Western governments and investors have long indulged themselves by describing Central Asian states as “hybrid regimes” or “imperfect democracies”. The truth is that they are dictatorships occasionally “legitimising” themselves with highly engineered elections. Such electoral authoritarianism doesn
The similarities between the Egyptian and Russian regime are striking, says Grigorii Golosov. Arguably, Mubarak’s was the more liberal one.
The story of scores being settled with a brutal mass murder in southern Russia has hit the Russian national press. It reveals much about the links between organised crime and power in the country today and gives the lie to the propaganda machine’s claims of increasing happiness and stability.
