Democracy

( Inequality.org) – Great wealth can do great damage. Grand personal fortunes, we’ve come to understand, can menace our democracy and distort our economic life. But these fortunes can also wreak a much more hidden havoc: They can mess up the minds of people who hold them. Great fortunes can leave their owners feeling supremely […]

Democracy

How Gerrymandering Threatens Democracy

contributors

By Arnold J. Oliver | – Tiffin, Oh. (Special to Informed Comment) – Right now, Ohio, Michigan and other states are in the process of drawing new legislative boundaries, which takes place every ten years based mostly on information gained from the US census. As this process gets into gear, it appears that once again […]

Democracy

How can America Promote Democracy When the GOP Half of the Country Doesn’t Believe in it?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – America desperately needs a dose of its own medicine of democracy promotion. By John Feffer | August 25, 2021 Arizona’s Maricopa County is ground zero in the continuing debate over election integrity in the United States. The so-called audit of the 2.1 million votes cast in that county in […]

Authoritarianism

Tunisia: the complex issues behind the presidential power-grab

The Conversation

By Mariam Salehi | – Ten years on from the Arab uprisings, Tunisia has often been presented as a rare success story. Elsewhere Egypt sank into an army dictatorship, Syria, Libya and Yemen into bloody civil war. In other countries, meanwhile, such as Bahrain, the protests were put down with ferocity and the old regimes […]

Democracy

Iran: Overseer of Mass Executions Elected President: Further Erosion of Political Rights, Accountability

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – The victory of Ebrahim Raeesi, Iran’s judiciary chief, on June 19, 2021, in a presidential election that was neither free nor fair raises serious concerns about human rights and accountability in the country, Human Rights Watch said today. Raeesi has had a long career in the country’s judiciary and […]

Elections

Why Iranians won’t vote: new survey reveals massive political disenchantment

The Conversation

By Pooyan Tamimi Arab and Ammar Maleki | – The Islamic Republic of Iran has never organised free and fair elections since its establishment in 1979. By definition, the combination of modern totalitarianism and Iran’s Islamic theocracy, with a supreme leader, cannot allow for more than a voting spectacle, rather than elections in the normal […]

Elections

With Little Hope for Change through the Ballot Box, Iranian Civil Society Debates Strategy

Human Rights Watch

By Tara Sepehri Far | Iran Researcher | – ( Human Rights Watch) – Twenty days before Iran’s presidential election, the Guardian Council, which vets the candidates, sent shock waves through the political elite and public by disqualifying two prominent figures: the former speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, and the current vice president, Eshagh Jahangiri. […]

Democracy

Democracy: On the Precipice?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – If we extrapolate from the current trend lines, democracy will be gone in a couple decades, melted away like the polar ice. But although down, democracy is not out. By John Feffer | June 2, 2021 Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian dictator, snatches a dissident from midair. Military strongman Assimi […]

Elections

Disgruntled Iranians Say ‘No Way,’ Call For Boycott Of June Presidential Election

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/RL ) – Less than a month before Iran’s June 18 presidential election, there are few signs of enthusiasm about the vote. For many Iranians, voting in the Islamic republic has often been a choice between bad or worse. Elections in Iran are tightly restricted, with candidates being preselected by hard-liners on the country’s […]