Will Kenya's elections produce a representative government or deepen its democratic decline? CFR's Joshua Kurlantzick offers a prescription for reversing the retreat of emerging states like Kenya.
In this Policy Innovation Memorandum, Daniel Markey argues that U.S. officials should resist temptations to lend support to Pakistani leaders with "pro-American" leanings.
Both are accurate. China certainly "has risen" to become a global economic power: in only three decades, it has transformed itself into the world's second largest economy, largest exporter, and largest provider of loans to the developing world. At the same time, China is rising: its economic and political system, as well as its foreign policy, is still developing. To state categorically that China "has risen" is to accept that the China of today will be substantially the same as the China of five to ten years from now, and few people in or outside China would accept such a conclusion.
Contrary to those who see a future of "globalization on steroids," Joshua Kurlantzick says the reality of today's economic slowdown is that it will leave as its legacy the worst degloblization in modern history.
"The complex evolution of the Obama administration's policy toward North Korea during its first term and the characteristics of President Obama's world view together provide a framework for considering what the administration is likely to do in a second term," says Scott A. Snyder.
Adam Segal says the recent Chinese cyberattacks on Bloomberg and the New York Timeshighlights both the willingness of Beijing to shape the narrative about China, as well as the vulnerability the top leadership feels about how they are portrayed.
In the third of threeexcerpts from his new book, Democracy in Retreat, Joshua Kurlantzick says that emerging powers like India, Brazil and South Africa were supposed to be democracy's greatest proponents, but that it hasn't worked out that way at all.
In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Democracy in Retreat, Joshua Kurlantzickargues that voting is losing its cachet in the developing world and in the West.
In an excerpt from his new book, Democracy in Retreat, Joshua Kurlantzick argues democracy cannot flourish unless the middle class embraces it, warts and all.
Jerome A. Cohen argues that whatever form the proposed end of re-education through labour takes, even if it fails to fully comply with China's constitution or its laws, the present situation is likely to be improved.
The United States and Pakistan spent most of 2011 and at least half of 2012 lurching from crisis to crisis, their relationship teetering at the edge of an abyss. In recent months, however, moves by Islamabad have raised hopes in Washington that Pakistan might be navigating a "strategic shift" that would restart normal, workmanlike cooperation and, more important, would allow America to escape from its war in Afghanistan.
Jerome A. Cohen says, "Beijing's pending prosecution of deposed Politburo member Bo Xilai and the recent murder conviction of his wife, Gu Kailai , have again brought China's criminal justice system to world attention."
A thought-provoking study of democratization proposing that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, is not just a series of exceptions.
In a major electoral comeback, Japan's conservatives have won a supermajority in parliament. But the results have stirred anxieties about how they will use their power, says CFR's Sheila Smith.
Joshua Kurlantzick examines how emerging democratic powers like India and Brazil have thus far avoided a leadership in democracy promotion commensurate with their new global statuses
On the upcoming South Korean presidential election, Scott A. Snyder says the determining vote will be "South Korea's bulging forties cohort" that played a critical role in South Korea's transition from authoritiarianism to democracy and also has the greatest stake in its economic stability.
Joshua Kurlantzick shares an excerpt from his new book, Democracy in Retreat, which revolves around a disturbing thesis: that after a steady increase in the number of democracies in the world for nearly a century, autocratic rule is on the march.
With the passing of International Human Rights Day, Jerome A. Cohen says China still has no effective means of enforcing the rights enshrined in its constitution. Yet, once again, new Communist Party leaders reignite hopes for bringing government and the party under the rule of law.
Joshua Kurlantzick suggests that the interethnic conflict in Rakhine State in western Myanmar is symptomatic of the larger challenges the country faces as it transitions from absolute military rule to democracy.