Analyses
Yassin al-Haj Saleh: After Assad, Syria Must Free Itself from Sectarianism
Riccardo Cristiano 12 December 2024
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, born in 1961, is one of Syria’s foremost intellectuals and a long-standing dissident against the Assad regime. He spent sixteen years in prison for “political reasons,” including time in the maximum-security facility of Tadmur, also known as Palmyra. With the onset of the Syrian Spring, he immediately emerged as an opponent of the regime.
  • Will the Young Save Europe From the Rise of the Far Right?
    Albena Azmanova 6 June 2024
    The far right is poised to make dramatic gains in the European elections this weekend. One could draw hope from an increase in the youth vote. Turnout among the young has been rising in national and European elections. Moreover, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Malta are extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds (and Greece to 17-year-olds). The latest Eurobarometer registers a fairly high interest in the elections among voters under 24, with most (63 percent) vouching to vote and an overwhelming majority (86 percent) agreeing voting is important to keep democracy strong.
  • The Dalai Lama’s Visits to Taiwan Intertwined with Cross-Strait Relations
    Kristina Kironska 5 June 2024
    The Dalai Lama has visited Taiwan three times – in 1997, 2001, and 2009 – and there are calls for his return. Since his first visit, Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan has grown significantly. The total number of Tibetan Buddhist centers has increased from 82 in 1996 to 473 in 2018, while the community of Tibetan Buddhists soared to approximately half a million. From this perspective, the Dalai Lama’s visits to Taiwan have achieved their goal of disseminating Tibetan Buddhism, making his potential return to Taiwan of paramount religious significance. But there is also a political significance to his visits.
  • Tunisia: Clamping Down on Civil Liberties Ahead of Understated Presidential Elections
    Ruth Hanau Santini 24 May 2024
    Next autumn Tunisians will go to the polls to elect the President of the Republic. The Election’s date has not been confirmed, and the main opposition coalition, Chebbi’s National Salvation Front, has announced they will boycott the vote unless three conditions will be met: the electoral commission will be independent, the main Islamist party, Ennahda, will be allowed to re-open its headquarters, and all political prisoners will be freed. When Tunisians last voted for presidential elections, all those conditions were in place, but in the past few years, political and civil liberties have shrunk to the extent that the country is not only “partly” free but its democratic ranking continues to deteriorate, year on year.
  • Iran after Raisi: Elections Under the Revolutionary Guard’s Watch
    Renzo Guolo 24 May 2024
    The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, almost certainly the designated heir of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has exposed the contradictions at the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said contradictions lie both in the country’s institutional denomination – a true political oxymoron – and in its constitutional architecture, formed in 1979 when the revolution was still developing, and not yet wholly wedded to its Islamist matrix.
  • The Implications for Indonesian Democracy after Prabowo’s 2024 Win
    Hurriyah 30 April 2024
    After losing four elections, former general and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto won 58 percent of the vote on February 14, 2024. He and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, President Jokowi’s eldest son, are expected to be inaugurated as president and vice president in the coming months. In what may have been the worst elections since Indonesia’s post-1998 democratization, Prabowo’s current victory is the result of Machiavellian tactics – unethical cunning to attain personal ambitions – and reflects the fundamental threat to Indonesia’s nascent democracy
  • Hijacked Discourses Impede Cultural Plurality in International Affairs
    Seán Golden 24 April 2024
    Jürgen Habermas’ theory of civic discourse imposes binding rules on debate in order to subsequently bind behavior. Perhaps this could be extended to international affairs. Scholar Wang Minmin advocates establishing “a set of negotiable yet binding communicative rules and values, [and] world opinion [that] would both allow civic discourse and act as the binding power of an international norm.” Such an approach would require “that we must first acknowledge the differences in moral orders on both sides, but then also move beyond this to realize the common ground on which both sides stand.”
  • A Campaign Under Modi’s Heel
    Maria Tavernini 19 April 2024
    India, a country that loves to be defined as the world’s largest democracy, or the “mother of democracy” – using the words of its Prime Minister Narendra Modi – has just started its 18th general election. The massive democratic exercise is going to take place from today through June 1, with 970 million people heading to the polls in seven phases, with results expected to be announced on June 4. However, many have pointed out that it is not only simply the fact of holding elections that makes a country a democracy. According to V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report, India dropped down to an “electoral autocracy” in 2018 and stayed in this category up to now.
  • Slovakia and Poland at the Ballot: Pellegrini Prevails, Political Deadlock in Warsaw
    Fabio Turco 17 April 2024
    On the weekend of April 6-7, the citizens of both Poland and Slovakia went back to the polls, only six months after elections that resulted in important shifts in their respective governments. These more recent elections constituted a first test for the new executives. The elections in Poland were for local administration, while those in Slovakia were presidential.
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