global debate. Governments and peoples around the world are struggling to understand to how an American-centered unipolar system o

CHA-AM, Thailand, Feb 28 (IPS) - South-east Asian governments are examining the possibility of using a seven-year-old regional mechanism, known as the ''Bali Process,'' to find an answer to minority Muslim Rohingyas fleeing ethnic cleansing in military-ru

HARARE, Feb 26 (IPS) - Women's rights activists in Zimbabwe are outraged by the low representation of female politicians in the new unity government. Only four women are part of the 35-member cabinet, laughably short of the equal representation of women i

Is the Obama administration putting democracy promotion on the back-burner or simply toning down the previous administration's Freedom Agenda oratory? Is promoting democracy falling victim to calculating realpolitik or simply being "pursued with more mode

In late 2008, the Hugo Chavez administration celebrated 10 years in government. Since his first electoral triumph on Dec. 6, 1998, a new period began characterized by the emergence of progressive and leftist governments in South America. Chavez's rise to

As the European Union (EU) evolved as an international actor in the 1990s, it placed a commitment to promote certain values at the core of its foreign policy. These values include democracy, and alongside others such as a respect for human rights and the

The aim of this study is to analyse the reasons for the shortcomings of the EU as an agent of democracy promotion in Algeria. Instead of focusing solely on the EU, the study proposes that it was the interaction between EU-level problems and domestic, poli

This article studies a novel factor relevant for the moderation of an Islamist party: the degree of dependency on a social movement organization. This question is examined in a case study analysing the evolution of the relationship between the Moroccan Is

The literature on democratization emphasises how authoritarian constraints usually lead genuine opposition parties and movements to form alliances in order to make demands for reform to the authoritarian regime. There is significant empirical evidence to

Since July 2004, Egypt has undertaken a comprehensive economic reform agenda, put forward by 'newly' emerging political and economic elites with different sources of legitimization than their predecessors. Economic reforms are accompanied by a limited pac

During the 2005 elections in Egypt, newspapers around the world widely reported on the 'judges' revolt'. The judiciary, supported by civil society, confronted the executive by denouncing the fraudulent results of the constitutional referendum, as well as

The article takes recent research on the difficulties for the EU in successfully promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as its point of departure, with a specific focus on the European Neighbourhood Policy EU-Lebanon Action

This article discusses the nature of the political transformation process that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has undergone over the past decade regarding, first, political participation in Palestinian institutions, and second, the issue of negot

Disciplinary debates about the challenge of liberal democracy in the Mediterranean suggest that the underlying constraints in the region, such as the nature of authoritarian regimes, economic underdevelopment, and the nature of rentier states, pose severe

Contemporary perceptions of, and responses to, the growth of political Islam on the southern shores of the Mediterranean are still heavily influenced by traditional orientalist views on 'Islam' and by realist notions of regional security. This situation c

Democracies are fragile. No matter how long a regime has been democratic, it is always confronted with the possibility of becoming dysfunctional, of becoming less democratic, and possibly breaking down. Some scholars believe that polarisation is the singl

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (IPS) - A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state has called the 30-year U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America a failure and urged a drastic change in policy. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy iss

MELBOURNE, Feb 12 (IPS) - There are concerns that the behaviour of Fiji's interim government indicates the possibility of a Burma-style dictatorship emerging in the Pacific nation. "Are we seeing the development of a militarised democracy [in Fiji]?" as

BEIJING, Feb 9 (IPS) - When China's human rights record comes up for review before a key United Nations panel on Monday, this nominally communist country will have two contrasting accounts of its human rights situation.

Two distinct approaches to international democracy assistance have emerged in recent years: the political approach and the developmental approach. They vary with respect to their underlying conceptions of democracy and democratization and their methods an