Domestic Politics Archive

Zimbabwe recently announced it was moving ahead with plans to require foreign-owned banks to give 51 percent ownership to locals. In an email interview, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, a professor in the department of development studies at the University of South Africa, discussed Zimbabwe’s indigenization program. WPR: What is the political and economic strategy behind Zimbabwe’s move to indigenize ownership in various sectors over the past few years? Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni: Over the past 10 years, Zimbabwe has consolidated itself into a typical nationalist state as opposed to a neo-colonial state. The leitmotif of this nationalist state has been the ideology […]

Ghanaian President John Atta Mills died Tuesday, three days after turning 68 years old and five-and-a-half months before the end of his first term in office. In other African countries, the death of political leaders has often led to political crises, including coups, such as Togo in 2005 and Guinea in 2008. But in Ghana, which has long been held up as a model of democracy for Africa, the peaceful transfer of power following the death of the president has only improved its reputation. “That John Dramani Mahama, Mills’ vice president, would be sworn in within hours of Mills’ death […]

The recent national elections in Libya have drawn attention to the country’s postconflict transition. But overshadowed by the international community’s ongoing failure to contain the crisis in Syria, the positive international role in Libya has gone largely overlooked. The success of Libya’s elections for a National Congress is in part due to the deep engagement of the international community, led by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). Bucking the trend of many recent postwar interventions, however, this assistance has not come in the form of a large-scale operation. As such, it may present a new model for postconflict […]

The British government revealed plans in early July to restructure the British army, including cutting the number of regular soldiers from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2020. In an email interview, Michael Codner, the director of the military sciences department at the Royal United Services Institute in London, discussed the U.K.’s defense cuts. WPR: What are the concrete consequences, in terms of force size and capabilities, of the defense cuts the U.K. has announced? Michael Codner: The cuts in the army, as well as to the Royal Marines, who were affected through the earlier 18 percent cuts to the navy, are […]

A remarkable transformation is underway in a country where most people were nomadic herders a generation ago. Mongolia has the fastest-growing economy in the world, with GDP increasing by more than 17 percent last year. It sits on vast precious metal and mineral resources: The 10 biggest deposits alone are estimated to be worth almost $1.5 trillion. Given all this wealth in a country of only 3 million people, Mongolia has the potential to become an Asian version of Norway. However, popular anger is growing as fast as the economy. Despite the “gold rush,” the poverty rate increased between 2008 […]

Prior to the disruptions that have swept the Middle East and North Africa since 2011, Algeria had achieved a comfortable balance between its internal and external strategic priorities. Now it faces the challenge of repositioning itself both within a region in flux and in relation to its main international alliances with France, the U.S. and — as its main supplier of arms — Russia. On the plus side, Algeria has weathered the storms of regional change well since early 2011, even if this has come at the expense of looking increasingly out of sync with the rapidity and depth of […]

On Sept. 30, 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki was riding in a convoy in northern Yemen’s al-Jawf province with several other suspected members of the terrorist group al-Qaida. Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric, had long been on a so-called kill list of terrorist leaders targeted by the U.S. government for elimination. On that day, two Predator drones operating in the skies above fired seven Hellfire missiles, killing Awlaki and, among others, a colleague named Samir Khan. In itself, the killing was simply another skirmish in the 10-year U.S.-led war on terror, which since Sept. 11, 2001, has stretched from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on South African President Jacob Zuma’s political prospects as leader of both the African National Congress and South Africa. Part I examined some of Zuma’s recent successes in consolidating his political position within the party. Part II examines his weaknesses and failures, which risk undermining his future prospects. At its June policy conference in Midrand, the African National Congress (ANC) took pains to make clear that its policy discussions were a separate matter from the broader question of the party’s future leadership. That argument, however, carried little weight with analysts […]

