By Fareed Zakaria, TIME

Why does it seem that democracy has such a hard time taking root in the Arab world? I explore this question in my latest column in TIME Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

As it happens, a Harvard economics professor, Eric Chaney, recently presented a rigorous paper that helps unravel that knot. Chaney asks why there is a "democracy deficit" in the Arab world and systematically tests various hypotheses against the data. He notes that such majority-Muslim nations as Turkey, Indonesia, Albania, Bangladesh and Malaysia have functioning democratic systems, so the mere presence of Islam or Islamic culture cannot be to blame. He looks at oil-rich states and finds that some with vast energy reserves lack democracy (Saudi Arabia), but so do some without (Syria). He asks whether Arab culture is the culprit, but this does not provide much clarity. Chaney points out that many countries in the Arab neighborhood seem to share in the democracy deficit–Chad, Iran, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan–yet they are not Arab.

Check out the full column here. You can read all my TIME pieces at a new landing page (with no pay wall!) here.

By Tim Padgett, TIME.com

It has been 50 years since a U.S. President traveled to Puerto Rico, and that's indicative of how little Washington ponders America's Caribbean island commonwealth. Only rarely, like the controversy over the U.S. naval base at Vieques a decade ago, do Americans even remember their ties to Puerto Rico.

Even President Obama's visit to the island on Tuesday, June 14, is being explained by most pundits as a way for him to curry favor with Puerto Rican voters in the U.S. The Miami Herald's Frances Robles has an insightful piece today on how Obama is eyeing in particular the burgeoning Puerto Rican community in central Florida, which is less reliably Democratic than more traditional communities like New York's.

But beneath the superficial political considerations, Puerto Rico – which unlike Haiti is actually our responsibility – has big problems that the U.S. needs to engage.

Puerto Rico's unemployment rate tops 16%; its poverty rate is 44% and its median annual income is $14,400, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., which is well below the U.S. poverty line.

Its violent crime has gotten so bad that last year Governor Luis Fortuño had to call out the National Guard in a bid to contain it. Little wonder that so many Puerto Ricans are leaving the island that according to Pew, there are more Puerto Rican-origin Latinos living in the U.S. today (4.6 million) than there are living in Puerto Rico (3.7 million).

Read on here.

By Rania Abouzeid, TIME

Location, in real estate and sometimes in politics, is everything.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lives in a very different geopolitical neighborhood from his erstwhile, but now-ousted counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the teetering leaders of Libya and Yemen.

It's a tumultuous patch of the Middle East, populated by an uneasy mix of religious and ethnic groups, frequently in turmoil. Fear of the chaos and instability his ouster might unleash is Assad's greatest advantage as he races to brutally crush a seven-week uprising before the rapidly rising body count forces world leaders to act more forcefully against him. FULL POST

Everyone has been in a panic this week over America's impending fiscal collapse, but I think the reality is that America does not face an immediate debt crisis. Take a look at the simplest indicator, the day that Standard & Poor's raised its now famous warnings about America's debt, markets decided to lower America's borrowing costs and the dollar rose against its principal alternative, the euro.

The real problem for America may well be that it does not face a short-term crisis. FULL POST

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that U.S. firms are shifting hiring abroad:

U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.

The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.

This is a huge issue. We made a GPS TV special dealing with this last year (video above), and I wrote a piece in TIME:

America's great corporations access global markets, easy credit, new technologies and high-quality labor at a low price. Many have had to cut jobs at home, where demand is weak, and have added them in the emerging markets that are booming. They are not "outsourcing" jobs. That word makes little sense anymore. They simply invest in growth areas and cut back in places where the economy is weak. None of them will ever give up on the American market — it is too large, too profitable and too central to their businesses — but the marginal dollar is more likely to be invested abroad than in the U.S.

On news that Fidel Castro resigned from the Central Committee of Cuba's Communist Party, my colleague Ishaan Tharoor over at TIME's Global Spin blog reached into the magazine's archives to pull out the cover story on Fidel Castro from January 26, 1959. Here's an excerpt:

Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks—behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue-ribbon audience waited 4¾ hours for his arrival...

FULL POST

By Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations

[Syrian President] Bashar [al-Assad] had two choices: he could choose reform, making concessions to co-opt the protesters, or he could choose physical repression. His televised speech on March 30 was a disappointment. Contrary to expectations, he did not repeal the 1963 emergency law that grants the government extraordinary powers to limit dissent. He attributed the protests to an anti-Syrian external conspiracy. There were no political changes.

FULL POST

I've just published a piece in Time on the Paul Ryan plan, which poses a test of character for President Obama.  Will he turn the plan into a series of attack ads, or use it to spur a national conversation on the U.S. budget crisis? Check out an excerpt of my piece here:

It was fateful that Paul Ryan released his budget plan the same week Barack Obama launched his re-election campaign — because we will now see what matters most to Obama.

The President has talked passionately and consistently about the need to tackle the country's problems, act like grownups, do the hard things and win the future. But he has also skipped every opportunity to say how he'd tackle the gigantic problem of entitlements. Ryan's plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.

It should prompt the President to say, in effect, "You're right about the problem. You're wrong about the solution. And here's how I would accomplish the same goal by more humane and responsible means." That would be the beginning of a great national conversation.

FULL POST

By Tony Karon, Time

Judge Richard Goldstone's Sunday op ed in the Washington Post reconsidering the allegation in his 2009 UN report that Israel had deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians in its 2008/9 Gaza war was greeted with premature euphoria in Israeli circles. Goldstone himself made clear, Wednesday, that he has no intention of withdrawing any part of his report, but had simply sought to correct its claim that the civilian casualties caused by Israel's Operation Cast Lead had been the result of an intentional policy to target non-combatants.

"As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel," the South African jurist told the AP. "Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time."

FULL POST