Domestic Politics Archive

In his strongest statement yet on the civil unrest in Syria the Turkish prime minister has accused Damascus of “atrocities”, and behaving in an “inhumane” manner towards protesters.

The West Africa Cable System recently landed in Ghana, extending the reach of the new undersea telecommunications cable that will eventually run from South Africa to Western Europe. In an email interview, Patricia K. McCormick, an expert in developing-country telecommunications policy at Wayne State University, discussed Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure. WPR: What is the current state of Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure? Patricia K. McCormick: If the wealth and socio-economic health of a region is defined by its ability to participate in the networked economy, Africa is indeed impoverished. In an era of accelerated technological change, Africa’s technological dependency and underdevelopment impairs its […]

Coverage of last month’s Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France, centered on the leadership crisis at the International Monetary Fund and measures to support new regimes in the Arab world. However, the summit’s most significant achievement may be the dramatic change in Russia’s stance on the conflict in Libya. After months of Russian ambivalence toward the military intervention against Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev not only joined the other G-8 leaders in a statement declaring that Gadhafi has lost all legitimacy and must step down, but also announced that Russia would help mediate an exit for the […]

The defeat of Portugal’s Socialist Party in parliamentary elections last Sunday was largely reported as an indictment of the welfare state and spending policies embraced by the party and outgoing Prime Minister José Sócrates. However, Robert M. Fishman, a sociologist at the University of Notre Damewhose research focuseson the politics of Portugal and Spain, says the victorious Social Democrat Party (PSD) is unlikely to bring about the sort of significant rightward shift in policies heralded in much of the media coverage of the elections. “Historically the PSD has defended and enacted policies that are not hostile to the welfare state […]

Nearly 100 people in Inner Mongolia have been arrested after the recent demonstration sparked by the death of a Mongol herder. Chinese authorities last week blamed the unrest on unnamed “foreign sources”, and the region remains under heavy police presence.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to Afghanistan this week prompted contradictory reports about both the war’s progress and the likelihood for an accelerated troop withdrawal. Some observers said President Barack Obama’s security team was now considering the option of a swift pullout. Others quoted Gates as saying it’s too early to end combat. Meanwhile, a U.S. general touted success in training Afghan forces just as Congress released a report criticizing the Afghan nation-building program. Joshua Foust, a fellow and Afghanistan specialist with the American Security Project, tells Trend Lines that the conflicting reports are best explained by a widening […]

Defense budget advocacy can be a dry business. While debating the technical aspects of some weapon or another is boring enough to a lay audience, arguing the finer points of industrial policy can put all but the most dedicated bureaucrats — and lobbyists — to sleep. Accordingly, defense policy advocates often rely on scare stories designed to shock and awe, winning an audience’s attention and credulity with dramatic claims of horrific outcomes should the wrong path be taken. If the story succeeds in creating the desired effect, no one realizes until too late that it was all a sham. Perhaps […]

Despite heavy rain this week, much of central China remains dry. The country’s worst drought in 50 years has reignited debate about the controversial Three Gorges Dam.

Though the outcomes of the protests have varied, from country to country the protesters for the most part have used a similar set of tactics. What few people realize is that the philosophical underpinnings for these tactics can be traced to a 93-year-old retired professor, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Portugal’s Social-Democrats are expected to put together a centre-right coalition after beating the socialists in the country’s snap election. The PSD won 105 places in the 230-seat parliament. Along with the 24 MPs of the right-wing CDS the result would be a strong majority.

Peru’s left-winger Ollanta Humala has claimed victory in the country’s presidential election.

As the United States debates just how much more effort it wants to put into the Afghanistan-Pakistan sinkhole, evidence mounts of the need to pursue a strategic pivot back toward the Middle East, where the Arab Spring is increasingly threatened by a Persian winter of revolutionary discontent. For some time now, Iran has been showing signs of mounting internal divisions between competing hardline factions led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But it has also become more desperate about asserting its alleged leadership of the region’s ongoing wave of uprisings, including a far more active […]

The appointment of U.S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff inspired some debate this week over why President Barack Obama passed over U.S. Marine Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright — a previous front-runner for the post. But David Johnson, executive director of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, says the decision to go with Dempsey was something of a no-brainer, since Dempsey stands a significantly better chance of reconciling different factions within the Pentagon over the issue of looming budget cuts. “He fits in very well both with the need to harmonize […]

In May, lawmakers from the European Union and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group urged Madagascar to install a transitional leadership ahead of planned elections. In an email interview, Stephen Ellis, a Madagascar expert at the African Studies Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, discussed Madagascar’s ongoing political crisis. WPR: What is the background of Madagascar’s political crisis? Stephen Ellis: The immediate origin of Madagascar’s political crisis was the forced resignation of the elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, on March 17, 2009, in an effective military coup. Ravalomanana had become unpopular — not only within Madagascar’s political elite, but also among aid […]

LIMA, Peru — As Peruvians return to the polls this Sunday for a second round of voting in an extremely tight presidential race, the outcome will likely be determined by voters’ fear and mistrust of the losing candidate rather than by enthusiasm for the winner and his or her platform. The latest polls show a technical tie between conservative Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, 36, and leftist retired military officer Ollanta Humala, 48, with Fujimori ahead by less than the margin of error in most recent polls. Both candidates have striven to appeal to moderate voters while making populist campaign promises, but […]

AMSTERDAM — Backpackers around the world took notice when the Dutch government announced plans to ban sales of marijuana to tourists in the Netherlands. Some observers viewed the decision as part of a definitive move to the right in Dutch politics. The reality, however, is not so simple; the Netherlands is not about to become a conservative country. Rather than a move to the right, the latest news is one more piece of evidence that the old distinctions between left and right can no longer tell the full story in Dutch politics. Like in much of Europe, politics in the […]

At least 25,000 university student protesters have marched through the streets of Santiago, Chile’s capital, calling for reforms in education, local news reported.