Domestic Politics Archive

The sheer magnitude of the elections taking place in India make them historic and worthy of international attention. But even if the contest had more familiar proportions it would still constitute a major event in world affairs. The choice of India’s next leader is sending nervous chills down some people’s spines. The next government in New Delhi will have the power to shake up the world’s largest democracy, the globe’s second-most-populous country and a nuclear-armed nation with a history of ethnic strife and a sense of unfulfilled economic potential. When election results are announced on May 16, they will most […]

El Salvador’s leftist FMLN won the country’s presidential election in March by a razor-thin margin, despite pre-election polls that indicated the party would score an easy victory over the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). After a “final scrutiny” of the second-round vote, the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) declared that the FMLN’s Salvador Sanchez Ceren had won a majority of the vote—50.11 percent to 49.89 percent for ARENA’s Norman Quijano. Two weeks later, both the TSE and the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber rejected petitions from ARENA alleging fraud and demanding a ballot-by-ballot recount. Following ARENA’s relatively poor first-round performance, the […]

At a parliamentary group meeting today, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed his country’s courts for acting as part of a parallel state undermining his government. Erdogan’s remarks were the latest maneuver in an ongoing struggle between Turkey’s judiciary and the prime minister and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a contest that Michael Koplow described in an article for World Politics Review in January. With the dispute showing no signs of flagging, WPR spoke via email with Koplow, program director at the Israel Institute and the author of the blog Ottomans and Zionists, to review the latest […]

Of all the choices America made, all the things that went wrong and all the suffering endured in the years after 9/11, Americans have been more united in wanting to close the book on torture than on anything else. Both in wanting it stopped—they disapproved of it by a 3-to-1 margin when it was disclosed in 2005 and nominated two presidential candidates in 2008 who wanted it banned—but also in wanting it forgotten. The Obama administration has done its best to oblige on both counts. On his second day in office, flanked by more than a dozen military leaders, President […]

A panel discussion on Thursday organized by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law discussed options for U.S. policy toward Uganda, after relations were ruffled by a new Ugandan law signed in February that imposes harsh legal penalties, including life sentences, for homosexual acts. As the U.S. moves forward with its promised review of its relationship with Uganda, the question is whether the Obama administration can produce an effective response to the new law or if the U.S. will be boxed into a narrow response that feeds perceptions of American imperialism. […]

Late last month, Venezuela’s government arrested three generals of the country’s air force, accusing them of plotting a coup. In an email interview, Harold Trinkunas, senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program, explained the state of Venezuela’s civil-military relations. WPR: What has been the overall state of civil-military relations in Venezuela in recent years? Harold Trinkunas: In recent years, civil-military relations in Venezuela have become progressively less institutionalized and more politicized. After he was elected in 1998, President Hugo Chavez, a former army officer, took a particular interest in military affairs, […]

The ruling Fidesz party of Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, won 45 percent of the vote in general elections on April 7, trouncing the left-liberal opposition in a poll that also saw the vote share of the far right top 20 percent. “The outcome of the elections is an obvious, unambiguous mandate for us to continue what we have begun,” said Orban after the results were announced. What might this continuation entail? Over the past four years, Orban has followed a course that his critics at home and abroad say is authoritarian, centralizing and nationalist; they warn of a […]

It is now very much old news that economic inequality has risen dramatically in the United States and many other developed democracies over the past 30 years. This dramatic increase has produced a flurry of discussion over how severe the increase has been, how much of a problem inequality really is and what can and should be done about it. While inequality is resurgent as an issue in U.S. politics, it has a much longer and more prominent history in middle- and low-income countries. This is likely due to the fact that inequality in developing countries has historically been much […]

The original and most immediate rationale for redistributive land reform is that, at low levels of capital intensity, large farms operated by wage labor will be less efficient than small owner-operated ones. This has given rise to an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity that continues to be widely observed in the literature. In fact, colonial powers had often tried to restrict access to land by the local population to ensure a continued supply of cheap and relatively uneducated labor, despite the associated economic cost. In a sense, land reform is an effort to rectify this historical injustice and […]

This weekend’s first round of Afghanistan’s presidential election saw the country’s political institutions perform much better than during the 2009 ballot, while the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) provided a relatively safe and secure electoral environment. The winners may not be clear and certified until May. It seems likely that no candidate received more than half the votes, meaning that a runoff between the two leading candidates will probably occur in June. But already the results offer hope for Afghanistan’s status as a functioning democracy in which multiple candidates compete for the highest offices in elections whose outcome cannot be […]

Last month, Serbia held parliamentary elections in which the conservative and pro-EU Progressive party won a decisive majority in the legislature. In an email interview, Marlene Spoerri, U.N. officer at Independent Diplomat who has done research on democracy promotion and post-conflict statebuilding in the Western Balkans, explained what led to the victory and what comes next. WPR: What factors led to the Progressive party’s decisive victory in Serbia’s parliamentary elections? Marlene Spoerri: A number of factors contributed to the Progressive party’s victory in the March 2014 parliamentary elections. The first is the party’s pro-EU, center-right platform. Since it was formed […]

On Saturday, Afghans will go to the polls in the first round of an election that, if all goes well, will result in the first democratic transfer of presidential power in Afghanistan’s history. While the country has held two presidential and two parliamentary elections since the U.S. invasion in 2001, Saturday’s will be the first of the post-Taliban era to be secured entirely by Afghan forces. The campaign period has posed a major test for the Afghan National Security Forces, which formally assumed responsibility for Afghanistan’s security from international troops last summer. The Taliban have targeted poll workers, candidates and […]

On Sunday, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan racked up an astounding victory in municipal elections. The party’s success came despite waves of civil unrest last year, the economy taking a downturn, daily revelations about corruption in the highest echelons of government and a crackdown on online media. There are many political and socio-economic reasons for the AKP’s dominance, but in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast, Erdogan was able to count on one unexpected campaigner on his behalf: the president of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, Massoud Barzani. On Nov. 18, facing his darkest […]

When President Barack Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia last Friday, he briefly opened a window into the closest circles of power in Riyadh. One of the most striking images was that of Saudi King Abdullah breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank during his meeting with Obama. Although the king appeared animated and energetic, still sporting the jet-black goatee popular among Saudi royals, he looked puffy, and the plastic tubes taking oxygen into his nose betrayed the urgency of a royal succession process that has already gone into overdrive. It was no coincidence that Thursday, the day before Obama […]

The new foreign investment law passed unanimously last Saturday by Cuba’s National Assembly is a key component of President Raul Castro’s program to “update” the economy. Castro deemed the law so important that he called the assembly into special session to pass it rather than wait for the regularly scheduled session in July. The new law offers significantly better terms to foreign investors than the 1995 law it replaces, with the aim of boosting direct foreign investment (FDI) in Cuba’s chronically capital-poor economy. Though Cuba’s internal sector reforms have garnered more attention, it was a crisis in the external sector […]

In late February, Ecuador’s municipal elections yielded gains for the opposition in an apparent setback for President Rafael Correa. In an email interview, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue and adjunct professor of Latin American politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, explained why the opposition made gains and what’s next for Correa. WPR: What factors were involved with the Ecuadorean opposition’s victory in municipal elections in February? Michael Shifter: The Ecuadorean opposition’s victory in municipal elections on Feb. 23 was a sharp rebuke to President Rafael Correa, who campaigned heavily and effectively nationalized the vote. The results […]