Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, July 27, 2015
To keep up with Democracy Lab in real time, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Rushda Majeed tells the story of Indonesia’s remarkably successful anti-corruption agency – the fourth case study in our “Curbing Corruption” series. (Previous installments featured a Nepalese reality show, a citizen feedback initiative in Pakistan, and a crusading Costa Rican newspaper.) ...
To keep up with Democracy Lab in real time, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Rushda Majeed tells the story of Indonesia’s remarkably successful anti-corruption agency – the fourth case study in our “Curbing Corruption” series. (Previous installments featured a Nepalese reality show, a citizen feedback initiative in Pakistan, and a crusading Costa Rican newspaper.)
Ievgen Vorobiov reports on Ukraine’s push to change place names that commemorate the Soviet past.
Wai Moe explains why Burma’s political establishment is at war with itself. Christian Caryl urges Washington to take a more active stance against Burmese leaders who want to slow the country’s progress toward democracy.
Juan Nagel speaks with Venezuelan opposition activist Maria Corina Machado, who once again finds herself in the crosshairs of the Caracas regime.
And finally, Gary Rawnsley analyzes the increasing effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Party efforts to manipulate the Internet (another installment in the Legatum Institute’s “Beyond Propaganda” series).
And now for this week’s recommended reads:
The July issue of the Journal of Democracy is out – with reads on Hungary’s retreat from democracy, Azerbaijan’s attack on European human rights institutions, and autocrats who twist nonpartisan election monitoring to their own nefarious ends.
Tom Daschle, writing for Politico, argues that it’s time for the West to offer wide-ranging support to Ukraine – including weaponry. Chatham House’s Andrew Monaghan counters that arming Ukraine would cause more problems than it would solve.
GlobalPost’s Simeon Tegel explains why Venezuela’s super cheap Big Mac offers further evidence of the government’s disastrous economic management.
In the Washington Post, Dom Phillips chronicles the escalating corruption scandal enveloping Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras.
The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson profiles a Cuban-American entrepreneur who has big plans for his changing homeland.
In Foreign Affairs, Nancy Okail and Allison McManus warn that Egypt’s efforts to combat terrorism will never work as long as the regime runs roughshod over human rights.
The Christian Science Monitor’s Fred Weir reports on the small Russian town that delivered a stinging electoral rebuke to Putin’s ruling party.
In the photo, a member of the Egyptian security forces stands guard at the site of a bomb that targeted the Egyptian state prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, in Cairo on June 29, 2015.
Photo credit: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images
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