authoritarianism

Browncast Episode 118: Professor Ahmet Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment

A BrownCast episode with Professor Ahmet Kuru of San Diego State, author of Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, discussing his book and the causes of the relative decline of the Islamicate…

BrownCast · with Omar Ali7 August 20207 comments
Since 1989

Argues that, although China is authoritarian and in some ways totalitarian, a society should be judged by the odds it gives its least advantaged.

Razib Khan6 June 201970 comments
Don’t weep for the Chinese but for the Desis-

Tired of anti-PRC propaganda on the Tiananmen anniversary, the author argues that China’s growth of about 8 per cent a year since lifted some 600 million people out of poverty,…

X.T.M5 June 201923 comments
The damage done to third world countries by Harvard and UChicago

Prompted by an Economist article on Bolsonaro’s Chicago-trained economist, the author argues that US-trained ‘luminaries’ harmed third-world countries including Pakistan, quoting at length on the Chicago Boys’ market reforms in…

AbdulMajeed Abid26 May 20192 comments
Interview with a Tiananmen Square survivor

An interview with a Chinese doctor who was at Tiananmen Square and escaped in the early 1990s, first published in the Daily Times, tracing his rebellious youth, family hardship after…

AbdulMajeed Abid6 June 20183 comments
free speech,freedom,truth, democracy and development

An open question asking how free speech, democracy, development, China’s growth and technology connect, and what new ideological forces may emerge over the next 20 to 150 years.

Bharata Bharatavanshi12 April 20186 comments
Does Colonialism work?

A Guardian extract arguing colonialism can work, citing Singapore’s wealth and elections, while noting its rulers kept colonial tools such as detention without trial and press licensing.

X.T.M4 January 20183 comments
Is Islam the rock on which the liberal order broke?

Prompted by an article on global democracy in danger, the author revisits Fukuyama’s end-of-history thesis and asks whether Islam, rather than the postmodern critics of the West, is the force…

Brown Pundits Archive5 December 20166 comments
Saving the Incompetent Sharif Brothers and this Rapacious Unfair System

Argues that building a working democracy in an ex-colonial country takes far more skill than running a functional government, and that undermining the system, even to remove incompetent leaders like…

Brown Pundits Archive29 August 20140 comments
False Dawn?

Noting Suzuki importing Indian transmission technology, the poster says the Indian economy is showing signs of life under Modi, compares him to the Pakistani Army as a stabiliser, and warns…

Brown Pundits Archive29 August 20140 comments