Contrary to what its name may imply, “flexians” — the subject of the anthropologist and public policy scholar Janine Wedel’s stimulating new book Shadow Elite— are not alien beings from an episode of Star Trek. Rather, they are a relatively new, distinctly terrestrial constellation of actors who are remolding the landscape of global governance. Emblematic…
Whether the global snapshot provided in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World assessment characterizes the 2010 results as a “declining trend” or a “stagnation” in global democracy, the report’s outlook is certainly bleak. Good news was hard to find in Freedom of the World 2010. Arch Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research, spoke Tuesday…
In the South Pacific, I found a case study in modern censorship, as Fiji’s three-year-old military government collides with a once free local press, an emerging blogging culture and an ambivalent international community. Some basic facts are contested, but it is clear that free expression in Fiji is under intense pressure, in a sharp departure…
Uganda has made regular appearances in the Global Integrity Report, with national assessments in each of the past three years, and and another to be released in February with the upcoming Global Integrity Report: 2009. Why do we continue to include Uganda on our short-list? Because the African country is an extreme example of the…
Khaled Badawy, a member of the Global Integrity research staff in Egypt, highlighted the results of our latest Egypt assessment during a governance debate on an Egyptian satellite television station. (For non-Arabic speakers: in the clip above Khaled is the young man with glasses.) Khaled is a governance and service-delivery expert who works with the…
Disclosure: Legatum is a funder of Global Integrity The Legatum Institute’s latest survey dives into India’s expanding field of start-up businesses, asking Indian entrepreneurs where their motivation comes from and what the top hindrances are to business creation. The results show a group of enthusiastic and creative individuals who attribute their success more to their…