Domestic Politics Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss Turkey’s interests and agenda in the Syrian civil war. For the Report, Ciara Long talks with Peter Dörrie about the impact of austerity on higher education and social mobility in Brazil. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Russia and Turkey Move Closer, but Can Erdogan Survive Putin’s Embrace? In Colombia, the Long Journey to Implementing Peace With the FARC Begins Does Any Party in South Sudan Have the Will to Prevent Genocide? Brazil’s Cuts to Higher Education Dash Hopes for […]

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak visited China last month, where he signed a series of deals, including a significant defense agreement, raising concerns that Malaysia could be “separating” from its partnership with the United States. In an email interview, Yang Razali Kassim, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, discusses Malaysia’s ties with China. WPR: What is the nature and extent of economic and military ties between Malaysia and China, how have ties evolved in recent years, and what impact has the South China Sea disputes had on them? Yang Razali Kassim: Economic ties […]

U.S. policy on Israel almost always manages to divide and stoke controversy, and President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel is no exception. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer with no diplomatic experience and a strong supporter of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has generated outrage on the left and exaltation on the right—in both the United States and Israel. Friedman has overtly rejected any prospects for a two-state solution and demonized American Jews critical of Israeli policy. He once called members of J Street—a self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” progressive lobbying group—“worse than kapos,” the term […]

Bill English was chosen on Dec. 12 to be New Zealand’s new prime minister after John Key, who had led the National Party to three election victories since 2008, surprised the country by stepping down. In an email interview, Jon Johansson, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, discusses New Zealand politics. WPR: What have been John Key’s major domestic and foreign policy accomplishments, and where has his record been less successful? Jon Johansson: Key’s major domestic legacy achievements include his crisis leadership following the Christchurch earthquakes in 2010 and 2011; his government’s progress in advancing historical Treaty of Waitangi claims […]

The paint around the front doors of the law building at the Federal University of Rio de Janiero (UFRJ) is flaking, but the inside remains pristine. Yellow walls stretch upward to meet high ceilings, while sizeable busts and oil portraits of the faculty’s founders stare watchfully on. But recently, they have been watching something unusual. Every evening since early November, 25 students have been sleeping in tents inside the faculty building in protest of a constitutional amendment, PEC 55, which was being reviewed by the government. On Dec. 13, it was approved, sparking protests across the country. Brazilians, and especially […]

A bomb ripped through a church in central Cairo last week, killing at least 26 people in the most brutal and brazen attack on Egypt’s Coptic Christian community in years. The self-declared Islamic State, which has been waging an insurgency against the government in the Sinai Peninsula since 2014, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, the seat of the Egyptian Orthodox Church. It vowed to escalate what it called a “war on polytheism,” a sign that it seeks to stoke more sectarian violence in Egypt and target the country’s beleaguered Coptic minority. The attack […]

Leaders of Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, wearing sport jackets and khakis against the high-altitude chill, attended meetings in Bogota last week, a city they hadn’t seen in decades, if ever. In Colombia, unlike anywhere else in the world in 2016, a once-intractable conflict has ended. The peace accord between the government and the FARC guerrillas, which puts an end to 52 years of fighting, cleared one of its last formal hurdles on Dec. 13. Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that laws needed to implement the accord’s commitments could be passed in a matter of weeks using a […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss Russia’s efforts to reassert itself as a global power and whether or not Moscow is succeeding. For the Report, JJ Robinson talks with Peter Dörrie about the many problems facing the Maldives. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Even With Aleppo’s Fall, Syria’s Assad Will Keep Looking Over His Shoulder What Could Trump’s Russia Policy Actually Look Like? Why Climate Change Is the Least of the Maldives’ Worries Will ‘Lip Service’ Reforms End Up Changing Morocco’s Politics? Is Macri’s Moment […]

