openDemocracy: Lessons on building democracy after nonviolent revolutions

What explains these differences? Why do some nonviolent revolutions end in democracy while others do not? And is nonviolent resistance really that much of a factor in promoting democracy in the first place? These are the questions that I examine in a new monograph from ICNC press: When Civil Resistance Succeeds: Building Democracy after Nonviolent Uprisings. The monograph builds on statistical research into 78 political transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance from 1945 to 2011, as well as interviews and in-depth examination of three particular transitions: Brazil’s transition away from military rule in the 1980s, Zambia’s transition away from single party rule in the 1990s, and Nepal’s transition away from monarchy in the 2000s. It focuses first on building our understanding of these questions using the best tools of social science research, and second on generating practical lessons that activists, political leaders and external actors interested in helping promote democracy after nonviolent revolutions can apply to their own situations.

The first major takeaway from the research is that nonviolent resistance does encourage democratic progress, even in very unfavorable circumstances. Out of the 78 political transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance, 60 ended with at least a minimal level of democracy. This is a much higher proportion than political transitions initiated through any other means. This strengthens the findings of earlier research that found that nonviolent resistance led to more democracy than violent resistance. [...]

The third lesson is to build and maintain a positive vision of the future. Pro-democracy movements often focus on negative goals to mobilize people against dictators. It can be easier to unite a diverse coalition around getting rid of a particularly hated leader, rather than having hard conversations about what the future will look like once the leader is gone. But having those hard conversations is crucial because, once the hated leader or regime is gone, people need a reason to continue to engage in activism. [...]

The third lesson is to not shut out everyone from the old regime. Accountability for past crimes, particularly grievous human rights abuses, is central to any meaningful democratic tradition. But often the focus in political transitions moves beyond accountability to punishment and vindictiveness towards all those associated with the old regime. This creates a whole class of political players who have political skills but now no way of exercising them, and no reason to buy into the new democratic politics. They can thus often turn into a potent force seeking to undermine new democratic politics and preventing the creation of new institutions.

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The Atlantic: Is Trump Compromised by Saudi Money

Although Trump tweeted last month that he has “no financial interests in Saudi Arabia,” he has in the past acknowledged business ties with the kingdom. “Saudi Arabia, I like the Saudis,” he said at a July 2015 campaign rally. “I make a lot of money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. All kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.” The Associated Press reported that in the 1990s, when Trump was “teetering on personal bankruptcy and scrambling to raise cash,” a billionaire Saudi prince twice closed on multimillion-dollar deals, including one to buy a 282-foot yacht called Princess. More recent business comes through Saudi stays at Trump hotels during his presidency, though PolitiFact reports that the Trump Organization doesn’t appear to own property or invest in the kingdom. [...]

Schiff, whom Trump called “little Adam Schitt” in a tweet last week, apparently is laying the groundwork to dig into the president’s personal finances more than any other investigator. When the Democrats take control of the House in January, he’ll gain control of the Intelligence Committee’s subpoena power and majority staff. The Daily Beast reported a few days ago that the committee has created positions for “money-laundering and forensic accounting experts.”[...]

So, a reporter asked, “who should be held accountable?” The president’s response did not identify any other Saudi officials, military cooperation, arms sales, official visits, or support for the war in Yemen. Instead, Trump seemed to blame universal human depravity.

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The Atlantic: America’s Epidemic of Empty Churches

Many of our nation’s churches can no longer afford to maintain their structures—between 6,000 and 10,000 churches die each year in America—and that number will likely grow. Though more than 70 percent of our citizens still claim to be Christian, congregational participation is less central to many American’s faith than it once was. Most denominations are declining as a share of the overall population, and donations to congregations have been falling for decades. Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated Americans, nicknamed the “nones,” are growing as a share of the U.S. population.

Any minister can tell you that the two best predictors of a congregation’s survival are “budgets and butts,” and American churches are struggling by both metrics. As donations and attendance decrease, the cost of maintaining large physical structures that are only in use a few hours a week by a handful of worshippers becomes prohibitive. None of these trends show signs of slowing, so the United States’s struggling congregations face a choice: start packing or find a creative way to stay afloat.[...]

A church building is more than just walls and windows; it is also a sacred vessel that stores generations of religious memories. Even for those who do not regularly practice a religion, sacred images and structures operate as powerful community symbols. When a hallowed building is resurrected as something else, those who feel a connection to that symbol may experience a sense of loss or even righteous anger. [...]

While this type of sacred-to-secular conversion may be a tough pill for former members to swallow, many are even less satisfied with the alternatives. A large number of abandoned churches have become wineries or breweries or bars. Others have been converted into hotels, bed and breakfasts, and AirBNBs. A few have been transformed into entertainment venues, such as an indoor playground for children, a laser-tag arena, or a skate park.

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The Calvert Journal: A home from home: traces of a shared past in post-Soviet interiors

For her photo series Of Time and Memory, Bulgarian photographer Eugenia Maximova documented homes in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova that still encompass a Soviet style. In these rooms we encounter clocks, calendars and personal archives — various marks of time — but it is her own memories that Maximova projects onto these interiors. “While I was taking pictures for my project, a lot of memories from my childhood resurfaced,” says Maximova. Although the photographer grew up in Bulgaria, she recognised the kitschy household items that were mass produced in the Soviet Union as copies of western luxury goods but were common elsewhere in the world. “At home we had many low-value objects, cutlery, glasses, and ornaments that we handled with great care.” Soviet memorabilia that characterises these rooms reveals a nostalgia for the past. Yet Maximova presents it as a collective memory, not only shared by former Soviet countries. Rather than estrange the viewer, these images make you feel at home. This is why kitsch, although sometimes strange, is timeless and appealing.

