Our resistance to the corrosion of democracy and freedom must now move from frenzied outrage to strategic action. It’s time to think beyond marches, beyond symbolic acts of opposition (as important as these moments of defiance are and will continue to be over the coming months and years).

At the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial in Seattle, held under the last Democrat president, I was beaten, pepper-sprayed, and left blinded for hours on a sidewalk engulfed by a police riot.

Greece’s leftist party, Syriza, swept into power on Jan. 26, buoyed by fiery rhetoric from its leader, Alexis Tsipras, who promised to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s 2010-12 debt bailouts.

At first glance, Libya’s massive oil dependence looks like the country’s biggest weakness. Conflict and corruption spawned by oil recently brought down one government and currently threaten to tear the country apart.

Let’s face it: Democracy is struggling. Sure, it surged after the fall of the Berlin Wall, reaching a high-water mark in the first years of the 21st century with various inspirational "colored" revolutions.

As the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) draws near, debates about the contours of a new post-2015 development agenda that will best meet the needs of the world’s poor are accelerating.

Recent weeks have seen simmering property rights conflicts around the world: Burmese citizens marching in protest against the government’s seizure of their lands for a hotel zone; Vietnamese villagers contesting the confiscation of their land for an EcoPark satellite city project; and violent clashes breaking out in Panama City over a controversial law allowing the sale of state-owned land in the port city of Colón—Latin America’s largest duty-free zone.

The 2012 election season is just behind us, but before the next one begins, we need to take a serious look at the increasing role that money is playing in influencing political outcomes.

Last week I introduced the SERF Index, a new measurement tool my colleagues Susan Randolph, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, and I have built to evaluate social and economic rights fulfillment.

A careful look at the data reveals that societies with greater gender equality achieve higher levels of social and economic rights fulfillment for all members.

In an article in this month’s Africa in Fact, Joshua Greenstein and I proposed measures that could help direct Africa’s natural resource wealth into investments for development—instead of into the pockets of corrupt officials.

A new consensus has emerged in recent years that good institutions—especially the fair and predictable rule of law, and accountable governments that effectively serve their citizens—are prerequisites for sustainable and inclusive growth. 

Over the past decade a new conventional wisdom has emerged that security and development are mutually reinforcing, and that long-term security is not possible without reducing poverty and promoting economic development.

The conventional wisdom has long held secure private property rights to be a critical ingredient of economic growth.

Editor’s Note: Terra Lawson-Remer is a Fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations and Assistant Professor at The New School University. She was formerly Senior Advisor for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The “super committee’s” apparent failure to cut a deal to trim $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade is set to trigger blanket budget cuts, including $500 billion from the Pentagon’s budget.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters have been widely criticized for “not having demands”, as if the lack of a clearly articulated policy platform undermines the legitimacy of those crying foul at a system that seems rigged – politically and economically – in favor of the well-connect and wealthy few.

G20 finance ministers are gathering in Mexico City this weekend to prepare for the fourth G20 Leaders’ Summit since the Group of 20 declared itself the premier forum for international economic cooperation at its 2009 Pittsburgh summit.

On November 3rd occupiers amassed in an Oakland “general strike,” shutting down the entire port of Oakland for several hours. Over 3,000 people have been arrested in association with the Occupy protests since they began in New York on September 17th.