Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, November 11, 2013

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Michael Weiss takes issue with those who claim that President Obama’s Syria policy is an unheralded success.

Sheila Fruman explains why Pakistan’s transition to democracy really is an unheralded success.

Christian Caryl looks at how the Sochi Olympics gay rights fight represents a sharp global values divide.

Anna Nemtsova interviews one of Russia’s young ultranationalists.

Mohamed Eljarh reports on Libya’s continuing power struggle.

Juan Nagel explains why Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s future hinges on local elections.

Tiffany Lynch presses the world to pay attention to the human rights catastrophe that is Eritrea.

And in Democracy Lab’s latest collaboration with Princeton’s Innovations for Successful Societies, Rushda Majeed describes how Bangladesh used an elite team of insiders to reform its failing civil service.

And now for this week’s recommended reads…

In the New York Times, Maung Zarni explains why Burma’s ethnic minorities aren’t eager to sign a ceasefire agreement.

Writing for Foreign Affairs, Frederic Wehrey reviews the status of the United States effort to train a new Libyan army.

Democracy Digest looks at the current debate in Washington over the role that democracy promotion should play in U.S. foreign policy.

Al Jazeera reports that Mali’s rebel groups have agreed to work together in their peace talks with the central government.

Writing for the Centre for Independent Studies, Benjamin Herscovitch offers China as an example of why economic success doesn’t necessarily lead to democracy.

In an article for Daily News Egypt, Hend Kortam writes about the climate of fear and violence confronting journalists in Egypt.

The New Republic‘s Laura Dean explains that the Egypt’s youth have found themselves pushed out of politics after the Arab Spring.

Writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ahmed Morsy and Nathan J. Brown look at how the Al-Azhar religious institutions are trying to reassert their role as the guiding force in Egyptian Islam (while bypassing the Muslim Brotherhood).

In an article for the Atlantic Council, Amr Hamzawy deplores the failure of the Egyptian government to protect its religious minorities from politicized acts of violence.

In the Los Angeles Times, Patrick J. McDonnell writes on how Turkey has become a checkpoint for the rebels on its Syrian border.

(In the photo above, the bodies of Typhoon Haiyan’s estimated 10,000 victims line the streets in the Philippines.)