Domestic Politics Archive

For over three decades, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, has ruled his country without any sign of ever wanting to give up power, despite growing indications that Cambodians want him to. As the country prepares for elections, he has begun his most ruthless campaign yet to consolidate his position as a strongman and undermine his opponents to ensure his own political survival. The resignation of the country’s longtime opposition leader is just the latest indication of the heavy price that Hun Sen is exacting on Cambodia’s domestic politics and foreign policy. Since coming to power in 1985 with Vietnamese support […]

Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo held a new round of talks in Brussels last week in a bid to defuse tensions that have been on the rise recently. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said she was “encouraged by the constructive engagement from both sides.” Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo declined to comment. In an email interview, Naim Rashiti, the executive director of the Balkans Policy Research Group, discusses the state of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. WPR: What is behind the recent spike in tensions between Serbia and Kosovo? Naim Rashiti: Last month a train traveled between […]

On Feb. 19, Ecuador will hold elections for a new president and members of the 137-seat National Assembly, as well as for the Andean Parliament, the legislative body of the Andean Community customs union made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Ecuadorians will also vote on a proposal to prohibit public officials from having assets in tax havens. With leftist President Rafael Correa ineligible to run for re-election as he finishes an unprecedented third term, many predict the elections will be a referendum on his so-called Citizen’s Revolution. Poverty in Ecuador has decreased 16 percent under Correa, thanks to […]

The French presidential campaign was already off to a surprising start, with dark-horse candidates having won both of the major parties’ primaries. It was thrown into further disarray two weeks ago by the scandal engulfing conservative Republican party candidate and erstwhile frontrunner, Francois Fillon, who is accused of paying his wife hundreds of thousands of euros in salary while he was a member of Parliament for work she never performed. Fillon has denied any wrongdoing and refused to bow out, but his candidacy, based in part on his reputation as a clean politician, has taken a severe hit. The scandal […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. Indonesian President Joko Widodo recently pledged that his administration would focus on reducing economic disparities in 2017, and he called on his ministers to accelerate the implementation of the government’s poverty-eradication programs. In an email interview, Matthew Wai-Poi, a senior economist at the World Bank, discusses inequality in Indonesia. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in Indonesia, what are the latest trends in terms of widening or lessening inequality, and what are the main factors […]

Fears of another war are growing in Bosnia and Herzegovina as xenophobia and nationalist rivalries surge in the largely autonomous and Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska. Observers are warning that a growing separatist movement in the territory threatens the terms of the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War of the 1990s. That conflict killed more than 100,000 people and displaced some 1 million civilians through interethnic violence between Catholic Croats, Bosnian Muslims—or Bosniaks—and Orthodox Christian Serbs. Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb enclave of Bosnia and Herzegovina that was formalized by the U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords, virtually cleansed the bulk of its […]

Since late 2016, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has been consumed by a blasphemy case against the Christian and ethnically Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok. After mounting pressure from hard-line Islamists who staged mass demonstrations against him, Ahok—who is a candidate for the Feb. 15 gubernatorial election in Jakarta—is now on trial for a statement that he uttered in mid-October that was deemed insulting to the Quran. His case has sparked fears about the growing voice of radical Islam in Indonesia and the threat it could pose to the country’s reputation for […]

Kenya’s most prominent opposition leader, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, will run again in his fourth presidential election this August. Another loss could cost him the confidence of his base, the Luo people, who for five decades have placed high hopes in him and his late father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, to break the ethnic monopoly on Kenya’s presidency, which has rotated between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin people. But an Odinga loss, whether by a close margin or because of perceived voting irregularities that have plagued earlier contests, could ignite the kind of ethnic violence seen after the 2007 election and […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about workers’ rights in various countries around the world. Last year, the International Trade Union Confederation gave Uruguay a top rating of 1 on its scale from 1 to 5, indicating that workers’ rights are infrequently violated. Uruguay is the only country in Latin America to receive the organization’s highest rating possible. In an email interview, Adriana Cassoni, a researcher at the Universidad OTR Uruguay, discusses worker’s rights in Uruguay. WPR: How robust are protections for workers in Uruguay with regard to the right to organize, both in law […]

Is the United States ripe for a Color Revolution? Is it already in the midst of one? If so, who are the democratic revolutionaries and who the illegitimate usurpers? Back in September, when I wrote about eroding faith in government undermining political legitimacy in the U.S., I said that a broader unraveling was unlikely. At the time, police killings of black Americans had triggered protests in many cities across the country, but those demonstrations had remained largely peaceful. The demonstrations that sprung up spontaneously over the weekend at a number of American airports to protest President Donald Trump’s entry ban […]

The massacre at a Quebec City mosque on Sunday has taken a backseat to a news cycle dominated on the other side of the border by the turbulent start of Donald Trump’s presidency. The shooting, which killed six worshippers and injured 19 more, followed the implementation of Trump’s executive order to bar individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. In response to Trump’s travel ban, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media on Saturday to declare that Canada’s arms were open to any rejected refugees unable to enter the United States. The following evening, 27-year-old Alexandre […]