Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, April 29, 2013

Anna Nemtsova interviews Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston marathon.

Dalibor Rohac and Marian L. Tupy take on critics of the World Bank’s influential Doing Business survey.

Francis Wade profiles the Burmese monks whose nationalist politics are promoting ethnic violence against Rohingya Muslims.

Christian Caryl follows up by looking at the history of violence in Buddhist culture.

Seema Shah accuses U.S. democracy promotion organizations of misrepresenting the recent presidential election in Kenya.

Mohamed Eljarh reports on the resurgence of federalist politics in Libya and the recent car bomb attack on the French embassy in Tripoli.

Juan Nagel examines the case for electoral fraud now being advanced by Venezuelan opposition leader Henriques Capriles.

Mohamed El Dahshan explores the latest scandal involving U.N. peacekeepers in Morocco.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

Al Jazeera interviews Prime Minister Najib Razak about the upcoming elections in Malaysia.

Conor Friedersdorf reports for The Atlantic on the Yemeni man who testified to Congress that drone strikes on his village are making al Qaeda stronger.

Writing in The National Interest, Jordan Michael Smith argues that U.S. efforts to promote democracy in other countries may be having the opposite effect.

Lincoln Mitchell writes for The American Interest that the 2012 Georgian elections reveal the challenges of future democracy promotion efforts.

In its Democracy Index 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit offers a skeptical take on the global progress of democracy. The Economist asks whether the recent Kosovo-Serbia peace deal signals new hope for the Balkans.

The Transnational Institute releases an important report on Burma’s political reform and its consequences for ethnic conflict.

Madawi al-Rasheed writes in Jadaliyya on efforts by Saudi Islamists to reconcile democracy and Islamic rule.