Susan Aaronson examines prospects for trade and accountable government in light of a new initiative to increase transparency around extractive resources. Might the Resource Curse be exorcised? The promise of free trade to elevate living standards in poor countries has driven international development policy since WWII. Countries rich in oil, gas or minerals sell them…
Prime Minister Edward Lowassa has resigned Friday, following the completion Wednesday of a Parliamentary investigation into his dealings with the supposedly U.S.-based Richmond Development Company (RDC). The company turned out to be non-existent, with assets barely more than a post-office box. The government’s ill-fated hiring of RDC to provide badly needed electrical power plants was…
Europe’s primary election watchdog, ODIHR, is withdrawing its Russian election monitoring mission, citing unacceptable government restrictions. The press release here. Media coverage here. The press release begins: WARSAW, 7 February 2008 – The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) regrets that restrictions imposed on its planned election observation mission will not allow…
Global Integrity contributor Ghanashyam Ojha starts a fire — literally — with a story exposing the financial workings of the Young Communist League in Nepal. The report reads: “Shoe factories provide us shoes and various other industrialists provide food and other items. Even some hoteliers here willingly give us a monthly levy ranging from Rs…
An email from one of Global Integrity’s contributors — apparently censored by government email servers — prompts us to reexamine the “progress” in Yemen’s movement towards open political discourse.Yemen is a fascinating country when it comes to governance and corruption issues. A 2006 Global Integrity assessment for the country (published in January 2007) rated Yemen…
Diebold, a politically well connected maker of touch-screen voting machines used in some parts of the United States, comes under new fire for the lax security of their machines. Some months ago, researchers at Princeton demonstrated that someone with only 60 seconds of access to an unlocked Diebold box could insert a virus which could…