Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, November 2, 2015

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Christian Caryl describes the unholy alliance between Buddhist extremists and government officials that is threatening to derail Burma’s democratic transition.

Isabel Rutherfurd explains why Burma’s privatization is benefitting only the well-connected — and why it matters.

Tom O’Bryan points out that Beasts of No Nation, a new film about child soldiers, is perpetuating some misleading stereotypes.

Juan Nagel reports on a top Venezuelan prosecutor who has fled to the United States and publicly admitted framing Leopoldo López, the country’s highest profile opposition politician.

Kawa Hassan warns that the refusal of Iraqi Kurdistan’s president to step down as the constitution requires is threatening the region’s hard-earned democratic credentials.

Hannah Thoburn looks into initial results from Ukraine’s local elections last weekend — and finds that the oligarchs still rule.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

In the Washington Post, Fareed Zarakia hails Tunisia as a democratic model in the Muslim world, especially as an antidote to the appeal of the Islamic State. In the New York Times, on the other hand, Kamel Daoud argues that the Tunisian case is too exceptional to be useful as a model.

In Mother Jones, Samantha Michaels takes Hillary Clinton to task for claiming Burma’s democratic transition as a foreign policy success.

In the Guardian, Nouriel Roubini warns of the continued strengthening of European populist right-wing parties, some of whom have alarming authoritarian tendencies.

For FP, Alexander Christie-Miller reports on the results of the snap Turkish election over the weekend, in which President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party recaptured a parliamentary majority.

As Secretary of State John Kerry visits Central Asia this week, Human Rights Watch has released a briefing on the region’s deteriorating human rights situation. A paper just released by Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic analyzes the persecution of Burma’s Rohingya Muslims and finds that it likely fits the definition of genocide.

In Open Democracy, Francesca Ebel asks whether Ukraine’s revolution has left women behind.

Any finally, our friends at the Legatum Institute have just released the 2015 Prosperity Index. The index combines measures of economic performance and human wellbeing to offer an insight of which countries are achieving the most for their citizens.

In the photo, people react as smoke billows from pallets set on fire during clashes between Turkish riot policemen and Kurdish protesters in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on November 1, 2015 after first results of the Turkish general election showed a clear victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Photo credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images