In mid-November 2001, a little over seven years ago, the war to terminate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was nearing its end. The Taliban militias had vacated Kabul almost overnight and most of them were dispersing across the south and east of the country, as well as across the border into western Pakistan.
Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September... more »
Democracy support: where now?, Vidar Helgesen
Even international civil servants not given tothe expression of overtly political sentiments can find themselves moved by adisplay of public and democratic affirmation. Such was the case around midnighton 4 November 2008, when I found myself in a gathering crowd outside the WhiteHouse - a crowd that was wildly celebrating the imminent election of BarackObama as the next president of the United States.
Vidar Helgesen is Secretary-General of theInternational Institute for Democracy and... more »
Thailand’s southern fix, John Virgoe
The return to democracy in Thailand following the military overthrow of the populist prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006 has been messy. In the second half of 2008, the country's polity has been riven by a deepening political crisis which has pitted the government (now led by Somchai Wongsawat, and sympathetic to Thaksin) against much of Bangkok's middle-class and the country's traditional establishment and elite.
John Virgoe is southeast Asia project director at... more »
Brazil: democracy as balance, Arthur Ituassu
The test of a democracy's health is what happens at levels beneath that of presidents, overseas observers and international media. That at least is one possible conclusion to be drawn from the two-round municipal elections held in Brazil on 5 October and 26 October 2008. When the results were announced by the country's supreme electoral court, it was clear that the contest over Brazil's political direction was as sharp and open at urban as at regional and national levels. The moment... more »
Evo and Bolivia: the next campaign , John Crabtree
President Evo Morales of Bolivia is now able to prepare for a referendum in January 2009 on the country's new constitution, following a historic deal with the centre-right congressional opposition on 21 October 2008 which enabled the document to win acceptance. To secure this agreement involved the president making significant concessions. But it is not yet clear if this flexibility will end the sort of political confrontation that led to widespread violence as recently as September (see... more »
Russia's political direction, Boris Dolgin
Extending the constitutional terms
At the heart of the recent message from the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly was the peripheral, but unsuccessful, initiative to alter the constitutional term of the Duma. It featured alongside the highly significant (for foreign policy) but no more successful initiative to respond to the deployment of American ABMs in Europe.
It is clear that those behind these attempts to increase the presidential tenure and the constitutional term... more »
The real threat from the BNP, Stuart Weir
Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Two years ago Democratic Audit and two of our partners, Helen Margetts and Peter John, provoked a storm when we suggested that the British National Party had a far larger potential electoral support than specialist political scientists believed. The conventional view was that far-right parties in the UK were an insignificant political force. We compounded their ire by getting a front-page article in the New Statesman and a great deal of media... more »
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