The Closing Space Challenge: How Are Funders Responding?

As restrictions on foreign funding for civil society continue to multiply around the world, Western public and private funders committed to supporting civil society development are diversifying and deepening their responses. Yet, as a result of continued internal divisions in outlook and approach, the international aid community is still struggling to define broader, collective approaches that match the depth and breadth of the problem. This paper seeks to answer the question: how is the assistance community responding to what a growing array of aid practitioners now see as a major threat to Western support for civil society development in many parts of the world?  It looks at how Western funders are responding, examining changes they are making in how they operate and what they do to support civil society abroad, as well as actions they are taking to try to limit specific closing space measures

Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire

After seeing its reach increase for decades, international support for democracy and human rights faces a serious challenge: more and more governments are erecting legal and logistical barriers to democracy and rights programs, publicly vilifying international aid groups and their local partners, and harassing such groups or expelling them altogether. Despite the significant implications of the pushback, the roots and full scope of the phenomenon remain poorly understood and responses to it are often weak. This report examines the closing space challenge to international support for democracy and rights

Political strategies of external support for democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach

TFIIB aptamers inhibit transcription by perturbing PIC formation at distinct stages

Transcription in eukaryotes is a multistep process involving the assembly and disassembly of numerous inter- and intramolecular interactions between transcription factors and nucleic acids. The roles of each of these interactions and the regions responsible for them have been identified and studied primarily by the use of mutants, which destroy the inherent properties of the interacting surface. A less intrusive but potentially effective way to study the interactions as well as the surfaces responsible for them is the use of RNA aptamers that bind to the interacting factors. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of high-affinity RNA aptamers that bind to the yeast general transcription factor TFIIB. These aptamers fall into two classes that interfere with TFIIB's interactions with either TBP or RNA polymerase II, both of which are crucial for transcription in yeast. We demonstrate the high affinity and specificity of these reagents, their effect on transcription and preinitiation complex formation and discuss their potential use to address mechanistic questions in vitro as well as in vivo

Biochemical Programs and Analog-Digital Mixed Algorithms in the Cell

International audienceIn this chapter, we take an IT perspective in seeking to understand how computation is carried out in the cell to maintain itself in its environment, process signals and make the decisions that determine its fate. The continuous nature of many protein interactions leads us to consider mixed analog-digital computation models, for which recent results in the theory of analog computability and complexity establish fundamental links with classical programming. We derive from these results a compiler of behavioral specifications into biochemical reactions, which can be compared to natural circuits acquired through evolution. We illustrate this approach through the example of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling module, which has a function of analog-digital converter in the cell, and through the cell cycle control

Why U.S. Efforts to Promote the Rule of Law in Afghanistan Failed

Promoting the rule of law in Afghanistan has been a major U.S. foreign policy objective since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Policymakers invested heavily in building a modern democratic state bound by the rule of law as a means to consolidate a liberal post-conflict order. Eventually, justice-sector support also became a cornerstone of counterinsurgency efforts against the reconstituted Taliban. Yet a systematic analysis of the major U.S.-backed initiatives from 2004 to 2014 finds that assistance was consistently based on dubious assumptions and questionable strategic choices. These programs failed to advance the rule of law even as spending increased dramatically during President Barack Obama's administration. Aid helped enable rent seeking and a culture of impunity among Afghan state officials. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, rule-of-law initiatives did not bolster counterinsurgency efforts. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan highlights that effective rule-of-law aid cannot be merely technocratic. To have a reasonable prospect of success, rule-of-law promotion efforts must engage with the local foundations of legitimate legal order, which are often rooted in nonstate authority, and enjoy the support of credible domestic partners, including high-level state officials