Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
This book examines democracy aid programs relating to elections, political parties, governmental reform, rule of law, civil society, independent media, labor unions, decentralization, and other elements of what Carothers describes as "the democracy template" that policy makers and aid officials apply around the world.
By supporting expensive institutions and processes of democratization, democracy assistance creates political systems that are financially unsustainable for less developed countries. There are less expensive donor strategies that could help to produce more economically viable democratizations.
Several factors explain why a growing number of regimes are adopting outwardly more democratic political systems: the loss of appeal of socialist systems during the 1990s, the creation of newly independent states, and the corresponding need felt by an increasing number of governments to legitimize themselves in the eyes of their citizens and of the international community.
Why has Russian law not got stuck, although plenty of laws have been promulgated and all the legal bodies have undergone substantial reform? So why do not Russians trust and use the judicial system to a greater extent?
In making assessments of Russia's behavior in the world, it is critical that we recognize that Russia is not a totalitarian state ruled by a Communist Party with a single, clearly articulated foreign policy. That state disappeared in 1991. Rather, Russia is a democratizing state, and Russia's foreign policy, in turn, is a product of domestic politics in a pluralistic system.
For lasting peace, the colonial powers must leave the warring nations of Africa to find their own solutions: most conflicts are about internal failure, not simple border quarrels.
Since the beginning of 1997, Beijing and the man it appointed to be Hong Kong's chief executive, C. H. Tung, have been rewriting Hong Kong's laws to put new restrictions on political activity and free speech. The Hong Kong canary is already short of breath as the PRC coal mine closes in around it. By the time we wake up to find that political liberties have been extinguished, it will be too late.