Domestic Politics Archive

Denmark became the third Nordic country to form a center-left government this year after the Social Democratic Party won elections in June. The Social Democrats’ leader, Mette Fredericksen, became the country’s youngest prime minister at the age of 41, forming a one-party minority government with the support of three other left-leaning parties. Social democratic parties have also prevailed in elections in Sweden and Finland this year, seemingly bucking a continent-wide populist trend. But in Denmark, the Social Democratic Party won largely due to its sharp rightward turn on immigration, which allowed it to siphon off votes from the right-wing Danish […]

The peace agreement signed recently in Mozambique by President Filipe Nyusi and the head of the former rebel group Renamo, now a political party, addresses the two critical issues that have festered since an accord in 1992 never fully ended the country’s civil war. The deal includes provisions for the full demobilization of Renamo fighters, with the integration of selected Renamo personnel into the armed forces, and the decentralization of political power. It is the second attempt to end renewed conflict between rebels and the government since 1992, following an earlier agreement in 2014 that was supposed to end a […]

Two weeks after the release of new government data showing a sharp rise in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, hundreds of indigenous women occupied a government building in Brasilia on Tuesday to protest what they called President Jair Bolsonaro’s “genocidal” environmental policies targeting their communities. The following day, a contingent of over 1,000 indigenous women joined some 100,000 other demonstrators in Brazil’s Women’s March on the streets of the capital. “We are all warriors on the front lines of this struggle against today’s political situation, which is so adverse to our peoples,” said Sonia Guajajara, who works with the organization […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on immigration and integration policy around the world. The kingdom is looking to address high youth unemployment by pushing for the "Saudization" of certain industries, particularly in the private sector. Saudi Arabia announced plans late last month to ban foreign workers from certain jobs in the hospitality sector. The move is the latest in a series of policy shifts designed to tackle the kingdom’s high unemployment rate by boosting private sector hiring for Saudi citizens, after many years of relying on cheap foreign labor. But many analysts are skeptical that […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Frederick Deknatel and Laura Weiss talk about President Donald Trump’s decision to postpone a new round of tariffs on China, and what it says about his subordination of U.S. foreign policy to the needs of his reelection campaign. They also discussed the challenges facing newly elected Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s faltering attempt to force new elections in Italy. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get […]

Rarely has the world seen a single-day market crash like the one in Argentina this week. Investors stampeded for the exits Monday, devastating markets for Argentina’s stocks, bonds and currency, following the outcome of a primary election that strongly suggested President Mauricio Macri will lose his reelection bid. At one point, Argentina’s Merval index had dropped a staggering 48 percent, the second-biggest single-day loss anywhere in the past 70 years. When the day was over, the Merval had lost more than a third of its value, bonds had fallen 20 percent and the peso had crashed to new record lows. […]

He died in a hospital in Phnom Penh, 93 years-old and still portraying himself as a Cambodian hero. Nuon Chea was the senior-most surviving member of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, having served as Brother No. 2, as he was known, under its leader Pol Pot. He was widely seen as one of the major planners of the regime’s rapid, brutal overhaul of Cambodian society from 1975 to 1979, which included emptying Phnom Penh of citizens, murdering a sizable portion of the population, and torturing and killing some 14,000 people at an infamous prison called Tuol Sleng. Nuon Chea was also […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. “After months of prolonged resistance, we are frightened, angry and exhausted.” The contrite message, part of a lengthy apology sent to reporters Wednesday and signed “from Hong Kong protesters seeking democracy and freedom,” came after four days of demonstrations at Hong Kong International Airport that caused hundreds of flight cancellations and several violent incidents. The protests were largely peaceful until Tuesday, when scuffles broke out between passengers and demonstrators, who had blocked the departure gates. Later that evening, protesters […]

There is a simple metric that many will use to judge the performance of Guatemala’s next president: Can he stop the exodus of people fleeing the country? Alejandro Giammattei, the leader of the right-wing Vamos party who won Sunday’s runoff convincingly over Sandra Torres of the center-left National Unity of Hope party, says he has a plan. But there are many reasons to be skeptical. According to local estimates, nearly 250,000 Guatemalans left their country in the first half of this year, equivalent to 1.5 percent of the population of some 17 million, and most of them headed for the […]

