The shadow of a military airplane. Photo by Robert Couse-Baker via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Military Influence: the Hidden Power of Men in Uniform

March 19, 2018 / Tanja Eschenauer

Officers and generals have always been influential and powerful actors, who meddle with politics. Today not so much by coups and direct rule, but by pulling the strings in the background. A new dataset reveals these substantial but indirect political roles of the military. No political leader, democratic or autocratic, can survive in office without […]

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Evening in Port Louis, Mauritius' capital. Photo by Peter Kuchar via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Mauritius: Ready for a Second Economic Miracle?

March 09, 2018 / Sean Carey

On March 12, 2018, Mauritius celebrates 50 years of independence. The country is proud of its economic progress and the government has set an ambitious goal: to transform the remote island state into a high-income country within the next few years. What is the origin of the Mauritian success story? In 1961 Nobel-prize-winning British economist […]

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Vladimir Putin in Volgograd. Photo by www.kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Russian Presidential Election: To the Victor, Stagnation

February 26, 2018 / Hans-Joachim Spanger

Putin will remain Russia’s strong man for another six years. But his muscle-flexing on the international stage is designed to divert attention from the country’s dismal economic outlook. A key feature of democratic elections, according to Polish-American political scientist Adam Przeworski, is their “institutionalized uncertainty”: Anyone can win. There is no question that Russia’s presidential […]

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Olympic flag and South Korean flag. Photo by Anja Johnson via Wikimedia Commons.

Peaceful Olympics amid Thawing Tensions

February 08, 2018 / Robert Schwarz

On 9 February the Pyeongchang Olympics will be opened. This means that South Korea will be the first country examined by the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) to host both summer and winter games. We fact-check the 2018 Olympics through the looking glass of selected criteria and indicators of our index, which will be published in […]

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Villagers during the bombing of Hajar Aukaish - Yemen - in April 2015. Photo by Almigdad Mojalli/VOA, via wikimedia.com. Public Domain, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

The Regional Proxy War in Yemen: Deadly Interferences

February 05, 2018 / Elham Manea

Yemen is suffering one of the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophes. To resolve it, it is necessary to look beyond the national conflict. Yemen’s civil war is complex. It’s a violent conflict between competing Yemeni factions, each of which is allying itself with regional, sectarian, tribal and Islamist groups. The country has a long history of instability and […]

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The Port of Piraeus, Greece. Photo by Peter Gyöngi via flickr.com, CC BY-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Money Can’t Buy You Love – but Influence, Apparently

January 29, 2018 / Falk Hartig

China under Xi Jinping is deeply concerned with its global status and standing and aims to regain its deserved place on the global stage. This has dramatic consequences not only for China but for the rest of the world. One of the most important developments with regards to China has been the bold departure from […]

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Brasil's ex-president Lula da Silva after his first conviction in July 2017. Photo by Mídia Ninja via flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Brazil: The Drama of Unpredictability

January 23, 2018 / Manuela Andreoni

Uncertainty about the 2018 presidential elections, which will be held in October, weigh heavily on Brazil. A court decision this week may cost former president Lula da Silva his candidacy. As Brazil braces for its most important election in decades, hopes of stabilization are dwindling. The country is slowly stepping out of an almost three-year […]

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European flags in a protest in Chișinău, 2016. Photo by Gikü via wikimedia.org, CC0 1.0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Moldova’s European Integration Is on Hold

January 16, 2018 / Leonid Litra

In late November, the leaders of the European Union met with six Eastern Partnership countries in Brussels to review what has been achieved since their last summit in 2015. A matter of concern was the former symbol of hope: Moldova. Just a few years ago, Moldova used to be seen as success story of the […]

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Tigrinya Women Protesting. Photo by SarahTz via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Race to the Bottom: Ethiopia’s Accelerating Crisis

January 05, 2018 / Awol Kassim Allo

An economy in free fall, ever-deepening repression, a deteriorating security, inter-ethnic violence, and a vicious infighting within the ruling party – Ethiopia is on the cusp of political explosion. Ethiopia has largely been seen in Western capitals and think tanks as “an Island of stability in a troubled region”. Within the last two years, however, […]

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Tailer in Berbera sewing the Somaliland flag. Photo by Alfred Weidinger via commons.wikimedia.org. CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Somaliland after the Elections: Old Traps, New Challenges

December 11, 2017 / Claire Elder

Despite the lack of international recognition, Somaliland has created a relatively stable enclave in the unsecure region of the Horn of Africa. However, the successful consensus politics of the past decades shows first deep cracks. Is Somaliland falling into the old traps of clan rivalries and foreign geopolitical interests? The Republic of Somaliland is recognised as […]

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Welcome to the blog of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Transformation Index.

We share local insights from our network of BTI experts and journalists in developing and transition countries.

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