Domestic Politics Archive

Over the weekend, the Philippine government announced that it had reached a framework agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to end the separatist insurgency the rebel group has waged for decades in the southern Philippines. As reported by the New York Times, Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III said the framework agreement “paves the way” for peace and represents a major step toward ending the conflict in Mindanao, a predominantly Muslim island in the only predominantly Christian country in Asia. In an email interview with Trend Lines, Steven Rood, the Asia Foundation’s country representative in the Philippines and an […]

AL BAB, Syria — There is clearly something improvised about the courtroom scene: The prison guard wears civilian clothes and holds an assault rifle. He and a prisoner pose with a wide grin for a visiting photographer. The court sits in a simple office room, in a building whose courtyard has been partially damaged by bombardment. Yet this is very much government in action. With a 48-member council, a “council manager” (elected for a one-month term by council vote) and a criminal court, civic government is reasserting itself in this northern Syrian city of about 180,000 people after rebel fighters […]

On Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won a new term, defeating the strongest electoral challenge to his presidency to date, despite questions over his health and an opposition that has grown in strength and resolve. Both Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor of Americas Quarterly, and Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, told Trend Lines that even though Henrique Capriles Radonski, the opposition candidate, lost the election, the opposition itself took a major step forward in the process. “The difference between the opposition’s performance this time around and […]

In late-September, Mayor Mike Bell of Toledo, Ohio, a city of 290,000 about an hour’s drive south of Detroit, hosted a three-day conference for more than 200 Chinese business executives. Like many other cities across the manufacturing belt of the U.S. Midwest, Toledo has suffered over the past decade, during which some 50,000 jobs disappeared and its population fell by nearly 10 percent. But the depressed local real estate prices that accompanied the downturn have attracted new buyers from an unexpected place: While overall Chinese investment in the United States remains tiny, over the past year one Chinese group spent […]

During an online forum broadcast last month by the Spanish-language Univision network, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney assured the mostly Latino audience that, if elected, he would achieve sweeping immigration reform, while also promising not to pursue mass deportation of the 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. The Romney campaign has invested heavily in ads on Spanish-language media in swing states from Colorado to Virginia, and has deployed his son Craig, who speaks Spanish, to help court Latino voters. These efforts underscore the fact that Latinos are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States […]

On Oct. 1, Niger launched its “Strategy for Development and Security” (SDS), a $2.5 billion, five-year initiative targeting six of the country’s eight regions. The project is part of Niger’s ongoing efforts to prevent the kind of chaos that has gripped its neighbor Mali, where a Tuareg uprising in January touched off a domino effect that included a coup in the south and the seizure of northern Mali by armed Islamists. As regional and international actors plan a military intervention in Mali — a move Niger’s government has strongly advocated — Niger is hoping that financial and political outreach will […]

The announcement last week that Peer Steinbrück would be the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in Germany’s next general elections in September 2013 came as a surprise, given the SDP’s insistence over the past month that the decision on the party nominee would be taken closer to date of the actual polls. The party had promised a campaign based on programs, not personalities, even if it was clear that one of the SDP’s ruling troika — party chief Sigmar Gabriel, head of the parliamentary group Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Steinbrück, a former president of the North Rhine-Westphalia lander and finance minister […]

When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili took to the air to concede his ruling United National Movement party’s defeat in the country’s Oct. 1 elections and announce the UNM’s plans to head into the opposition, it signaled the end of the Rose Revolution era. That the revolution’s leaders were shown the door through the ballot box and not by street protests marks a significant advance for Georgia and the region. If it has not quite achieved mature democracy yet, Georgia has at least reached an unprecedented level of political competitiveness for the post-Soviet world outside the Baltic states. Among the many […]

CARACAS — Venezuelans go to the polls Sunday in what some commentators have baptized the “mother of all elections.” Incumbent socialist President Hugo Chávez seeks a third consecutive term and a continuation of his “Bolivarian Revolution,” but faces a strong challenge from the social-democratic Henrique Capriles Radonski, the first opposition candidate since 1998 with a real chance of toppling Chávez. As the campaign comes to an end, tensions are running high. Last week, three opposition campaign workers were shot to death in Chávez’s home state of Barinas, allegedly by supporters of the president. Recent weeks had already seen sporadic clashes […]

The global landscape has been scarred for decades by conflicts that defy both the passage of time and the efforts of armies and diplomats — conflicts that at times seem so intractable as to appear impossible to solve. That is why it’s worth pausing to take note of a momentous, in fact, astonishing, development that has taken place in recent months: Three of the world’s most durable, deadly and stubborn conflicts appear to be coming to an end. The progress in resolving the decades-old conflicts in Somalia, Sudan and Myanmar will undoubtedly give rise to countless claims of credit. These […]

The recent capture of several high-profile drug cartel capos has yet again propelled Mexico’s security situation into the spotlight. With last week’s arrest of important Zeta leader Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known as “Z-50” or “El Taliban,” the administration of President Felipe Calderón can now claim to have put 24 of the 37 most wanted drug cartel capos behind bars. While the reality of Mexico’s cartel-related violence is often shocking, much of the press coverage is more fiction than fact. In particular, three recurrent misconceptions surrounding Mexico’s security situation and drug cartels plague press coverage outside of Mexico and skew policymaking […]

Earlier this morning, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili conceded that his ruling United National Movement (UNM) party had lost the popular vote to the opposition Georgian Dream coalition in yesterday’s parliamentary elections. Having pledged to allow the opposition to the form the next government, Saakashvili will further secure his legacy by overseeing the first peaceful and legal transfer of power between opposing political forces in Georgia’s history. This ballot therefore marks an important point in the country’s history, consolidating its democratic transition. Specifically, Georgia has passed what many observers had considered to be its democratic “litmus test” by holding elections in […]