Domestic Politics Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about workers’ rights in various countries around the world. When Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines in May 2016, the strongman who has made a name for himself in his ruthless war on drugs and crime also promised to deliver vast economic changes by restructuring the country’s labor economy. Millions of Filipino workers suffer from the precariousness of temporary, fix-termed contracts that keep them from enjoying the benefits of regular employment. In this email interview, Dr. Aries A. Arugay, associate professor of political science at the University […]

Kenyans breathed a sigh of relief this week. Despite a bitter presidential election, including isolated violence, their worst fears were not realized. Although friction still lingers, Kenya’s election on Aug. 8 went relatively smoothly and was praised by teams of election monitors from the African Union, the United States and the European Union. Memories of the 2007 elections, when widespread electoral fraud and a disputed outcome led to chaos, are still fresh in the minds of Kenyans. More than 1,000 people died in that post-election violence; hundreds of thousands were displaced. There was no repeat this year, despite a few […]

Three years ago, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, Oman’s 76-year-old ruler, left for an eight-month stint of medical treatment in Germany. It wouldn’t be his last. Since then, the sultan’s continued deteriorating health and lack of a clear heir—he has no children and has kept any plans for a successor vague—have fueled a succession debate both within Oman and among its neighbors. Now, amid the significant rift in the Gulf resulting from the Saudi- and Emirati-led blockade of Qatar, the potential for a looming succession crisis in Oman could affect not just domestic stability in the Gulf’s quietest state, […]

Except in times of war, few politicians have achieved great electoral success by telling voters to sacrifice living standards today for the sake of a better tomorrow. But in a surprising turn of events, voters in Argentina have just given an unexpected endorsement to this message, which has been the guiding logic behind the anti-populist policies of President Mauricio Macri. On Sunday, Argentina held primary elections ahead of the Oct. 22 midterm legislative polls. It wasn’t supposed to be a very momentous event, but the results, as it happened, came loaded with significance. Voters didn’t just give a boost to […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. While Moldova’s LGBT community enjoys some legal protection against discrimination, public perceptions remain negative, and domestic proponents of a pro-Russian agenda have launched a propaganda campaign that has left LGBT people more and more exposed. Their battle is increasingly focusing on restrictions on their use of media and information platforms to mobilize for their rights. In an email interview, Anastasia Danilova, executive director of the GENDERDOC-M Information Center, Moldova’s only LGBT rights organization, describes the increasingly hostile environment […]

For years, Hong Kong’s education system has been a paragon of academic achievement, consistently ranked among the leading systems in the world. Yet Hong Kong’s education policy is far from perfect, and its highly competitive environment has produced problems of its own. Moreover, Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China has created an identity dilemma and limited its potential as an education hub. In an email interview, Bob Adamson, chair professor of Curriculum Reform at the Education University of Hong Kong and UNESCO chairholder in TVET and Lifelong Learning, explains the development of Hong Kong’s education system, what the choice of […]

On July 28, Pakistan’s highest court ruled that corruption allegations disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from serving in office, forcing him to resign. The ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), quickly announced a succession plan: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a close Sharif ally, would be appointed prime minister until a successor was found to serve out Sharif’s term, which ends next year. After winning a parliamentary by-election—a formality in a PML-N-dominated legislature—Abbasi took office on Aug. 1. Soon after, the government announced that Abbasi himself would serve out Sharif’s term. Initially, all seemed to be going swimmingly with the transition. […]

For the approximately 150 journalists and opinion leaders gathered in Mexico City’s Casa Lamm Cultural Center, the evening of July 15 was a difficult one. They came together to pay homage to the life and work of Javier Valdez Cardenas, one of the country’s most celebrated investigative reporters, who had been brutally murdered two months earlier in Culiacan, the capital of the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa. The event—organized by press freedom groups the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, and Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym, RSF—was a solemn affair. A parade of speakers read from Valdez’s […]

