Domestic Politics Archive

When Venezuelans went to the polls for regional elections last weekend, they knew the future of the country, as they’ve come to know it, was hanging on a fraying thread. President Hugo Chávez, the man with the outsize personality who has dominated Venezuelan politics since before the turn of the 21st century, had just had his fourth cancer surgery, and the outlook for a full recovery looked rather grim. Chávez was not on the ballot, but his condition was the overarching concern for millions of voters. By his own dramatic, emotional admission, Chávez may not be able to return to […]

For 14 years, President Hugo Chávez has been a powerful unifying force in Venezuela, galvanizing his diverse supporters behind his lead, and uniting his opponents in their aversion to his policies and persona. Now, with the presidential inauguration still weeks away and Chávez apparently gravely ill, these centrifugal forces will be much harder to hold together, and many observers have predicted political instability, debilitating infighting within both camps and even violence. Nevertheless, three dynamics could help to prevent Venezuela from spinning out of control. First, Chávez began last week to prepare for a possible transition by warning Venezuelans of the […]

Park Geun-hye, the daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, was elected president of South Korea on Wednesday, defeating her liberal opponent, Moon Jae-in, and becoming the first female leader of the country. While the campaigns of Park, of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party, and Moon, of the progressive opposition Democratic Unity Party, focused mainly on the slowing economy and other domestic economic issues, the candidates took significantly different lines on foreign policy, particularly when it came to North Korea. “The main foreign policy difference that came out of the campaign was the pace and conceptual approach in dealing with North […]

Although social diversity is the norm, rather than the exception, in the world today, there are few societies that are as diverse and fractious as Israel’s. Israeli society appears to be a hodgepodge of different groups constantly bickering with each other. Israelis disagree on almost every conceivable issue from the most momentous, such as the location of the country’s final borders and the relationship between religion and the state, to the most mundane, such as what days of the week the weekend should fall on and when clocks should be changed from summertime to wintertime. Israeli politics is hostage to […]

As the Israeli general election of Jan. 22, 2013 draws near, the major question in Israeli politics is whether the campaign will be dominated by foreign policy and security concerns or domestic issues. Because of the recent history of Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and southern Lebanon, as well as recent shift in the regional landscape, an emphasis on security issues would help the incumbent government headed by Likud leader and prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. On the other hand, a focus on domestic issues, such as rising prices, an increase in income inequality, the unfairly shared burden of military service and […]

On Dec. 16, the Japanese public delivered Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda a predictable, but nonetheless crushing defeat in parliamentary elections. The magnitude of the public’s rejection of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) trumped poll predictions and resulted in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), led by Shinzo Abe, wresting total control of the Lower House. The LDP along with its ally, the Komeito Party, won 325 seats in the election, giving it a “supermajority” of two-thirds of the total representatives. This will effectively allow Abe to override any vetoes from the Upper House of the Japanese Diet, which is […]

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on the policy priorities and initial reforms of China’s new leadership. Part I examines domestic policy. Part II examines foreign policy. Despite the sense of disappointment surrounding China’s leadership transition in the month since the November party congress, policy formulation has moved ahead, even as incoming President Xi Jinping actively forges his public persona. China-watchers have been able to piece together a more detailed picture of elite politics during the run-up to the handover, while clearer signals about the new leadership’s domestic policy priorities are gradually emerging. Although political reforms […]

The New Patriotic Party, the Ghanaian opposition party whose candidate lost to incumbent President John Dramani Mahama in presidential elections held last Friday, said this week it plans to challenge the results of the poll. While international observers deemed the elections free and fair, the opposition insists the ruling party rigged the vote. This has led to fears that the opposition’s failure to concede defeat could destabilize one of West Africa’s secure democracies. “What this election means for Ghanaian democracy depends largely on whether the NPP is able to provide hard evidence to back up its allegations of deliberate electoral […]

