Domestic Politics Archive

When this year’s slate of GOP presidential candidates took the stage for a televised debate a couple of months ago, with the flamboyant Donald Trump capturing most of the attention, a number of writers started referring to the group as the Republican “clown car.” The term was obviously meant to be a humorous putdown, dismissing the seriousness and political viability of the large and histrionic collection of would-be presidents. More recently, as the possibility that Trump could emerge victorious started becoming less inconceivable to the establishment, the term fell into disuse. And yet, there is a grain of truth in […]

Greeks head to the polls this Sunday after a split in the ruling far-left Syriza party over Greece’s bailout prompted Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to resign and call snap elections. A poll released Tuesday shows Syriza neck and neck with the center-right New Democracy party—27.0 percent support to 27.5, respectively—putting into doubt Tsipras’ ability to return as prime minister. Syriza came to power in January on a staunch anti-austerity platform. However, Tsipras was unable to negotiate an end to austerity with Greece’s creditors—the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Throughout the spring Greece faced the […]

In early September, Serbia, an aspiring European Union member, conducted a military drill with two people on the EU’s bad list: Russia and Belarus. In Novorossiysk, Russia, in an exercise known as “Slavic Brotherhood,” paratroopers from the three countries played war games and practiced crushing a Maidan-style revolt. “Who can lecture us?” said Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, responding to questions about what impact the drill would have on his country’s image in Brussels. “The European Union is not a military bloc. Let them mind their own business.” The EU was not impressed, given the diplomatic energy it has expended […]

On Saturday, Tunisians flocked to Avenue Habib Bourguiba, in Tunis, to protest a draft law on “economic reconciliation,” which parliament approved in July. The initiative—strongly backed by President Beji Caid Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes party—would freeze prosecutions of officials and businessmen from ousted President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s era who are being investigated for corruption, and create a special committee to which they would reveal their assets. Those funds would then, the government says, be injected into Tunisia’s flailing economy. Critics point to the evident impunity the law would grant to those guilty of corruption or embezzlement, further undermining Tunisia’s […]

Earlier this month, left-leaning opposition parties in the Faeroe Islands announced they would form a coalition after the Javnadarflokkurin party won 8 out of 33 seats in the parliamentary elections, upsetting the ruling Prime Minister Kaj Leo Johannesen’s right-leaning Sambandsflokkurin party, which has been in power since 2008. In an email interview, Maria Ackrén, an associate professor at the University of Greenland, discussed politics in the Faeroe Islands. WPR: What are the main factors that led to the defeat of the right-wing Sambandsflokkurin party in the Faeroe Islands? Maria Ackrén: It is impossible to identify any particular factor or factors […]

After months of peaceful protests, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina was stripped of immunity and forced to step down last week. He now faces charges of illicit association, customs fraud and bribery for his alleged role in a massive corruption scheme. A judge has ordered that he remain in jail until his trial in December. Over a dozen public officials, including former Vice President Roxana Baldetti, Cabinet members and government ministers, have been arrested and put on trial for their participation in the criminal network. The corruption scandals uncovered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the U.N.-led International Commission against […]

The trial of Hissene Habre, the former leader of Chad, on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture has begun in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. Habre, who ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990, is accused of presiding over a network of secret police known by its French acronym, the DDS, which carried out systematic torture and disappearances during his rule. A Chadian truth commission in the 1990s established that there could have been as many as 40,000 victims. The reopening of the trial at the Palace of Justice in Dakar on Monday was a media spectacle—amid chaotic scenes, […]

Today the world is riveted by the tragic migrant flows from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe. Driven by conflict in their homelands, hundreds of thousands of refugees have risked—and sometimes lost—everything in search of security and opportunity far from their troubled nations. While addressing this humanitarian crisis is the most pressing concern for Europe, the United States and the rest of the world community, political leaders must also look further into the future: Today’s migrant crisis is the bow wave of tomorrow’s security challenges. In the contemporary security environment, a peace settlement or the removal of a […]

