Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, July 25, 2016

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Nina Jankowicz explains that Donald Trump’s dismissal of NATO doesn’t just weaken a military alliance, but also undermines democracy.

Christian Caryl offers advice to establishment politicians who are struggling to defeat the Trumps of the world: Be less boring.

Chloe McGrath responds to criticism of Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag protest movement, arguing that it is less radical and more practical than many observers think.

Antoun Issa shows us how the struggle for LGBT rights in the Middle East is a crucial part of the regional fight for democracy.

Mischa Benoit-Lavelle argues that Tunisia’s Nobel Prize-winning labor union is now holding the country back.

Maina Kiai insists that it’s time for international development banks to start really listening to the beneficiaries of all that assistance.

And Nick Danforth considers what Washington would have done if last week’s Turkish coup had succeeded.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

In the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner worries that the Republican National Convention offers evidence that democratic values in the United States are fraying. And in the Post’s “Monkey Cage” blog, Lisel Hintz points out the darker side of the popular resistance to the Turkish coup.

(For more on how President Erdogan mobilized his supporters using the very same social media he frequently cracks down on, here’s Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times.)

In the Hill, Anna Borshchevskaya explains how the Turkish coup attempt helps Putin.

The BBC’s Soutik Biswas remembers P.V. Narasimha Rao, the transformative “prime minister that India forgot.” And in Forbes, Panos Mourdoukoutas asks what India could do to catch up to China.

For Bloomberg, Pablo Gorondi reports on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s comment that Donald Trump is the “better option” in Europe’s fight against terrorism.

In Foreign Affairs, Christopher Sabatini highlights the darker side of the massive infrastructure projects undertaken by emerging economies in recent years.

The Telegraph’s Peta Thornycroft reports that a group of prominent Zimbabweans have called for a neutral transitional authority to run the country until fair elections can be held.

In the National Review, Thor Halvorssen and Roberto González remember Cuban pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas on the fourth anniversary of his death.

In the photo, a group of Erdogan supporters look on during a rally in Taksim square in Istanbul on July 22.

Photo credit: OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images