Domestic Politics Archive

In picking a topic for this week’s column, I decided to write about an institution that is deeply embedded in the structure of daily life as we know it. Yet it is deeply flawed, in ways that many observers from across the political spectrum have acknowledged for quite some time: It is bloated, sclerotic, overly bureaucratic and inadequately representative of society’s less privileged. Worse still, it is detached from the everyday life of those under its watch and paralyzed by seemingly insurmountable political divisions. Similarly, there is a general consensus on the necessary reforms that would make this institution more […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. In 2008, Rwanda announced that it was switching the language of scholastic instruction from French to English. The move was implemented rapidly, and with decidedly mixed success—at least at first. In an email interview, Maria Ambrozy, a researcher with the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London, explains the reason for the change and its effects. WPR: What is the current state of Rwanda’s education system, and what are some of the biggest barriers to improving […]

In the information age, we can all access more information than we can absorb, so the choices we make about what sources to trust may make us dumber, not smarter. U.S. President Donald Trump is a prime example of a very casual approach to accessing information, more often from social media rather than subject-matter experts, whose influence on public policy is declining. As a result, leaders are more likely to make poor choices in responding to the international challenges they face. Watching Trump abruptly change his positions as he is exposed to more authoritative information about world problems is illustrative […]

Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, the government has kept yearly records of the state of national unity, issuing a report every September that takes stock of economic, social and institutional progress east of the Elbe River. In its 2016 report, the focus was more on socio-political, rather than economic, developments in the region. “We have achieved a lot in eastern Germany in the last 26 years,” said government spokesperson Iris Gleicke in Berlin last September as she presented the findings of the annual report. But, she added, “we are very concerned about the right-wing extremism, xenophobia and intolerance […]

Last month, former resistance fighter Francisco Guterres won an election to become East Timor’s next president. The vote was the third since factional fighting within the military triggered widespread violence in 2006, leading to a military intervention headed by Australia. In an email interview, Damien Kingsbury, professor of international politics at Deakin University in Australia, discusses how the vote unfolded and what the results mean for legislative elections planned for July. WPR: How did the substance of this campaign compare to past campaigns, and what does that say about how the country is evolving more than a decade after the […]

On Sunday, April 2, Ecuadoreans returned to the polls to elect their president in a second round of voting after a highly contentious campaign season. During the first-round ballot, former Vice President Lenin Moreno won 39.2 percent of the vote, just shy of the 40 percent required to avoid a runoff. His challenger in the second round was banker Guillermo Lasso, who won approximately 28 percent of the first-round vote. The campaign for the second round was divisive and at times became a referendum on controversial outgoing president, Rafael Correa. Voters struggled to muster excitement for either candidate. In fact, […]

Is Francois Hollande the most underrated statesman of his generation? The question might at first glance seem like a mean jibe. The French president is almost a forgotten man these days. His domestic approval ratings were so dire that he chose not to run for a second term. French voters will start the two-round process of selecting his successor next weekend. The outcome is disturbingly unclear, and the nationalist Marine Le Pen could be the ultimate victor. Even if France picks a more palatable president, Hollande’s exit marks a greater loss for global diplomacy than most analysts recognize. France has […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, has made education reform a central component of her strategy to combat inequality. But her approach has been a frequent source of controversy, and with a presidential election later this year, it is likely to become a central issue in the campaign. In an email interview, Kirsten Sehnbruch, director of the Institute of Public Policy at the Universidad Diego Portales, research associate of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion and affiliated lecturer at the University […]