After several weeks of intense and occasionally violent protests, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday finally rescinded a decree that had given him extrajudicial powers. Protesters had filled Tahrir Square in response to the decree, with some carrying banners equating Morsi with his dictatorial predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. But by caving in to the protesters, Morsi showed that his main failing is incompetence rather than authoritarianism. In fact, this is the second time in two months that Morsi has felt compelled to reverse a major policy announcement in the face of public opposition. In early October, the president announced a plan […]

Soldiers who carried out a coup in Mali earlier this year ousted Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra on Tuesday, placing Diarra under house arrest and forcing his resignation. While the interim president has named a new prime minister, this abrupt change in leadership has drawn international attention to the military’s continuing grip on the country and called into question plans for an intervention to retake northern Mali from radical Islamists. In an email interview, Paul Melly, an associate fellow in the Africa Program at Chatham House, told Trend Lines the ouster “undermines the constitutional legitimacy and political cover for intervention” […]

NAIROBI, Kenya — Widely thought to possess the best military hardware in East Africa but little experience in conventional warfare, the Kenyan military had its moment in the sun after ejecting the al-Shabab terrorist group from neighboring southern Somalia. Now a backlash is in the works, as the region’s biggest economy contemplates a homegrown terrorist threat from sympathizers of the al-Qaida-linked group. After a string of kidnappings along their shared border, Kenyan forces crossed into Somalia in October 2011 as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a military grouping of five African states. By late-September 2012, the […]

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff recently issued a partial veto for a bill that would distribute a greater share of oil revenues to Brazilian states that are not oil producers. In an email interview, Fernando Antonio Slaibe Postali, a professor of economics at the University of São Paulo, discussed Brazil’s oil revenue distribution policy. WPR: What is at stake in the efforts to craft revenue-sharing legislation in Brazil? Fernando Antonio Slaibe Postali: When the current rules where designed, in the mid-1990s, the revenues involved were small, because oil prices were low and the Brazilian exchange rate was fixed. (Oil royalties are […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s long-serving president, has emerged as the central mediator of the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, orchestrating the withdrawal of rebel troops from the key Congolese city of Goma and hosting peace talks between the rebel leaders and the Congolese government. By coordinating all stages of the process, Museveni has reaffirmed his position as East Africa’s key power broker — a status that until recently appeared to be slipping. In October, Reuters published details of a leaked U.N. Security Council Group of Experts report alleging Ugandan and Rwandan support for M23, the […]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez flew to Cuba on Monday for his fourth cancer surgery after announcing over the weekend that he had designated his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, as his desired political successor. The announcement marked the first time Chávez, who has publicly battled the disease for more than a year, has suggested that his health could keep him from continuing in office. “Venezuela will never be the same again,” Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor of Americas Quarterly, told Trend Lines. “There is no going back. The Chávez […]

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the country’s main opposition party, is likely to sweep Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan in the general election scheduled for Dec. 16, according to polls released yesterday. The projected LDP win would install Shinzo Abe as the country’s prime minister for the second time. Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and William Grimes, chairman of the Department of International Relations at Boston University, told Trend Lines these elections have major implications for Japan, particularly in foreign policy. “This election could be a turning point for […]

There is practically no space left on the Middle East’s geopolitical plate for another conflict. Like it or not, however, the long-simmering animosity between Iraq’s central government and the country’s Kurdish minority is reaching a boiling point. The conflict has recently heated up dangerously, and it shows no sign of cooling down. Like so many other crises in the region, the tensions between Iraq’s Arabs and its Kurdish population find echoes in the complicated political realities of neighboring countries. Syria, home to a large Kurdish minority, is engulfed by an all-out civil war. Meanwhile, Turkey is grappling with its own […]

Newly inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto promised during his campaign to triple Mexico’s GDP growth rate to 5-6 percent annually. In order to even approach that lofty goal, Peña Nieto must confront the country’s bloated monopolies that discourage competition and raise the cost of goods and services for Mexicans. Complicating this already monumental task is Mexico’s entrenched culture of monopolies, which will be harder to defeat than the actual monopolies themselves. When it comes to Mexican monopolies, the big offenders are well-known: Telmex, the telecommunications conglomerate owned by the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim; Televisa, the largest multimedia company […]