Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, April 18, 2016

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Anna Petherick profiles Brazil’s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, who has just lost a congressional vote on impeachment.

Robert Palmer calls for the hidden owners of shady shell companies to be publicly revealed.

Richard Cockett scrutinizes Aung San Suu Kyi’s plans to boost Burma’s long-languishing economy.

Paul Quinn-Judge reports on the resurgence of fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Senem Aydin-Duzgit explains how Turkey’s authoritarian turn at home has stifled its support for democracy abroad.

And Drew Sullivan makes the case for more international funding of independent investigative journalism.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

The Carnegie Endowment’s Marwan Muasher, Marc Pierini, and Alexander Djerassi warn that Tunisia’s democratic transition is losing momentum, and offer remedies to bring it back on track.

Latin America Goes Global offers a detailed account of how Latin American governments have failed to defend democratic principles, leading to a troubling weakening of the liberal international order.

Freedom House releases its latest “Nations in Transit” report, which covers the region’s continued democratic decline and warns that the stability of its authoritarian regimes is increasingly in doubt.

The European Council on Foreign Relations releases a report dissecting how Ukraine’s oligarchs are succeeding in blocking crucial reforms.

As Michael Cohen reports for Bloomberg, the race is on to find a successor to South Africa’s embattled president, Jacob Zuma.

Stanford University hosts a conversation with Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama about Burma’s democratic transition.

In the Washington Post, Lauren Kosa pushes back against the argument that dictators can ensure stability in the Middle East.

In the New York Times, Roger Cohen bemoans the “death of liberalism.”

In a paper for New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, DemLab contributor Thant Myint-U analyzes the sclerotic state of the United Nations and recommends reforms to the next secretary general. (And, just in case you missed it, here’s a link to last month’s devastating critique of the U.N. in the New York Times by Anthony Banbury, an outgoing assistant secretary general.)

In the photo, supporters of South Africa’s main opposition party, Democratic Alliance, protest against President Jacob Zuma on April 15 in Johannesburg.

Photo credit: MUJAHID SAFODIEN/AFP/Getty Images