Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, August 11, 2014

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In the first of our Lab Reports on Turkey, Cenk Sidar argues that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s victory in this weekend’s presidential election will inspire the biggest opposition backlash yet.

As John Kerry visits Burma, Stephen Gray implores the United States to use its leverage to help put Burma’s troubled transition back on track.

Mohamed Eljarh warns that Libya’s new parliament must act fast if it still wants to have a country to govern.

Peter Salisbury explains how Yemen’s branch of al Qaeda is working toward declaring its own Islamic state. (In the photo above, Yemeni children look at street art protesting the government’s decision to raise fuel prices.)

Rick Rowden reports on why some African leaders are questioning the sanctity of free market strategy.

Lincoln Mitchell defends the Georgian government’s efforts to prosecute ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili for alleged abuse of power.

Daniel Branch and Jason Mosley analyze the mounting tensions behind growing conflict along East Africa’s borders.

And Pedro Pizano defends a proposal to rename the address of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC after a prominent dissident.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

Writing for the LSE Review of Books, Zeynep Kaya reviews Zaid al-Ali’s book on the failures of Iraq’s government to win legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents. Cheryl Benard, in the National Interest, makes the case for a more active U.S. engagement with Kurdistan.

In a piece for Spiegel International, Shadi Hamid explains why the fabled Arab strongman is staging a comeback after the disappointments of the Arab Spring.

An Economist correspondent updates a classic analysis of the postcolonial ethnic dynamics that still inform conflicts in Southeast Asia.

The New Yorker‘s David Remnick tracks the rise and fall of democracy in Russia through a profile of former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul.

Daniel Calingaert and Kellen McClure, writing for Global Post, urge the United States to promote democracy in African countries.

In an in-depth report for the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Lolita Cigane and Magnus Ohman explore the connection between campaign finance and the success of female candidates.

The International Federation for Human Rights reports on the historic imprisonment of two former Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia.

Writing for Foreign Affairs, Deborah M. Lehr and Leigh Wedell map out the methods the Chinese government employs to control local leaders in the provinces.