Two decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Balkan countries have a complicated relationship with their Communist past. Two recent events in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina highlight the complexities of regional identity, and the negative effects of compulsory ethnic identification.
The popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east are driven by a profound democratic impulse. This represents both learning and test for international democracy actors, says Vidar Helgesen.
The new legal case against Italy's prime minister is also a test for a divided nation at a critical stage in its history, says Geoff Andrews.
Niger is just one battleground, albeit it one on the periphery, in the new geopolitical scramble for resources taking place among developed nations. Nowhere has the Chinese quest for resources in Africa been more pronounced
In the ascendant in Egypt is the socio-political power of a new national-development-oriented coalition of businessmen and military entrepreneurs, as well as the decisive force of micro-enterprise and workers’ organizations consisting of women and youth - a force that portends well. First publishe
It is the deeper process of social transformation which should spread from one country to the other and not just some hollowed out ‘pro-democracy movement’.
Maybe the US won’t change its course until the Arab world changes. It is amazing how instantly possibilities present themselves when the people, en masse, demand their own interests and rules of the game.
The uprisings sweeping across the Middle East portend a political transformation as significant as those of 1989. The economic stagnation of the region, the failures of corrupt and repressive autocratic regimes, conjoined with a disenchanted youthful population wired together as never before, have
In thinking through the issues we were struck by how often failures happen at the level of the national state nowadays and remedies, responses, the making of solutions… all tend to happen at more local levels, from cities and villages to translocal networks and neighbourhoods.
The similarities between the Egyptian and Russian regime are striking, says Grigorii Golosov. Arguably, Mubarak’s was the more liberal one.
Updated 11am. After Mubarak's refusal to stand down, attention must turn to what the armed pillars of the state will now do.The army may well be divided between loyalists and reformers; but the police and the Presidential Guard are also armed. The right kind of foreign pressure must continue.
The leaders of the United States have this time dropped the ball.
