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Internet shutdowns are not new, but they have become increasingly popular instruments among dictators and autocrats who want to control their citizenry and preempt political threats.
Improving security sector governance requires looking beyond short term tactical success and investing in longer term improvements. Such reforms are necessary for fragile states to improve the effectiveness of their security forces and temper extremism.
Four years ago, the AfD had seemed to fade from the political picture. Its recent rise has stopped for now, but Germany is not immune to far-right politics.
Producing more efficacious funding of civic space requires international aid and policy actors to face questions on the nature of closing civic space, how to address it, where to target funding, and how to mitigate against any unintended consequences of aid.
Even in democracies like the United States, government use of facial recognition technology, in its current form, corrodes civil rights and civil liberties because its errors disproportionately impact vulnerable communities.
Unless the United States redirects its approach in Syria, civilian stabilization programs will not achieve their stated objective: the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State.
The Nigerian case highlights the challenges of local-level stabilization efforts while working with a host government that lacks political commitment, capacity, and coordination.
New technologies are arming governments with unprecedented capabilities to monitor, track and surveil individual people. Even governments in democracies with strong traditions of rule of law find themselves tempted to abuse these new abilities.
Sheri Berman’s substantial new history of democracy in Europe offers useful insights on the question of why democracy sometimes succeeds but often does not. Yet Western democracies are now experiencing tectonic shifts, and history offers only a limited guide to understanding their future.
The Nigerian government has rolled out big-budget programs with the stated aim of helping small businesspeople, but these schemes are more often used by corrupt officials to help themselves.