The Syrian civil war has undeniably reached a turning point. Syrian government forces and their allies have routed the rebels in the eastern side of the city of Aleppo, once the country’s largest and most thriving metropolis. Aleppo lies in ruins, its population terrified by a relentless assault by the Syrian army, with the support of Russia, Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah and other Shiite forces organized and backed by Iran. The eastern districts of Aleppo had been under rebel control since 2012. Their fall marks the most significant setback suffered by the forces seeking an end to the dictatorship of […]

Is Donald Trump crazy, or is he crazy like a fox? Is he singularly ill-suited for the presidency, or a deftly intuitive negotiator adept at throwing his adversaries off-balance? Is he genuinely clueless about the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy and the international order in which it operates, with no curiosity to learn about them? Or is he cleverly manipulating the widespread perception of his ignorance to his advantage? As with most things having to do with the U.S. president-elect’s foreign policy, these questions remain unanswerable. But in trying to answer them, we are left not only with uncertainty, but […]

Mauricio Macri assumed the presidency of Argentina a little over a year ago, on Dec. 10, 2015, intent on correcting years of mistakes by his predecessors and eager to cement his place as a leader of significance. While he has largely succeeded in the first goal, the second remains stubbornly out of reach, and efforts to build an enduring legacy will only grow more complicated in the years to come. Macri’s surprising victory in the 2015 election—polls initially showed him likely to lose outright in October’s first round of voting—ended 12 years of rule by Nestor Kirchner and his wife, […]

On the morning of Aug. 17, 2014, an officer in the special operations section of the Maldives police force heard the beep of an incoming message from his cell phone. It was from Ahmed Adeeb, who at the time was the country’s tourism minister. “You guys need to focus on this auditor general,” he wrote in his message, referring to Ibrahim Niyaz, who had been investigating corruption in the country’s tourism marketing authority, the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC). “No worries,” the officer texted back. “Maybe we need to light up his office, as he is continuously making […]

Over four months on from Britain’s referendum on whether or not to remain a member of the European Union, what exactly Brexit will look like is still not any clearer. There has been no shortage of claims and counter-claims, posturing and rhetoric. The debate, if an exercise in guessing can be called that, has focused on the degree to which the United Kingdom will be able to have access to the single market. This will depend on its acceptance of the four freedoms—movement of people, capital, goods and services—as consistently emphasized by EU and member state officials, yet dismissed as […]

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned Wednesday after nearly 60 percent of voters rejected a referendum Sunday on a series of changes to the constitution that Renzi had staked his premiership on. The referendum’s failure and the resignation of the brash prime minister have plunged Italy into political and economic uncertainty, leading many to speculate about Italy’s future in the eurozone and the strength of populist movements across Europe. Renzi said the constitutional reforms would make Italy a more governable country by reducing the size and power of the Italian Senate, the upper house of parliament, and empowering the lower […]

Brazil, the embattled South American nation that has seen its fortunes rise and fall dramatically in the past few years, is once again looking like a country that foreshadows major global trends. This time, it is flashing warning signs about the coming battles in the worldwide campaign against corruption. For the past few years, Brazil has been in the news for its successes in rooting out embezzlement and bribery schemes involving the country’s industrial giants and its political class. But last week, Brazil’s corruption-plagued Chamber of Deputies took a controversial late-night vote. Rewriting an anti-corruption bill into one that would […]

Editor’s note: This article is the first in an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries across the globe. Though Sweden has one of the lowest rates of income inequality in the world, it is experiencing a wave of anti-establishment nationalism similar to what has struck much of Europe and the United States, fueled in large part by a backlash against immigration. In an email interview, Daniel Waldenström, a visiting professor at the Paris School of Economics, discusses income inequality in Sweden. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in Sweden, what are the […]

For years, Costa Rica has been a Latin American success story. The country’s democratic institutions and attention to good governance have enabled its resource-poor economy to thrive in a dangerous part of the world. The country overachieves on various measures of prosperity, with its ranking on indices such as economic quality, business environment, governance, education, health, personal freedom, social capital and the natural environment above the norm for countries at a similar level of development and wealth—and often considerably so. In terms of overall economic growth, data from the International Monetary Fund show the economy expanded at a steady rate […]