Domestic Politics Archive

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka—More than eight years have passed since Sri Lanka declared the end of its nearly three-decade long civil war. Since then, the small island-nation in the Indian Ocean has made significant progress. The country has remained mostly peaceful; tourists have started arriving in droves; and investors, especially from China, have started pouring billions into Sri Lanka, given its strategic location. And yet Sri Lanka’s march toward a stable, peaceful and prosperous future is threatened by two closely related problems: its hesitant approach to dealing with the events of the past, and its reluctance to tackle emerging tensions. In […]

After a first six months spent focused on matters domestic and European, French President Emmanuel Macron has begun to travel farther afield. He is in West Africa this week, having arrived yesterday in Burkina Faso and continuing on to Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. Earlier this month he traveled to the Persian Gulf for a planned visit to the United Arab Emirates, making an unplanned stopover in Saudi Arabia on his way back to Paris. In West Africa, Macron will try, as all new French presidents must, to reset a relationship burdened by the historical legacy of colonial exploitation and postcolonial […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. In late September, Brazil’s Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of allowing religious education in public schools to be taught by people promoting their own faith, testing the country’s secular public education system. In an email interview, Simon Schwartzman, a Brazilian social scientist who has written extensively on the country’s education system and who serves on the board of the Institute for the Study of Labor and Society (IETS) in Rio de Janeiro, discusses the Supreme Court’s decision, the state of […]

Radical Islam has traditionally held little appeal for the multiethnic and multicultural population of Mauritius, though there are signs Islamist extremism it is making some inroads. A review of the government’s response offers lessons for countries where political power is divided explicitly along ethnic or religious lines. In late 2014, Mauritian intelligence services discovered that a handful of Muslims from Mauritius had traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Many of those jihadi recruits were swayed and enabled by a small yet troubling network of ideologues in the tropical island nation, which is located in […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—The deadlocked political situation in Northern Ireland shows no sign of ending, at least this side of Christmas. The region’s two main parties—the conservative Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, and left-wing, nationalist Sinn Fein—still cannot reach an agreement to restore a devolved power-sharing government, which was brought down by a domestic scandal in January. The crisis has been deepened considerably by the prospects of a British exit from the European Union that calls into question the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that ended three decades of violence between nationalists and unionists. That deal, which has […]

The drama surrounding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continues to captivate policy communities around the world. Is MBS, as the upstart royal is known, a genuine reformer or a reckless and ambitious young leader who has more power than he has wisdom? He is strongly identified with Saudi Arabia’s costly war in neighboring Yemen, the nearly six-month diplomatic standoff with Qatar and the geopolitical struggle with Iran. At home, he has spearheaded ambitious plans to open up social space, reinvent the political system and adapt the kingdom’s economic strategies for a changing world energy landscape. The rise of MBS […]

On Thursday, an assault on a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula killed 305 worshippers in what officials have called the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Egyptian history. The staggering number of victims was a sign of the shifting nature of violence in which Egypt has been mired for nearly five years. Militants in Sinai who have waged an insurgency against the government are expanding their campaign to include not just agents of the state, but a rapidly growing number of civilians. The ongoing violence has weakened the position of the military-led regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came […]

As Zimbabwe finally enters the post-Robert Mugabe era, neighboring South Africa has an opportunity to play a constructive role in helping put in place a democratic roadmap. Despite being the dominant regional power and current chair of the 16-nation Southern African Development Community, or SADC, South Africa has, for too long, essentially endorsed the disastrous status quo in Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s unexpected ouster by the military should push South Africa to change course, making its Zimbabwe policy more in line with the values that underpin the South African constitution and inform the founding charters of the African Union and the SADC—though […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss what German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s precarious position in Berlin means for the European Union and the prospects for French President Emmanuel Macron’s own reform agenda. For the Report, James Bargent talks with Andrew Green about Colombia’s other peace process with the ELN guerrilla group and why it might prove even more challenging than the talks that recently ended the long war with the FARC insurgency. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series on the Islamic State after the fall of Raqqa and the outlook for Syria and its neighbors. The Syrian civil war is drawing to a close, at least in the way that the traditional conflict dynamics have been understood since 2011. The rebel opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in disarray and confined to relatively small patches of disconnected territory across the country, while the self-proclaimed Islamic State is on its last breath, pushed out of its base in the city of Raqqa and squeezed in eastern Syria. Only […]

Negotiations to form a coalition government in Germany broke down this week, leaving Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the country, in a state of suspended animation two months after an inconclusive general election. The possible ways forward include Merkel continuing as chancellor at the head of a minority government, or new elections. Opinion polls, however, suggest that a fresh round of voting would do nothing to significantly alter the electoral outcome or resolve the current impasse, opening what could be an extended period of political uncertainty in a country long known for its stability. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union suffered a drop […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. In September, Ghana’s government implemented two significant education reform policies, making secondary education free and requiring new licensing requirements for teachers. Despite the progressive steps, previous attempts at education reform have not always achieved the desired results, and the latest one is already showing similar signs of struggle. In an email interview, Veronica Dzeagu, the national coordinator for the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition, a network of civil society groups and educational research institutions, discusses the state of the country’s education […]

MEDELLIN, Colombia—The seven men arrived in the tiny hamlet of Carra, in the western Colombian state of Choco, just as darkness was falling on the evening of March 25. They were dressed in camouflage and were armed with rifles. According to witnesses, on their arms they wore bands bearing three letters: ELN, which stands for Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, the National Liberation Army. Witnesses described how they shouted, threatened, smashed up boats and kicked over tables. They called the terrified residents “paracos”—slang for paramilitaries—as they searched the houses. And then they raised their rifles and opened fire. Four people died […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—The first war crimes tribunal to be established since the military court in Nuremberg after World War II will close its doors at the end of the year, and with it, a chapter of international criminal justice will end. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established by the United Nations in May 1993 while the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were raging. It would adjudicate the worst crimes seen in Europe in half a century. The jurisprudence set since then has paved the way for other countries to adjudicate similar crimes, and for the […]

On Nov. 19, Greek primary voters elected Fofi Gennimata to head a new alliance of the fractured center-left that was once united by the dominant PASOK party. Using an open primary system, four parties allowed all Greek citizens to choose from a slate of candidates competing for the authority to decide what the new unified party would look like. In an email interview, Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, an associate professor of political science at the University of Athens, describes what gave rise to the alliance of center-left parties, how it will contend with the radical left Syriza party that leads the […]

Robert Mugabe became Zimbabwe’s prime minister in 1980 in the country’s first multiracial elections, after it finally won its independence from British rule. He has served as president or prime minister of the country ever since. Roughly 85 percent of Zimbabwe’s population has never known another leader. Despite his frail health and various opposition movements over the years, Mugabe has repeatedly found a way to hold on to power. Until last week. Early Wednesday morning, shortly after tanks started appearing on the streets in and near Harare, members of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces went on the national broadcaster, ZBC, to […]

On Nov. 2, Iceland’s president, Gudni Johannesson, asked the leader of the Left-Green Movement, Katrin Jakobsdottir, to form a government, even though the party came in second to the incumbent Independence Party in parliamentary elections late last month. After a first attempt at forming a coalition government failed, Jakobsdottir has now entered into talks with the centrist Progressive Party and the conservative Independence Party, which led the previous coalition government. In an email interview, Olafur Th. Hardarson, a professor of political science specializing in Icelandic elections at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, discusses the election results, the coalition talks […]