A drive to the airport in Shanghai from an outlying suburb earlier this week revealed an entirely new city to me. Brand new high-rise apartments rose in thick clusters in the near distance, as new access roads zigged, zagged and looped around new train and subway stations. Mine was not the usual surprise of newcomers to this city, but rather that of someone who had lived there for six years, up until 2009. Shanghai was already plenty big and new and physically impressive then. But to look at the way entirely new zones—from Pudong in the east to the southwestern […]

NEWRY, Northern Ireland—One of the main attractions at the local museum in Newry, a bustling market town some 40 miles south of Belfast, is an old wooden sign. Painted on a chalky white background, its tall red letters proclaim in Irish, then in English: “Custaim: Stad, Customs: Stop.” For decades, this sign stood on the road between Newry, in Northern Ireland, and Dundalk, in the Republic of Ireland, demarking the twisting, 500-kilometer border between the two countries. The sign was taken down when Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the European Union’s single market in 1993. By the time the […]

Newly installed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is eager to negotiate a trade deal with the United States. But should he be? And what price is he willing to pay? Other countries—China, Japan and the U.K.’s neighbors in the European Union—are all negotiating with the U.S. under duress. They seem to be doing their best to stall things for as long as possible in the hope that President Donald Trump won’t be reelected next year. By contrast, British International Trade Secretary Liz Truss and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab came to Washington last week to push for trade negotiations to start […]

In a sudden move on Aug. 5, India’s government announced it was eliminating the special, semiautonomous status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The decision is a watershed moment in the 72-year-long standoff between India and Pakistan over control of the Kashmir region, as well as for the Kashmiri peoples’ long struggle for political autonomy. It opens an uncertain new chapter in Indian-administered Kashmir, with reverberations far beyond its contested borders. The historic arrangement under which Jammu and Kashmir was to have a greater degree of political autonomy than other Indian […]

Since 2016, protesters from New Zealand’s indigenous Māori population have occupied a plot of land at Ihumātao, near Auckland, to prevent construction of a housing development.* The land was confiscated from its original Māori inhabitants in the 19th century, and protesters are demanding that it be incorporated into a nearby public reserve. The standoff intensified last month after police unsuccessfully tried to evict the protesters, and it could damage Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s standing among the Māori population if it is not resolved peacefully. In an email interview with WPR, Grant Duncan, a professor of political studies at Massey University’s […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. With the signing of a peace agreement this week, Mozambique’s decades-long internal struggle might finally be nearing its end. The agreement between the country’s two rival political parties—Frelimo, which has controlled the government since independence in 1975, and the former guerilla movement Renamo—comes just two months before national elections. The anti-communist Renamo rebels launched a 15-year war against Frelimo’s Marxist government shortly after Mozambique achieved its independence from Portugal in 1975. The conflict was notoriously brutal and also spurred a famine, killing […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Elliot Waldman, talk about North Korea’s recent string of short-range ballistic missile tests, the Trump administration’s less-than-forceful response, and what that says about the broader dysfunction plaguing the U.S. intelligence and foreign policy communities. They also discuss the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Algeria, which are now in their 25th week. As Francisco Serrano notes in his in-depth report for WPR this week, the outlook for the country’s protest movement remains unclear, given the risks that Algeria’s military leaders could still revert to form and […]

Even longtime observers of Sudan didn’t predict the collapse of President Omar al-Bashir’s government when protests against his economic policies began late last year. Widespread discontent and a crumbling economy, though, eventually proved to be too much for his entrenched but beleaguered regime. Since Bashir was forced out of power in April, the Transitional Military Council running the country has presided over a massacre of civilian protesters in Khartoum. Despite some recent progress in negotiations between the generals and protest leaders who are eager to begin a democratic transition, the situation remains fraught and exposed to the meddling of outside […]