Reviews
The Uncertain Future of Democracy Promotion
Democracy promotion has had a tough decade, nowhere more so than in the Middle East. In Working Paper 12 Steven Heydemann reviews the policy paper Beyond Orthodox Approaches: Assessing Opportunities for Democracy Support in the Middle East and North Africa. Ten years ago, the democratic optimism that followed the end of the Cold War was in relatively good health. Today, after a decade of authoritarian reversals, a sustained “backlash against democracy promotion,” and authoritarian resurgence...
Blogging Toward Utopia
The growth of Internet usage in the Middle East and North Africa is among the world’s fastest: between 2000 and 2007 usage increased almost 500 percent, more than twice the rate of increase in the rest of the world. Just as elsewhere, this has led to Middle Eastern cyber-optimism - among the users of digital tools and Internet watchers alike. It is a widely-held hope that the coming of Web 2.0 can move closed societies towarddemocratic values and governance.Book review by Sokari Ekine
Urgency is required at this very moment as the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 is pending before the Ugandan Parliament. Same-sex relationships are already illegal in the country, with sentences running from five years to life imprisonment. The laws, which are based on the British colonial penal code, do not specifically refer to relationships between women, but lesbians are stigmatized and face similar aggression and malice from society and the state as gay men. the proposed Anti-Homose...