The Worst Places to Be a Woman - By Valerie M. Hudson. Entrepreneurship and Democracy. Entrepreneurs as the revolutionaries of our time. By Pitch Johnson. Entrepreneurship and democracy are closely linked because they are two dimensions of personal freedom. These and the other freedoms that are widely agreed upon in many societies as ideals are related to and reinforce each other. These freedoms are not really separate concepts but are all facets of the same diamond and inseparable over time. Entrepreneurs are revolutionaries because they use economic freedom to challenge existing economic, social, and political structures. Facets of Freedom A difficult balance is required so that the exercise of one kind of freedom in a society does not unduly diminish the exercise of the others.
Entrepreneurs, by exercising their economic freedom to serve markets as they see fit, are key players in promoting the political freedom that brings and sustains democracy. Entrepreneurs Foster Democracy The Entrepreneurial Climate Conclusion. Could Tunisia be a startup nation? The Kauffman Foundation yesterday released its 2011 national Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, showing a 5.9 percent drop in U.S. startup activity from 2010. Not so in Tunisia, according to Mondher Khanfir, an entrepreneur in Tunis who recently co-launched Wiki Start Up, the country's first startup incubator: "After the revolution, my friends and I wanted to work on innovation, so we built an incubator to create seed funds to make projects happen ...
We launched last summer, and right now we have 15 startups and a portfolio of $20 million, but our capacity is 30 startups and we're looking to raise funds here in Tunisia and internationally. " Most of Wiki Start Up's entrepreneurs, he added, are young locals. "We have two coming from the Diaspora, from Europe and the U.S., but the other 13 were started by Tunisians based in Tunisia, and they're all under 40.
" "The question is not the stability of the country or the region because we want to work more in the international marketplace. Chinese coup watching. Last week, controversial politician Bo Xilai, whose relatively open campaigning for a seat on China's top ruling council shocked China watchers (and possibly his elite peers, as well), was removed from his post as Chongqing's party secretary. He hasn't been seen since. Rumors of a coup, possibly coordinated by Bo's apparent ally Zhou Yongkang, are in the air. Western media has extensively covered the political turmoil: Bloomberg reported on how coup rumors helped spark a jump in credit-default swaps for Chinese government bonds; the Wall Street Journal opinion page called Chinese leadership transitions an "invitation, sooner or later, for tanks in the streets.
" The Financial Times saw the removal of Bo, combined with Premier Wen Jiabao's strident remarks at a press conference hours before Bo's removal as a sign the party was moving to liberalize its stance on the Tiananmen square protests of 1989. A Recipe for Freedom - By F.W. de Klerk. I would like to address some of the lessons that we have learned in South Africa -- lessons that might be helpful to all the countries around the world that are in the process of transition, that strive to clamp down on violence, that hope to fight poverty and improve the quality of life of all their people, that aim to move towards democracy and to bring freedom to their people.
I don't have time to elaborate on all the lessons we have learned, but I want to mention five. First, if you want to break out of the cycle of violence, if you want to lay the foundations for a more prosperous society, if you want to democratize, then the departure point is that leaders must become convinced that fundamental change is necessary.
This happened in South Africa. I and my fellow leaders in the National Party became convinced that we had to change. We could not improve apartheid. So we were convinced that we had to change fundamentally, to make a 180-degree turn. This happened in South Africa. Map of the Day: How Long are World Leaders Staying in Power?