How do civil society organizations operate in the authoritarian environment of Vladimir Putin’s “sovereign democracy?”  To what extent are they able to further their causes despite pervasive corruption and the rule of courts that take their cues from the Kremlin?

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Russia expert, Leon Aron, recently traveled through Russia interviewing leaders of grass-roots movements. In a just released Russian Outlook, Aron describes the transformation underway in Russia.

The vote against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council shows India can use its foreign policy to promote democracy in Asia.

On February 17 the Italian newspaper: "L’Unità" (the official Democratic Party and already former communist newspaper) published an interesting article by the Hon. Stefano Fassina (responsible for the economical department of the Italian Democratic Party), eloquently entitled: "Catholic thinking can help to defeat liberalism." The author calls for a fruitful...

Grass-roots leaders are convinced that lasting Russian liberalization will come not from violent revolution or a great rupture imposed from above but from a mature civil society with the courage to control the executive. Thus, their work is not geared toward political change, but inner moral transformation, self-organization, and self-reliance.

Because of massive, sustained budget deficits by several eurozone countries, some could default on their sovereign debt obligations, or the euro itself might disintegrate, profoundly affecting the EU’s political and economic future. Very little media attention, however, is focused on a very different, but even more important, EU problem, namely its “democratic deficit.”

In "Wealth & Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism", AEI President Arthur C. Brooks and former White House official Peter Wehner explore America's system of democratic capitalism and find that the morality of capitalism depends on the cultural and social climate from which it emerges.