Domestic Politics Archive

With the adoption of a new constitution last weekend, Tunisia became the first post-revolutionary country in the Arab world to forge a political settlement accepted by the broad mass of its people. The process has hardly been swift, but the passage of the document by an overwhelming majority—200 delegates in favor and only 12 against—is a significant achievement. At a time when the other Arab countries that saw popular uprisings in 2011 have been dragged down by polarization and violence, Tunisia provides an example of political compromise overcoming broad national differences. Tunisia’s path to this moment has often been precarious. […]

Editor’s note: This is the fourth of a seven-part series examining conditions in Afghanistan in the last year of U.S. military operations there. The series runs every Wednesday and will examine each of the country’s regional commands to get a sense of the country, and the war, America is leaving behind. You can find the Series Introduction here, Part I here and Part II here. Regional Command East encompasses Afghanistan’s most populous region. The territory extends from Afghanistan’s mountainous eastern border with Pakistan to the central provinces surrounding Kabul, an area characterized by wide variation in terrain, ethnic groups, political […]

In 2009, President Barack Obama stood before an enthusiastic crowd in Prague and proclaimed that he would make the “peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” a key administration foreign policy goal, though it may not be achieved in his lifetime. And while his is not the first administration to support this objective—the United States is formally committed to move toward disarmament as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—Obama was more emphatic than any other recent president of the United States that eventual global nuclear disarmament, and not just nonproliferation in places like Iran, should be a […]

Since October, when President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had surgery to remove a blood clot in her head, Argentina has been on tenterhooks as people worried about the president’s future, who might be secretly running the country in her stead and mounting evidence that the country is once again headed toward economic collapse. In the most alarming sign of what the future may hold, police officers in Cordoba province went on strike in December to protest their low pay. With no one walking the beat, impromptu gangs formed. Riots then erupted across the country, including in the outskirts of Buenos […]

In the coming months, Brazil will host the World Cup and hold elections across all levels of government—all while its once-strong economy shows growing signs of a slowdown, hobbled by the country’s suffocating public sector, trade protection and inflation. Brazil’s GDP shrank in the third quarter of last year, its first contraction since 2009. The current outlook is a far cry from the exhilarating days of 2006-2007 when then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in office 2003-2011, oversaw a massive oil discovery in the Tupi field off Brazil’s southeastern coast and successfully wooed FIFA, international soccer’s governing federation, for World […]

This month, South Korea announced a major reduction in its target for nuclear power generation, partly in response to domestic safety concerns. In an email interview, Miles Pomper, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, explained the role of nuclear energy in South Korea. WPR: How important is nuclear within Korea’s current energy mix? Miles Pomper: Nuclear power plays a major role in South Korea’s electricity generation, meeting about 30 percent of the country’s energy needs in 2012, and South Korea is one of the top five nuclear-power-generating countries. South Korea does not have significant […]

The inhabitants of Michoacan, a state on Mexico’s Pacific coastline, must feel a grim sense of deja vu regarding recent developments surrounding organized crime-related violence in the region. Seven years ago, then-President Felipe Calderon launched the Joint Operation for Michoacan, through which the Mexican federal government essentially took over responsibility for security enforcement from regional and local authorities. The operation began shortly after La Familia, a criminal organization based in Michoacan, publicly announced itself as a new force to be reckoned with. The law enforcement response then marked the beginning of the Calderon administration’s so-called “war on drugs.” Although La […]

President Barack Obama now has a little less than three years left in office, and the latest political parlor game is to try and discern what shape the final tranche of his administration will take. David Remnick’s profile of Obama in the New Yorker suggests that the next 12 months or so represents the administration’s last chance to set in concrete what it hopes its lasting contributions to U.S. foreign and domestic policy will be. After that, the calendar will shift, with the dominant question becoming who will succeed Obama come January 2017. So will the last third of Obama’s […]

In a budget agreement reached this month, the U.S. Congress declined to approve a package of reforms for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the fund’s members agreed to four years ago. In an email interview, Daniel McDowell, assistant professor of political science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, explained the state of efforts to reform the IMF. WPR: What has been the recent state of efforts to reform the IMF? Daniel McDowell: In a word, stalled. The most recent push for reform began within months of the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis. The crisis revealed that […]