On Thursday, Palestinian security forces entered the Ain el-Hilweh camp for Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon, putting an end to a week of clashes involving Sunni Islamist militants that killed an estimated seven and injured dozens. The violence broke out last Friday, when a Palestinian security force met resistance from fighters affiliated with Bilal Badr—a radical Islamist with a strong foothold in Ain el-Hilweh—while attempting to deploy throughout the camp. In response, Fatah, the party that has controlled the Palestinian Authority since 1993, launched an offensive targeting Badr’s positions. Jihadi groups aren’t a new phenomenon in Palestinian camps in Lebanon, […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and associate editor Robbie Corey-Boulet discuss Rex Tillerson’s sit-down with Vladimir Putin and the loaded protocol of high-level diplomatic meetings. For the Report, Alev Scott talks with Peter Dörrie about how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed a war on terror into a crackdown on all dissent and what’s at stake in this weekend’s constitutional referendum. If you’d like to support our free podcast through patron pledges, Patreon is an online service that will allow you to do so. To find out about the benefits you can get through pledging […]

Last Friday, thousands of Senegalese turned out for a protest at Dakar’s central Obelisk Square to vent their anger with President Macky Sall, who is widely hailed abroad as an effective democratic reformer. The protesters, many of them dressed in black, were responding to a call from a collective of rappers and journalists known as “Y’en a marre”—meaning “Fed Up” in French—that in 2011 orchestrated massive demonstrations against the bid by then-President Abdoulaye Wade to run for a third term. The group’s ability to mobilize Senegalese youth helped Sall defeat Wade in an election the following year, but on Friday […]

A year ago, Jamaican voters, tired of years of severe austerity measures, unexpectedly ushered in a new government. The left-leaning People’s National Party (PNP), which had held power for much of the past 25 years, was widely predicted to win. Instead, the conservative Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) won by a slim margin, buoyed by a campaign platform of “prosperity for all,” in part through a promised tax break for a large swath of lower-income workers. The biggest concern at the time was that the JLP would derail Jamaica’s hard-won gains in repaying debts to the International Monetary Fund for short-term […]

Have the events of the past few weeks in South Africa provided the long-awaited tipping point for President Jacob Zuma’s dysfunctional presidency? His reckless sacking late last month of respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan was driven not by any economic logic, but by narrow political and financial ambition. It has helped unite previously disparate forces against Zuma and brought closer the prospect—though not the guarantee—of his removal. This emerging opposition goes well beyond the official opposition parties and now embraces a large section of the ruling African National Congress itself. Last year over 100 ANC veterans called for Zuma’s resignation, […]

It is perhaps apt that the man who brought a desperately needed reprieve to Latin America’s left is named Lenin. Lenin Moreno, the winner of the April 2 presidential election in Ecuador, now has the daunting task of not only moving his country forward, but salvaging the once-promising but now crumbling project of the left in South America. Moreno, to be sure, is no Bolshevik, but his victory is being hailed by anxious socialists in the region as the start of a comeback. The outgoing Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa, declared that his protégé’s win marked an “end to that change,” […]

In late March, lawmakers in Ethiopia voted unanimously to extend the country’s state of emergency for four more months. The emergency was first imposed last October as violence escalated following more than a year of anti-government protests. The protests have largely occurred in the Oromia and Amhara regions, the homelands of the country’s two biggest ethnic groups who complain of being marginalized by the central government. In an email interview, William Davison, an Addis Ababa-based freelance journalist and WPR contributor, gives an update on the crisis and the government’s response. WPR: How has the crisis in Ethiopia evolved since last […]

It is not very often that a candidate country admonishes the organization it wants to join. Yet that is the story in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone on a series of tirades against the Netherlands, Germany and the European Union at large ahead of a referendum this weekend on constitutional changes that would grant Erdogan more powers and transform Turkey’s government from a parliamentary to a presidential system. Turkey has been stuck in accession talks with the EU for over a decade. Erdogan’s anti-EU streak began with attacks early last month against the Netherlands, which he called […]

Over the past 18 months, terrorist attacks in Turkey have claimed over 400 lives, a dramatic increase that put pressure on authorities to take action. But the approach that Turkish authorities adopted has raised more concerns than it addressed: On Feb. 1, a month after a gunman affiliated with the so-called Islamic State killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Eve, the Supreme Council of Radio and Television, or RTUK, issued a notice to stations that effectively banned reporting on domestic terror. News outlets can no longer mention where a terrorist attack took place or who might […]