Democracy and Institutions

On 5th July 2014, a group of three sisters got on a night train after visiting their family. They were scheduled to reach Bangkok the next morning. However, the oldest sister woke up to find that her 13-year-old sister had gone missing, her bed in disarray. The two sisters searched the whole train but came up empty-handed. After notifying the officers and their parents, search teams were set up along the train route and police began investigating those […]

Covering the Middle East has fundamentally changed in the last decade, said Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal at a Shorenstein Center event. Increased security threats toward journalists in the Middle East and the quick turnaround times required for digital publishing have made it more difficult for Middle East correspondents […]

As Israelis flocked to the polls in last week’s elections, the West Bank remained calm. The 4.1 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza do not have the right to vote. Life went on as usual while only kilometers away, Israelis elected leaders who will determine policy affecting the Palestinians’ fate. Here are […]

Six weeks after a controversial postponement, the Nigerian presidential and National Assembly elections are set for March 28th, with the governorship and State House of Assembly elections scheduled to take place on April 11th. In spite of the volatile security environment, government officials have indicated that Nigerian citizens will be able to vote this Saturday, […]

As the Nigerian elections come around, the broadcast is out again and every pundit on Africa especially the western ones are on, once more, about Nigeria disintegrating.  This alarm and concern for Nigeria by outsiders seems to me not so much about caring but about perpetuating the myth of Africa’s failure in governing itself. In my […]

BY HUGO ZYLBERBERG General Keith Alexander maintained in a 2013 speech that, as director of the National Security Agency (NSA) at the time, he was doing “everything [he] could to protect civil liberties and privacy,” then added a warning: “Everyone also understands that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense […]

ABSTRACT The Ibrahim Prize, the largest annually awarded prize given in the world, is meant to incentivize African heads of state to become better democratic leaders. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, IIAG, a composite measurement, is used in a ranking order of African heads of States. This paper affirms the hypothesis- no consistent correlation […]

BY DAVEDE ALEXANDER and JUSTIN OSSOLA America has been made very aware of the difficult, polarizing dynamics that can exist when the social experience of leadership and authority skews so drastically from those being served. Tinderbox situations between communities and law enforcement – such as that in Ferguson and, to a lesser extent, the current […]

Given the criminal justice system’s racist history, the failures of  grand juries to indict Officer Darren Wilson and Officer Daniel Pantaleo are unsurprising and show the need for dismantling, not reforming.  BY REETU MODY First a St. Louis grand jury failed to find enough evidence to indict Officer Darren Wilson for firing six shots that […]

Commentary All the heads of state or government who participated in the last three Summits of the Americas were democratically elected. This situation was unprecedented in the hemisphere; the past twenty-five years have become the most prolonged period of democracy in the Western hemisphere since independence. Democracy begins with free and fair elections. However, there […]

Abstract Democracy is deepening across much of Latin America, especially in Mexico and Brazil, the two major countries. In a region once plagued by bloody coups and military interventionism, free and fair elections are now the norm. Significant economic and social advances, including a sharp decline in poverty levels and even in inequality in some […]

Commentary When my administration began in 2002, many analysts said that Colombia was a failed state. Every year, the country faced thirty-thousand homicides and almost three-thousand kidnappings, and more than three-hundred municipalities lacked the presence of their mayors due threats made against their lives. Investment rates were low, unemployment was climbing, and poverty levels were […]