Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, October 12, 2015

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Farah Samti celebrates the Tunisian civil society organizations that won the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in defusing a political crisis that threatened to unravel their country’s progress.

Brian Klaas explains how it was Tunisians’ insistence on dialogue and compromise in the wake of their country’s revolution that is behind this Nobel Prize victory.

Josh Cohen lays out how smart privatization could free Ukraine from the shackles of corruption.

Jack Watling and Paul Raymond profile a remarkable private radio station in Mali that has transformed the country’s media landscape.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

Lizzie Dearden of the Independent reports on how the Turkish government has stifled media coverage of Saturday’s terrorist bombing, even going so far as to block Facebook and Twitter.

The BBC has an update on Mikheil Saakashvili’s crusade to transform the Ukrainian port city of Odessa.

Writing for Open Society Foundations, Pedro Abramovay outlines four possible scenarios for the future of democracy in Latin America.

In Pulse, Danny Postel interviews Wendy Pearlman, who has written a history of the Syrian uprising before it turned into a civil war.

Writing for the New York Review of Books, Timothy Snyder explains why Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, whose writing “recovers experience from myth,” deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature she was awarded this week.

Writing for the Carnegie Endowment, Thomas Carothers and Richard Youngs caution against overly facile generalization about the waves of protests that have swept the world in recent years.

In the Wall Street Journal, Democracy Lab contributor Adrian Karatnycky explains how Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is de-fanging the country’s far right.

An Amnesty International report documents Burma’s growing number of political prisoners, ensnared by a new government crackdown ahead of November elections. David Scott Mathieson, a Human Rights Watch researcher, warns about the virulent anti-Muslim bigotry stirred up by the country’s popular right-wing Buddhist political forces.

Aida Alami of the New York Times reports on the Moroccan government’s mounting crackdown on activists and critical journalists. A March analysis in the Guardian by Charlotte Bozonnet offers a good primer on how Morocco’s monarchy has skillfully maneuvered in the wake of the Arab Spring protests to remain firmly in power.

And finally, if you’re in Washington D.C. this Thursday, check out this event at the National Endowment for Democracy about media and press freedom in Egypt, Russia, and Vietnam.

The photo shows the funeral of Fatma Esen, a victim of the twin bombings that rocked Ankara, Turkey on October 10.

Photo credit: OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images