“There is a question mark over Poland’s European future today,” former Polish Prime Minister and current European Council President Donald Tusk said earlier this month in a remarkable statement for someone intimately connected with both Warsaw and Brussels. His comments came as Poland’s conservative government, which regards Tusk as its archenemy, showed little sign of backing off its populist drive to overhaul the country, despite international pressure and vocal domestic opposition. Last month, tens of thousands of Poles took to the streets to protest deeply controversial reforms to the judiciary that critics say would have handed power over the system […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. Members of Nepal’s LGBT community were once openly derided as “social pollutants,” but now enjoy social and political rights—including legal recognition of a third gender—that put the country leagues ahead of much of the rest of the world. The past decade has proved critical in that evolution, as LGBT activists won significant victories in Nepal’s courts. In an email interview, Kyle Knight, a researcher with the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, explains how LGBT activists in […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the rhetoric and reality of the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. For the Report, Thorgils Jonsson talks with Peter Dörrie about Iceland’s path back from economic disaster, and whether today’s economic boom is different than the last one. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on WPR, please think about supporting our work by subscribing. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Iceland Is Booming Again. Has It Learned Anything […]

With Jose Eduardo dos Santos stepping down after 38 years in power, there is little expectation in Angola of fair and free elections later this month. The ruling party headed by dos Santos has taken several steps to ensure its grip on power, stacking the deck against opposition parties and creating an election environment with little oversight or transparency. In an email interview, Dr. Sylvia Croese, a research fellow at the African Centre for Cities and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, describes the landscape in the runup to the elections, the pessimistic mood of civil […]

Last Saturday, Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s longtime opposition leader and head of the Movement for Democratic Change party, announced a new coalition intended to finally topple President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country since it attained independence in 1980. The grouping, known as MDC Alliance, features Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti, government critics who had previously broken ranks with Tsvangirai but now say they’re determined to join forces to defeat Mugabe in elections planned for next year. “We owe it to the thousands of Zimbabweans to make sure that in our lifetime we can remove the beast called ZANU-PF,” Biti […]

Two countries in South America are currently working on writing new constitutions, and while one is showcasing its democratic credentials, the other continues its slide deeper into an economic and political crisis. Chile has spent years consulting its citizens and probing lawmakers across the country in preparation for replacing a charter that was written in secret under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet nearly 40 years ago. Venezuela, meanwhile, will replace one controversial constitution—which was adopted in 1999 under the late President Hugo Chavez, a revolutionary to his supporters, and an illiberal authoritarian to his critics—with another that could be drafted […]

Since June, Singapore has been gripped by a public spat between the three children of the city-state’s revered founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, over the future of a family home. While some have downplayed the episode—which involves Singapore’s current prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, Lee’s eldest son—as a mere family feud, in reality the dispute reflects broader concerns about the future of Singapore’s politics and the government’s ability to manage domestic and foreign policy changes in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era. The heart of the dispute is technically over what to do with a bungalow at 38 Oxley Road, in […]

A data breach scandal involving the government’s failure to safeguard information from access by private contractors has ended the tenure of top ministers in Sweden’s government and threatened to bring down the ruling coalition. The scandal has also exposed the precariousness of the country’s newly fractured political system. In an email interview, Jonas Hinnfors, professor of political science at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, explains the causes and implications of the scandal, and how a divided political system may or may not allow the ruling coalition to survive. WPR: What is the nature of the so-called data breach scandal, when did […]

It’s been quite the turnaround. Almost nine years after Iceland, a country with just over 300,000 inhabitants, became the poster child for the 2008 global financial crisis, many indicators show the economy is doing better than ever. After the 2008 crash, Icelanders engaged in extensive debates about what had precipitated the crisis and how best to prevent such devastation from occurring again. Many still fear another crisis is around the corner, wondering whether it’s “2007 all over again,” while others believe a “New Iceland” has freed itself from the conditions that led to the last crash. Listen to Thorgils Jonsson […]