JERUSALEM—The job comes with some nice perks and mostly symbolic duties, but the position, president of Israel, carries enormous prestige, potentially a great deal of influence and, ultimately, a guaranteed spot in the history books. The race to replace Shimon Peres as head of state is getting off to a star-studded start. The latest candidate to throw his hat in the ring received the Nobel Prize in chemistry a couple of years ago. But polls show Israelis would like Peres, also a Nobel Prize winner, to stay on for another term. Already the collection of possible candidates looks like a […]

When it joined the European Union in May 2004, Poland was experiencing troubled times. Although its GDP growth was satisfying—5.4 percent in 2004, compared to 3.9 percent last year—its unemployment rate had hit 20 percent. Instead of perceiving EU membership as a chance to boost living standards, many Poles thought membership would widen the gap between Poland and the West. Thousands left the country seeking jobs abroad, mainly in Germany, Britain and Ireland. Populist parties exploited these fears. Ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in 2005, they based their campaigns on euroskepticism and protection of national interests. Lech Kaczynski, the […]

Editor’s note: This is the third of a seven-part series examining conditions in Afghanistan in the last year of U.S. military operations there. The series will run every Wednesday and will examine each of the country’s regional commands to get a sense of the country, and the war, America is leaving behind. You can find the Series Introduction here and Part I here. Northern Afghanistan, particularly the regional capital Mazar-i-Sharif in the province of Balkh, represents something of a success story. The region by and large benefited from the international intervention without experiencing the same level of economic distortion as […]

As U.S. forces draw down in Afghanistan, the United States continues to carry out targeted killings against suspected terrorist leaders in several theaters—including through the use of armed drones—and to enhance the ability of partner nations to carry out lethal operations. But U.S. drone strikes can kill innocent civilians along with their intended targets, generating backlash abroad and concerns domestically. According to reporting last week by the Washington Post, one such strike moved Congress to insert language into the $1.1 trillion spending bill that blocks Obama administration attempts to transfer the U.S. drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. […]

Despite its status as a poor, landlocked country in the midst of West Africa, Burkina Faso plays an important role in the region and for its international partners. During his 26 years in power, President Blaise Compaore has cast himself as an indispensible mediator, having brokered negotiations to end crises in Togo in 2006, Cote d’Ivoire in 2007 and 2011, and Mali in 2012, among others. With the diplomatic skill and networks necessary to negotiate the release of Westerners held by terrorist groups in the Sahel, Burkina Faso under Compaore has also become a “hostage whisperer.” In addition, Compaore has […]

After years of deadlocked negotiations and apparent inflexibility on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran to make substantive concessions on its development of nuclear technology, some of which might be used for weapons, Tehran has recently become much more accommodating. The framework agreement reached in November in Geneva, trading cessation of enrichment and dilution of existing stockpiles of enriched uranium for sanctions relief, will go into effect Jan. 20. Is this newfound willingness to negotiate simply a result of personnel changes, beginning with the election of Hassan Rouhani as president? Not entirely. After all, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei […]

This month, thousands of African migrants to Israel, many seeking asylum, marched in Tel Aviv to demand more rights and protections from the Israeli government. In an email interview, Dov Waxman, associate professor of political science at Baruch College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), as well as the co-director of the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development at Northeastern University, explained Israel’s immigration policy. WPR: What is the state of Israel’s overall immigration policy, particularly with regard to political refugees? Dov Waxman: Israel’s immigration policy fundamentally distinguishes between Jews, non-Jews […]

TEL AVIV, Israel—Before he became the leader of his country, Ariel Sharon, the recently deceased former Israeli prime minister, spent most of his life as a military man. The formative events for the late general took place on the battlefield. The experiences proved so powerful that they shaped Sharon as a political actor, gradually chiseling the profile of a political leader with such strong and unexpected views that he managed to antagonize even his closest allies and surprisingly satisfy some of his harshest critics. By the time he became Israel’s most powerful man, the lessons of war led the older […]