February 22, 2011

Michael McFaul in the New York Times on recent democratic transitions

Michael McFaul, senior advisor on Russia to President Obama and former director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), comments in the New York Times on uprisings and democratic transitions in recent years. "There are many different factors involved in the cases we have looked at: economic crises, aging authoritarians, negotiated transitions between elites," he says. Adds McFaul, who spent the last several weeks churning out case studies for the president and National Security Council based on work he and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss did at Stanford with the support of the Smith Richardson Foundation, "There is not one story line or a single model. There are many paths to democratic transitions and most of them are messy."

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• » NYT: "Sizing Up Revolutions in Waiting"