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The Calvert Journal: Elena Subach & Viacheslav Poliakov

Ukrainian photographers Elena Subach and Viacheslav Poliakov have been working together since 2012. Their City of Gardens focuses on the Polish city of Katowice, once an important region for coal mining and industrial steel production. Today, Katowice has been rebranded a “city of gardens” following a transformation aimed at the cultural development of the region. Situated within the historic Silesia region, most of which lies along south-west Poland’s Oder River, Katowice retains a strong sense of local identity and tradition. Against a backdrop of globalisation and fears of an increasing consumerist uniformity, City of Gardens reflects a search for a unique Polish aesthetic that lies on the border between East and West. [...]

Elena: I get my inspiration from stories. If a place or an event has a story attached to it that people want to tell, or that people can listen to until they forget what they were talking about in the first place — that’s how you know it might work for a project. We chose Silesia, where we shot our Polish project, because of the wonderful stories our friend told about it. She spent her childhood there and was able to convince us that not only was it where Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain, even the doves were a brighter shade of white there. [...]

Elena: On the whole, social networks have totally devalued image-making. And that’s an important step, because now you really have to ask yourself what you’re doing and why. They are also an invaluable educational resource for those who don’t live in big cities: if it wasn’t for the internet, we never would have discovered the photography we love, or not to this extent.

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America Magazine: Why are so many people fleeing Honduras?

Honduras has endured years of economic and political crises. The November 2017 election results, endorsed by the U.S. government but widely perceived as fraudulent, led to mass protests and dozens of deaths of demonstrators at the hands of security forces and police. The U.N. Office of the High Commission for Human Rights reported that military police and army “used excessive force, including lethal force, to control and disperse protests, leading to the killing and wounding of protesters as well as passers-by.” [...]

Karla Rivas, the coordinator of the Jesuit Migration Network, spoke with America by phone from Queretaro, Mexico, where she was accompanying a separate caravan of mothers who were searching for their children—young migrants who had gone unaccounted for after heading north. “The humanitarian exodus [from Honduras] is the culmination of several crises that have been manifesting themselves over time with the implementation of an unjust economic model.” She called it “an inhumane economic model that is based on extracting [resources] from communities.”[...]

The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that Honduras has “the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America,” a inequity that has been accelerating since President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in 2009. In the two years after the coup, “over 100 percent of all real income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans,” according to the report. [...]

Violence is another key driver of immigration from Honduras, which endures one of the world’s highest homicide rates. Much of the violence has been associated with drug trafficking and acts of extortion—criminal gangs can essentially control entire urban communities—but some of the violence results from collusion among gang members, police and security forces, sometimes in acts of intimidation directed at community or environmental activists.

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Quartz: Putin picked a very Putin time to seize three Ukrainian ships

When Russian president Vladimir Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, his approval ratings were at record lows and the world was watching the Sochi Olympics. When he went to war with Georgia in 2008, the world was consumed by the Beijing Olympics. [...]

On the back of controversial pension reforms, Putin’s ratings are again in a deep trough. In fact, they’re at the lowest point since 2014. After the seizure of Crimea, Putin’s ratings climbed dramatically and he rode extraordinary levels of support for four years.[...]

More conflict in the east is the last thing Europe needs. Among European countries, the UK is traditionally the most hawkish on Russia—but Brexit negotiations are at their busiest point in two years, consuming both Britain and the continent. Amid all that, Britain and Spain are having their own territorial dispute over Gibraltar. [...]

Now is a good time to mess with Ukrainian politics. It’s just four months until the 2019 election, and polls for president Petro Poroshenko—a Putin foe—are looking dire. The Kremlin is unlikely to be happy with whoever wins—former prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, who has a long and bitter history with Russia, is in pole position at the moment.

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Quartz: Taiwan’s vote against same-sex marriage illustrates the problem with referendums

The high court decision did not legalize same-sex marriage; it only declared that the legislature would have to make marriage equality law within two years. That meant it was up to Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which gained power in 2016, to follow through. It failed to do so. [...]

That is a low bar. Even though Christians make up just 5% of Taiwan’s population, they were able to collect the paltry 280,000 signatures needed to make their referendum happen. Their proposal to define marriage as “between a man and a woman” received over 7 million “yes” votes—more than a counter-referendum endorsing same-sex marriage, but far less than half of Taiwan’s over 18 million registered voters. [...]

The decision on marriage law in Taiwan reveals an even bigger problem with referendums, though: they turn politics into a popularity contest. Democracy is not just about voting, but also pluralism and the protection of minority rights. In deciding to call marriage discrimination unconstitutional, the court was acting to protect those rights for the LGBT community. Plus, given Taiwan’s law that a referendum needs only 25% of voters to say “yes,” it doesn’t even meet the standard of majority rule.

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Axios: Defying Trump, key GOP senator to sharpen focus on Saudi prince

In a phone interview, Graham told me he and some of his colleagues have requested an intelligence briefing this coming week to find out whether the reporting is correct that the CIA has "high confidence" MBS ordered the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. [...]

Why it matters: It doesn't look like the Khashoggi story is going away. It's unlikely new sanctions on Saudi will pass in the lame duck. That means this fight will likely carry over into next year — potentially pitting Democratic senators and a smaller group of Republicans against the president. [...]

The bottom line: Graham is arguing the opposite. "We cannot have a normal strategic relationship with somebody this crazy," Graham told me. Graham said "everything would be on the table" to punish Saudi Arabia, including blocking arms sales.

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