Domestic Politics Archive

Venezuelan opposition leaders and the governments that back them just saw their strategy for dislodging the increasingly tyrannical regime of President Nicolas Maduro culminate in failure. Last Sunday, in farcical elections for a new legislature, Maduro’s supporters took control of the last remaining bastion of the opposition, the National Assembly. The legislature had served as the tip of the spear for a coordinated international campaign to remove Maduro, which was promoted by the Trump administration and supported by European and Latin American democracies. That plan, which launched two years ago, had tried to capitalize on the opposition’s control of the […]

President Donald Trump has mostly ignored Central America save for his attempts to bully the region’s leaders into helping him slash the number of immigrants entering the United States, but President-elect Joe Biden is promising a radically different approach. With extensive foreign policy experience and a genuine interest in Central America stemming from his time as vice president, when he served as former President Barack Obama’s chief regional emissary, Biden has vowed to directly address the brutal conditions that are at the heart of the migration crisis in Central America. Biden has also pledged to “immediately do away with” President […]

MEKELLE, Ethiopia—During the past two years, whenever Haileselassie, a wood trader in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, placed an order for supplies from the capital, Addis Ababa, he would lie awake at night, restless with worry. “I don’t sleep,” he told me in late October, sitting at the back of his shop in the central market of Mekelle, Tigray’s capital. “I don’t believe it will arrive safely.” By then, insecurity and lawlessness had spread in different parts of Ethiopia, and tensions between Tigray and Amhara, a larger region that neighbors Tigray to the south, had decidedly worsened. The roads, […]

NAIROBI, Kenya—Federal elections that were supposed to be held in Somalia starting this month are behind schedule due to a dispute between the president and his political rivals. According to the electoral plan, legislative elections were to be held throughout December, followed by a vote in the Federal Parliament in February to elect the country’s next president. But opposition candidates are protesting the membership of two committees charged with overseeing the balloting, claiming they are packed with President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s allies, allegedly giving him an unfair advantage as he seeks reelection. The president, widely known in Somalia by his […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Daniel McDowell is filling in this week. When Joe Biden is inaugurated as America’s next president on Jan. 20, he is expected to take quick action to reverse many of Donald Trump’s policies. The incoming administration has spent months laying the legal groundwork for a flurry of swift, bold executive actions on issues like climate policy, immigration, transgender rights and nuclear weapons. Conspicuously absent from this list, however, is trade. Biden could undo many of the Trump administration’s most significant trade moves, like its tariffs on imports from both China and U.S. allies, with the stroke […]

In early November, Oman’s government announced plans to institute an income tax on high earners by 2022. The policy will break precedent in the oil-rich Gulf, where states tend to pay their citizens, rather than requiring citizens to pay the state. The question now is whether this decision will fundamentally shift the social contract in Oman, which has been an absolute monarchy for decades. Oman’s neighboring rentier economies will be watching closely to see whether direct taxation leads Omanis to more vocally demand representation in government. Oman’s experience will also have implications for U.S. engagement with the region. That Oman […]

Early last year, after the Netherlands was stunned by the victory of an upstart far-right party in provincial elections, I wondered whether the Forum for Democracy and its flamboyant 37-year-old leader, Thierry Baudet, would survive the inevitable scrutiny of their newfound prominence. Now we know, as the FvD is collapsing in spectacular fashion. But just like the FvD’s victory did not mean that the Netherlands was taking a sharp rightward turn, the party’s dramatic demise does not bring an end to the country’s far right. As it crumbles, it is revealing the stubborn ideological ugliness that lies partly hidden in […]

President Nana Akufo-Addo’s bid for a second term in Ghana’s upcoming general election took a hit last month, when the country’s anti-corruption czar, Martin Amidu, announced his resignation, citing political interference and lack of support from the government for his work. The incident is a setback for Ghana’s anti-graft campaign, which has seen mixed progress under Akufo-Addo’s government. But while it is a significant development that is injecting some uncertainty ahead of next Monday’s polls, it is unlikely to definitively swing the election result in favor of the opposition candidate, former President John Mahama. Amidu stepped down as special prosecutor […]

It’s been a long time since anyone in France thought of Emmanuel Macron as a centrist politician bridging the left-right partisan divide, as he has often portrayed himself. But after the events of the past few weeks, the French president is fending off charges of being an authoritarian wolf in liberal sheep’s clothing. His latest misstep involves the now-infamous security bill that his government was forced to partially withdraw this week due to popular protests against some of its sweeping measures. The entire episode has put Macron’s attempts to co-opt the far right in the spotlight, even as it highlights […]

A shock wave rattled South Africa’s political landscape on Nov. 10, when the Directorate for Primary Crime Investigation, a unit known as the Hawks, issued an arrest warrant for Ace Magashule on 21 charges of corruption, theft, fraud and money laundering. Magashule is currently the secretary general of the ruling African National Congress party and a longtime ally of former President Jacob Zuma, who is himself awaiting trial for graft. The charges against Magashule have to do with the awarding of a contract worth 255 million rand ($16.5 million) for work that was ultimately never done, as part of a […]