Domestic Politics Archive

Italians go to the polls this Sunday in a climate of uncertainty, amid fears, not unfounded, that their country’s political stability is at stake. Three main political forces are contending for power: On the right, a shaky alliance of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and two far-right parties, the League and the Brothers of Italy; the maverick and populist Five Star Movement; and the governing, center-left Democratic Party. They are polling roughly in that order, followed by Free and Equal, a left-wing coalition of disgruntled Democratic Party veterans who broke away in 2017. But 30 percent of the […]

Jordan’s prime minister, Hani al-Mulki, reshuffled his Cabinet on Sunday, making changes in several key and telling portfolios, including the ministries of economy, labor and interior. The shakeup comes amid a period of public uneasiness over the direction of the country’s economy and who should bear the burden resulting from years of economic mismanagement by largely unaccountable policymakers. In early February, the government raised the sales tax from 6 to 10 percent on more than 160 basic food items, services and commodities ranging from eggs to electricity. Brand new sales taxes were also introduced on agricultural products that were previously […]

Poland’s harsh policy on drugs, in place for nearly two decades, has not been effective. Now civil society groups are pushing for a new approach. Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. Poland’s strict drug laws, in place for nearly two decades, are considered among the harshest in Europe. But criminalizing even minor drug possession has proven ineffective, and the president who signed the measures into law has admitted they are a policy failure. In an email interview, Kasia Malinowska, director of the Global Drug Policy Program […]

After almost three years of deadly, sporadic crises, 2018 brought signs of much-needed change to Ethiopia when the government announced in early January that it would release many jailed journalists, politicians and protesters. But instead of opening up, Africa’s second-most populous country has returned to a formal state of emergency following the surprising resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on Feb. 15. With an emboldened opposition, and divisions within the ruling party, Ethiopia now faces more uncertainty. The chaotic chain of events underscores the difficulties for the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, in trying to […]

On Feb. 1, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a massive new health care program, already dubbed “Modicare,” aimed at providing free coverage to half a billion people. Yet details over when and how the program will be rolled out are still being formulated, with serious questions over how it will be funded. In an email interview, Indrani Gupta, a professor and head of the Health Policy Research Unit of the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi, discusses the ambitious new policy, India’s current health care system and the challenges ahead. WPR: What is driving the government’s ambitious plan […]

In late January, Yemen’s foreign minister, Abdul-malik al-Mekhlafi, traveled to Moscow where he met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. As they discussed the implementation of an elusive peace settlement in Yemen, Lavrov emphasized Russia’s willingness to mediate between rival Yemeni factions. Lavrov’s somewhat surprising announcement was followed up days later by a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offering to broker talks in the burgeoning conflict between separatists in southern Yemen and the forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, whose president is in exile in Saudi Arabia. Until recently, Russia has maintained a diplomatic presence in Yemen’s […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. This summer, Canada is expected to become only the second country in the world to legalize the recreational use of marijuana nationwide. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new drug policy is both a break from his conservative predecessor and from the hard-line stance taken by the Trump administration in Washington, which has bucked state-level trends toward marijuana decriminalization in the United States. In an email interview, Daniel Bear, a professor of criminal justice at Humber College in Toronto, explains why the […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss the recent indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian entities for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Was Russia’s interference a sophisticated campaign of hybrid warfare, or a ham-handed attempt at undermining America? For the Report, Peter Dörrie talks with our contributor in Cairo about the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle for survival under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our […]

There is a future in which wind turbines, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, produce electricity across the United States. Because of their height, these turbines would generate power from stronger, more constant gusts, making wind power a viable option in all 50 states, instead of primarily those in the nation’s plains where there are steady, lower winds. In this same future, inexpensive solar cells would coat windows, turning office buildings and homes into self-reliant electricity “prosumers.” Best of all, these technologies would be American innovations. The United States could breathe a sigh of relief after China briefly […]

Editor's Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. In its 2017 annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called out Russia for creating an increasingly repressive environment for religious minorities. While the report did not put Russia on the U.S. watchdog’s list of most egregious violators, it did recommend for the first time that Russia be designated a “country of particular concern.” In an email interview, Eugene Clay, head of the religious studies faculty at Arizona State University and a scholar on religion in Russia, discusses […]

Earlier this month, before leaving for a five-country trip in Latin America, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speculated about a potential way out of the economic and political chaos in Venezuela. Perhaps, he suggested, the best solution was a military coup d’état. “In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is oftentimes that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people,” he told an audience at the University of Texas. President Donald Trump first introduced the notion of prioritizing bullets over ballots in Venezuela […]

On Monday, a spokesman for a civil society group in Chad called Iyina became the latest government critic to be detained by security forces. According to police, Alain Kembah Didah was caught with a bottle of gasoline in his hand, preparing to burn a tire as part of an anti-government protest. Didah has disputed this account, but that didn’t stop Chadian authorities from taking him into custody and, according to Amnesty International, beating him to the point where he could barely stand. In Chadian Arabic, the name Iyina means “We’re fed up.” Its members aren’t the only ones who’ve been […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—As the 20th anniversary of the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement approaches this April, Northern Ireland once again finds itself in a political crisis. It has been without a government for over a year now, since the governing coalition in Belfast collapsed. Following the failure of talks last week between the two main parties, the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, and the nationalist Sinn Fein, the anniversary of the agreement that ended three decades of violence between Unionists and nationalists will be less of a cause for celebration. Of course, peace has held, more or less, since that […]

Editor’s Note: WPR has agreed to publish this article anonymously due to the hostile environment in Egypt toward political dissent and independent reporting. Tracking down the Society of the Muslim Brothers, better known as the Muslim Brotherhood, is a difficult task. Ever since the group was outlawed in Egypt following the July 2013 military coup that brought Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, those Brotherhood members who have not been killed, executed or imprisoned have kept their heads down. Inside Egypt, they generally refuse to meet or cancel at the last minute for fear of being identified and apprehended […]

When Jacob Zuma formally resigned as South Africa’s president last week, some commentators used his overdue but less than gracious exit as an opportunity to reach for the famous words of U.S. President Gerald Ford, who in 1974 declared, in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation, that “our long national nightmare is over.” Those words capture both the widespread sense of disgust in South Africa at the malignant nature of the Zuma presidency, and the hope for a new beginning and a fresh start under Cyril Ramaphosa. The new president has chosen his words carefully so far, anxious not to […]

In late January, Romania’s parliament approved Viorica Dancila as the nation’s first female prime minister—and the third prime minister in just the past year. The same ruling coalition has overseen a period of political turbulence driven by the largest wave of popular protests in Romania in a quarter of a century. In an email interview, Silvia Fierascu, a research fellow at the Center for Network Science at the Central European University in Budapest, discusses the ongoing political tensions, the balance of power and the role of international actors. WPR: What do the recent political battles that ultimately resulted in Dancila’s […]

Secessionists in southern Yemen have agitated for independence for almost as long as there has been a unified Yemeni state. But since unification in 1990, a common complaint among foreign diplomats and Yemeni government officials was that the secessionists were too diffuse and too poorly organized to credibly demand independence or even political relevance. They were seen as a noisy rabble with no real platform or strategy. Yemen’s civil war has changed that, as a group of secessionists is now moving to build a state within Yemen’s state of chaos. In late January, clashes in the southern port city of […]