After key security aides of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were killed in a bombing attack last week, media coverage became saturated with pronouncements of Assad’s “imminent” fall and reports of contingency planning for the collapse of his regime. Trend Lines spoke with Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at WINEP, about the risks, the opportunities and the unknowns of a post-Assad Syria. According to White, the strategic opportunities include “detaching Syria from Iran’s list of allies, getting Syria out of the terrorism business and breaking Syria’s […]

On July 7-8, Muslim Fulani herdsmen reportedly attacked Christian Berom farmers in Plateau state in Nigeria’s ethnically and religiously diverse Middle Belt. The violence claimed more than 100 lives, including those of two elected officials, and displaced an estimated 5,500 persons. On July 17, an apparent reprisal targeted a Muslim school in the state capital, Jos. The cycle of Muslim-Christian violence (.pdf) in Plateau dates back to 1994. And though Nigerian authorities have depicted the conflict as primarily local, it aggravates the tone of Muslim-Christian relations across the country and embarrasses the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, which is attempting […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on South African President Jacob Zuma’s political prospects as leader of both the African National Congress and South Africa. Part I examines some of Zuma’s recent successes in consolidating his political position within the party. Part II will examine his weaknesses and failures, which risk undermining his future prospects. The defining moment in South African politics this year will be the national conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Mangaung in December. The conference will chart the ANC’s future direction and will elect the leadership to guide both […]

In a significant foreign policy breakthrough, the Russian Duma voted last week to ratify the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization, resolving an issue that had been a point of contention between Russia and the West since the 1990s. Russia’s accession negotiations, which opened in 1995 and were completed in November 2011, were the longest and arguably the thorniest in WTO history. Economic and political disputes, not to mention the Russia-Georgia War of 2008, repeatedly delayed Russian accession. With Russia now set to formally enter the WTO in August, it is worth examining what the move will mean for […]

During the Soviet era, Russian trade unions were state run and had nothing to do with helping workers fight for their rights against employers. That changed following the Soviet Union’s collapse. This report by Euronews takes an in-depth look at the evolution of Russian trade unions and the battles they face today.

Libya, that sparsely populated North African country on the shores of the Mediterranean, has a history of punching above its weight. The Libyan people, in their first postrevolutionary elections, have just done it again, defying the conventional wisdom by thoroughly trouncing Islamist parties at the polls. Whether through the antics of its outrageous former dictator, the flamboyant Moammar Gadhafi, or through its opposition’s so-far-unmatched success at enlisting NATO’s firepower in deposing his oppressive regime, Libya has managed to make headlines and even to bend the curve of history. Conceivably, the latest electoral results, which still leave many unanswered questions, have […]

Twenty Ethiopian journalists and opposition figures accused of trying to topple the government will now spend between eight years and the rest of their lives in prison. As the New York Times reported, these defendants, who were convicted on terrorism charges, were the victims of security concerns being used “as an excuse to crack down on dissent and media freedoms.” The Horn of Africa country, located between Sudan and Somalia, is seen by the U.S. as a source of stability and as a key regional partner in the war on terror, explained Claire Beston, the Ethiopia researcher at Amnesty International. […]

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto ran on an agenda alien to many in his once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party: change. More specifically, Peña Nieto emphasized the need for structural reforms that many in the PRI have showed little enthusiasm for approving in recent years. But Peña Nieto says times have changed, and he has promised that an ambitious agenda of structural reforms will mark his presidency. He also insists there’s no going back to the past, when the PRI earned a checkered reputation for corruption and crony capitalism prior to losing power in 2000 after 71 straight years […]

In 2000, when Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel formed a coalition government with Jörg Haider’s far-right populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the 14 member states of the European Union immediately agreed to sanction the country. Acting on the basis of bilateral relations, as the EU Treaty did not justify such sanctions, the EU member states froze diplomatic relations and sought to isolate Austria in international institutions, despite the fact that Haider and his FPÖ had been democratically elected. Today, with populism on the rise across the member states of the EU, this kind of forceful reaction is no longer even […]