Quality of government in EU regions
By Lewis Dijkstra / European Commision / Inforegio
Short Note 01/2011 - Regio.c.3(2011)422425
This short note summarises the main findings of a study on Quality of Government (QoG) and subnational variation in the EU recently concluded by the Gothenburg Quality of Government Institute in Sweden for DG REGIO.
Slovenia: next playground for NED operatives? Graffiti in Ljubljana, presumibly made by Odbor VLV, during the recent demonstrations
Revisiting Colour Revolutions
Carlos González Villa, Ljubljana, April 25, 2013
Over the last years, systemic world crisis has shaped political processes and has determined global approaches of the sole superpower of the Post-Cold War. In this context, foreign policy of the United States has been focused on preserving its presence and influence in a world in which several countries and whole regions have started to take over responsibilities of their own future. Considering this, US foreign policy community and “democracy-promotion community” in Washington DC (as Thomas Carothers denominates it) have developed since the 1980s new ways of influencing political changes in the peripheral and semi-peripheral areas of the world-system. So-called “colour revolutions” in Eurasia were a consequence of this idea.
Through these events, the United States managed to canalize internal political changes with instruments of ‘soft power‘. Revisiting this phenomena is relevant, considering its influence in recent events, like the Arab Spring, or in other cases outside the Eurasian space (a good example can be found in Venezuela)
Nevertheless, it should also be noticed that learnings of colour revolutions could still be put into practice by the United States in other parts of the world in the future.
