Q & A Archive

Lithuania’s prime minister-designate, Ingrida Simonyte, announced her Cabinet lineup this week, selecting women for about half of the ministerial posts. Simonyte led the country’s main center-right opposition party, the Homeland Union—Lithuanian Christian Democrats, to victory in general elections late last month, taking 50 of the 141 seats in the Seimas, the country’s legislature. She will form a coalition government with two other right-leaning parties, the Liberal Movement and the Freedom Party, both of which are also led by women. According to Gediminas Vitkus, a professor of international relations at Vilnius University in Lithuania, one factor in the Homeland Union’s victory […]

Armenia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement last week to end six weeks of bloody fighting over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russia-brokered deal requires Armenia to give up much of the territory it controlled prior to the recent hostilities, and calls for Moscow to maintain a peacekeeping force of just under 2,000 soldiers. The agreement was widely seen as a win for Russia, which has regained substantial influence in the South Caucasus region, and for Turkey, whose military support for Azerbaijan was critical to the gains it made on the battlefield. Western powers were largely left out in the […]

In late September, the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly heated up. The six weeks of full-scale war that followed left thousands dead and tens of thousands more displaced. Unlike previous rounds of fighting that resulted in little exchange of territory, however, Azerbaijan’s well-armed and well-prepared military was able to make substantial gains on the battlefield, with significant support from neighboring Turkey. Just as Azerbaijani forces looked poised to advance deep into Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia brokered a deal between the two sides to bring the fighting to an end last week, under terms that […]

As authorities around the world seek out new tools to fight COVID-19, they are increasingly turning to contact-tracing apps and other technological tools that carry worrying implications for online privacy and digital rights. Meanwhile, a recent report from the watchdog group Freedom House warns that many authoritarian governments are seizing on the pandemic to expand their surveillance powers and crack down on online dissent, while imposing new restrictions on the flow of information across national borders. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Freedom House’s Adrian Shahbaz, one of the report’s co-authors, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to talk about how […]

Many aspects of our response to the coronavirus pandemic have relied on digital technology. Schools and workplaces are moving online, holding classes and meetings using virtual tools. Public health experts are using data analytics and contact tracing apps to slow the contagion. And in some cases, authoritarian governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to impose sweeping restrictions on their citizens that limit their scope for protests and other forms of criticism. According to researchers at the watchdog group Freedom House, the implications of the pandemic for digital rights worldwide are bleak. The organization released a new report last […]

Longtime opposition leader Wavel Ramkalawan was sworn in as president of the Seychelles late last month, after a decisive election victory over incumbent President Danny Faure. Ramkalawan’s coalition, the Seychelles Democratic Alliance—known in Seychellois Creole as the Linyon Demokratik Seselwa, or LDS—also expanded its majority in parliament. In an email interview with WPR, Yolanda Sadie, a professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg, discusses what led to Ramkalawan’s victory and the many challenges facing his new government. World Politics Review: What is the historical significance of Ramkalawan’s presidency? Yolanda Sadie: Ramkalawan’s election victory, in his sixth attempt, was the […]

Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, also known as Rama X, made a rare media appearance last weekend, publicly addressing for the first time the monthslong pro-democracy uprising in the country. In a joint interview with CNN and Channel 4 News, he suggested there could be room for compromise with the demonstrators in the streets. Asked what he would say to them, he responded, “we love them all the same.” But according to Tyrell Haberkorn, an expert on Thailand at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the king’s apparent peace offering should be taken with a grain of salt, given the ongoing campaign of […]