Last week, Azerbaijan sentenced Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist and anti-corruption campaigner, to seven-and-a-half years in prison for illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion. Her conviction comes three weeks after prominent human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus were sentenced to eight-and-a-half and seven years, respectively, for fraud, tax evasion and treason. The United Nations, the European Union, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, have all condemned the arrest, trial and sentencing of these and other human rights advocates and anti-corruption campaigners in Azerbaijan. The U.S. State Department released a statement saying it “is deeply troubled” by Ismayilova’s conviction […]

With the Iran nuclear deal well on its way to safe passage through Congress, the post-mortem tallies of winners and losers are already being written. And one name, seemingly more than any other, can regularly be found in the loser column: AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense—AIPAC got steamrolled. By some estimates the organization will have spent as much as $40 million, much of it on television advertisements that have run in two dozen states, in trying to kill the deal in Congress. All these efforts have appeared to accomplish so […]

Belarus will hold a presidential election on Oct. 11, but one needn’t bother staying up for the result: The incumbent, Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s so-called last dictator, traditionally claims 80 to 90 percent of ballots, with the result fixed both beforehand by mass early voting and afterward via a completely invisible counting process. But in a region gripped by the turmoil caused by Russia’s proxy war in Ukraine, Belarus’ election still matters. Lukashenko has been in power since 1994. The last election in 2010 culminated in mass protests against election fraud and almost 700 arrests. That isn’t likely to be the […]

Ahead of Singapore’s general elections on Sept. 11, both major parties contesting the poll have said it will be definitive, even historic. At a press conference on Sept. 1, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since the city-state was founded five decades ago, told reporters, “The country is at a turning point. Question is, in what direction do we now go?” That sentiment was echoed by Sylvia Lim, one of the leaders of the main opposition Workers’ Party. In some ways, election day will indeed be historic. For one, it is […]

President Barack Obama has now won enough support among Democrats in Congress to ensure that the nuclear agreement reached between world powers and Iran will move forward. But while indisputably a major political achievement, the victory is not any guarantee of long-term success. We can now see the outlines of the next phase of the struggle, in which profound disagreements over the deal persist in Washington, denying any semblance of consensus on one of the president’s most important foreign policy wins. First, to savor the success. It remains unknown whether Senate Democrats will manage to prevent the resolution of disapproval […]

In April, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, announced that he would run for a third term in the 2015 presidential election, stoking outrage among his opponents. Unrest swept the capital, Bujumbura, and protests devolved into violence as security forces increasingly cracked down on dissent against the ruling CNDD-FDD party. An attempted coup was quickly quashed, leading to a series of arrests and beatings of its accused perpetrators, and unleashing more violence in the streets, causing thousands to flee. Officials in neighboring Rwanda called on Burundian authorities to mitigate a humanitarian catastrophe and quell unrest. That deviated from other East African nations, […]

While the lingering effects of the Ebola crisis have dominated coverage of Liberia for over a year, the country is quietly approaching a number of precipices. A convergence of political, religious and international factors on the horizon has the potential to destabilize Liberia, which has seen a tenuous peace since warlord-turned-President Charles Taylor resigned in August 2003, ending 14 years of civil war. A United Nations peacekeeping mission is poised to significantly draw down by June 2016; religious tensions have been stoked by a movement to declare Liberia a Christian state; and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf reaches her term limit […]

Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, the longest-serving head of government in the European Union, Germany has assumed a central role in a changing Europe. But in both the EU and the world beyond, Berlin often seems a reluctant power, even as Merkel’s popularity at home masks underlying challenges. All of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers until Sept. 17. The View From Berlin: In winning a third term as chancellor in 2013, Merkel extended the Christian Democratic Union’s hold on power and cemented her dominance of German politics. But she was once again forced to form a coalition government […]

The good times are winding down in much of Latin America, and with them ends not only a period of economic growth but very possibly also one of relative political stability. As the global economy and financial markets strain to adjust to a slowdown in China, for years one of the world’s principal engines of growth, no region of the world will feel a more painful punch from the new reality. In fact, the International Monetary Fund’s growth projections show Latin America and the Caribbean with the slowest economies of any major region this year. Such a sharp deceleration inevitably […]