Domestic Politics Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. In 2000, the wealthiest 1 percent of Turks owned 38 percent of Turkey’s total wealth. Today, despite a decade and a half of solid economic growth, the top 1 percent controls around 55 percent of total wealth. In an email interview, Aysen Candas, an associate professor at Bogazici University, discusses income inequality in Turkey. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in Turkey, what are the latest trends in terms of increasing or lessening inequality, and […]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—For decades, Swedes have taken pride in providing a safe haven to the world’s huddled masses. Their country took in 163,000 refugees in 2015 alone. That equaled about 1.6 percent of Sweden’s population, an intake of refugees far higher than most of Europe, both in absolute terms and per capita. But times have changed. Unlike new arrivals who were often previously awarded permanent residency, the vast majority of asylum-seekers who have arrived since November 2015 are only eligible for a temporary permit to stay in Sweden. The government stated at the time of this policy shift that it aimed […]

In 1987, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika was loosening the screws on free enterprise, high-school teacher Bronislav Zeltserman opened a new teaching center in Riga, the capital of what was then the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. In a country receptive to new ideas for the first time since the 1950s, Zeltserman hoped to develop academic thinking and rear a new generation of students connected to the West. Tapping into the spirit of the times, he called his project “Experiment.” The Soviet Union collapsed four years later, in 1991. Today, the small Baltic nation […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. In late December, Nigeria’s top Muslim cleric called on lawmakers to reject a bill currently under debate in the National Assembly that would allow women the right to inherit family wealth and property, saying it goes against the teachings of the Quran. In an email interview, Ngozi Odiaka, a lecturer at Afe-Babalola University in Nigeria, discusses women’s rights in Nigeria. WPR: What is the current status of gender equality and women’s rights in Nigeria? […]