Though it may not appear so on the surface, the era of ‘managed democracy’ and ‘Putinism by consent’ is coming to an end. In a new 'Transitions Forum' report, author Ben Judah identifies five risks to Putin’s grip on power and to Russia’s stability in general.

In a new Transitions Forum paper, Jerry Timmins discusses how media regulation can help create the foundations for prosperity and peace in transitional countries with some insights from conversations in post-genocide Rwanda and post-revolutionary Libya.

www.libyamediawiki.com is a unique, open, assessment tracking the transformation of Libyan media since the revolution.

Papers commissioned for the Legatum Institute's The Future of Iran workshop on educational reform are available below.

In the first Transitions Forum paper, Dr Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart discuss how to prepare for a Syrian transition based on lessons learned from the global experience of the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century - lessons which might help the country not only avoid the deepening of civil war but move towards restructuring itself as a legitimate modern state.

Complementing the 2012 Legatum Prosperity Index, these twelve in depth studies provide additional analysis and insight into the political and economic paths of selected countries: Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Iceland, India, Iran, Japan, Mongolia, Turkey, and Vietnam.

Papers commissioned for the Legatum Institute's The Future of Iran workshops on transitional justice and judicial reform are available below.

In keynote remarks at the 2012 Charles Street Symposium, University of Texas Professor Peter Lewin explores what it really means to know that we don't know something.

In a working paper, Hudson Institute Scholar and former AEI President Christopher DeMuth argues that debt has become a means of pleasing and placating voters while avoiding democratic accountability.

Rwanda has distinguished itself by its economic reforms and institutional foundations for economic growth. But can Rwanda’s institutions survive a change in political leadership? Are there lessons for other African countries?

New regulations of the financial services industry, implemented in response to the global financial crisis, are disingenuous political posturing with some continuing the existing mistakes partly responsible for the problems we are facing today.

The Eurozone’s periphery has a deep solvency problem in the sense that, absent a debt restructuring and an exit from the Euro, the correction of the periphery’s public finances cannot be achieved without provoking the deepest and most prolonged of domestic economic recessions.

Economic sanctions are an important yet controversial tool of coercive diplomacy, however, the causal mechanisms by which they operate, how effective they are, and whether they have blowback effects are dimly understood. We aim to better understand these tools so they may be most effectively employed in economic statecraft.

Published alongside the Legatum Institute Survey of Entrepreneurs: India 2010, this survey of entrepreneurs in China reveals valuable insights into the minds and practices of China's enterprising class.

This report is the second edition of the Legatum Institute Survey of Entrepreneurs: India. It is one of the largest surveys of entrepreneurs in the world and allows us to ''get inside the mind'' of India's enterprising class.

Turkey has been going through subtle but substantial social, economic, and political changes since the late 1990s. This can be likened to metamorphosis: It has been fast transforming itself and moving to a new but open-ended direction.

The Legatum Institute Survey of Entrepreneurs: China and India 2010 aims to shed light on how entrepreneurs in these two dynamic economies think, so that policymakers, investors, business owners, and the media can better understand the enterprising class. 

This insightful study about one of India's most distinguished cities considers the historical path that brought Bangalore from a small urban agglomeration during the nineteen hundreds to the bustling centre of industry and commerce that it is today.

This important study provides a comprehensive account of how policy choices and regulatory infrastructure in the US-created conditions ripe for a global financial crisis. It answers two important questions: how did it happen? and whose fault was it?

This is a major international study of how increasing urbanisation in the world is affecting the prospect of upward mobility for ordinary families and individuals. The study focuses on the key social and economic developments in three major global cities: London, Mexico City, and Mumbai.

This report by Jonathan Paris considers the most important issues facing Pakistan of the next one to three years including the economy, civil-military issues, Islamic trends, the future of the Taliban, the India–Pakistan relationship and the US–Pakistan relationship.

This report is the inaugural edition of the Legatum Institute Survey of Entrepreneurs: India. It is one of the largest surveys of entrepreneurs in the world and allows us to “get inside the mind” of India’s enterprising class.

The Legatum Prosperity Index™ is the world’s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing. The Prosperity Index ranks countries based on the foundations of prosperity: the factors that help drive economic growth or produce happy citizens.

This important study provides a comprehensive historical account of how policy choices made over decades in the US created conditions ripe for a global crisis.