democratic society

Just before the last Moscow demonstration on December 24, two of the protest movement’s most popular leaders — writer Boris Akunin and politician-blogger Aleksey Navalny — got together for a fascinating public conversation. The three-part interview, published on Akunin’s blog, is arguably the fullest profile of Russia’s leading opposition politician and covers many of the more uncomfortable aspects of Navalny’s politics. ODR is pleased to present the full English translation of the interviews.

The recent wave of demonstrations against election fraud across Russia were preceded in the spring and autumn by protests from grassroots fishermen’s organisations, who marched to defend their right to fish for free. Authorities soon climbed down from their controversial plans to privatise rivers and lakes, but not before radicalising an estimated 15-20 million amateur fishermen, writes Oleg Pavlov.

It is no coincidence that the wave of protests comes in the wake of a 'democratic recession'. People are increasingly demanding democracy in the Arab world, and also in the west.

Bahrain's uprising was curtailed by a brutal crackdown. Could the rising sectarianism and tense Sunni-Shia divide be reversed through taxation?

openDemocracy’s founder Anthony Barnett writes to you...

Mono-cultural nationalism can no longer provide us with the national identities we need. The formation of multi-cultural civic identities requires a new way of drawing our political maps.

Prime Minister Putin’s attempts to shore up his falling popularity ratings have now extended to setting up a new electoral platform. But this is not just any old platform, laments Dmitri Oreshkin. It’s another return to old methods and old labels, and bodes no good for Russia.

A comic duo in the Eurovision, a new hymn against high-qualified slave labour and a Facebook protest on March 12, brought back the dormant spirit of revolution to the streets of Lisbon.

The end of Mubarak’s thirty years reign may mark an opportunity to revive the Egyptian universities’ founding ideals as autonomous institutions seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t gather your people and ask them to provide wood, prepare tools, assign tasks. Call them together and raise in their minds the longing for the endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

With peaceful but forceful civic mobilization in 2004, Ukrainians managed to reverse a rigged presidential election. Later, disappointed in politicians who failed to deliver on promises of political and economic change, many Ukrainians distanced themselves from politics, thereby helping Victor Yanukovych become president in 2010. Civil society moved its residual activism from political to social problems, which could strengthen civil society as it prepares to counter democratic backsliding.

In 2004, some local journalists in Oryol founded an independent newspaper ‘for those who want the truth’. Although it sold well, members of staff were subject to threats, bribes, attacks and arson. Still, it lasted four years.

There were such hopes for the future in Georgia after the Rose Revolution in 2004, but history is running backwards, says former foreign minister Salome Zourabishvili, and President Saakashvili must be told that enough is enough