Domestic Politics Archive

Since reports of a novel coronavirus outbreak in China emerged around the new year, the lion’s share of attention has focused on immediate efforts to contain and respond to the pathogen that has now infected millions around the world and killed nearly 300,000 people, according to official counts. As the initial wave crests in many countries, observers are debating how the pandemic might reshape the world order, including prospects for international cooperation. Some anticipate accelerated U.S. decline and the advent of a more multipolar world. Others predict a deepening authoritarian turn worldwide, with an emboldened China atop the global standings. […]

The announcement in late April that Guinea-Bissau’s prime minister, Nuno Gomes Nabiam, and four other senior government officials had tested positive for the coronavirus was just the latest crisis for the fragile West African state. Guinea-Bissau has experienced four coups—the most recent one in 2012—and 16 attempted coups since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974. More recently, the country has been mired in instability since a disputed second-round presidential election last December. The National Electoral Commission has declared that Umaro Sissoco Embalo, a retired military officer and former prime minister, won that poll with 53.6 percent of the vote. […]

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced this week that Japan’s state of emergency will continue until the end of May, as the country struggles with a fresh wave of coronavirus cases. Japanese authorities initially appeared to have gotten their outbreak under control shortly after reporting the first case in mid-January. But after new infections spiked last month, overwhelming health care facilities, Abe declared a national emergency. Roughly 16,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed so far, with over 560 deaths, but many experts say the lack of widespread testing for the virus makes the true scale of the outbreak in Japan […]

China has made concerted attempts recently to rewrite the global narrative about the coronavirus pandemic, especially its own lack of transparency about the early outbreak in Wuhan, in order to project an image of itself as a responsible global power. It has shipped medical supplies to help countries around the world contain the virus’s spread, and has launched a far-reaching disinformation campaign about the origins of the contagion and China’s response to it. Europe has been at the heart of these efforts. Chinese state media outlets have insinuated that Italy was the source of the novel coronavirus, while Beijing has […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Steven Metz is filling in for Candace Rondeaux this week. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the United States could have decided that its great fight against totalitarianism was finally over. America could have downsized its involvement in all but the most vital parts of the world, lessened its dependence on imported energy supplies, demilitarized its global strategy and abandoned the quest for primacy. But it did not. By then, Americans had become addicted to primacy, convinced that a militarized form of global leadership was both vital and sustainable. All of this no […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the big questions hanging over the future of U.S. foreign policy in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in November. They also discuss how the coronavirus pandemic has underscored and exacerbated the major issues at stake. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:America’s Global Role Was Already Shifting. COVID-19 Will Accelerate ItWith the U.S. Backsliding, Who Will Defend Democracy in the World?The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Risks of America’s Fade-OutPolicing a Pandemic: How Police Were, […]

As the coronavirus has spread across the globe in recent months, prisons and jails have emerged as critical hotspots for outbreaks. According to the Marshall Project, more than 14,000 prisoners have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States alone, over 200 of whom have died from the disease. For a look at the challenges prisons and jails are facing amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the strategies they’re adopting to overcome them, WPR recently spoke by phone with Marc Stern, an assistant professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health and a consultant in correctional […]

DUBLIN—On the first Saturday in March, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, could be found standing among an 81,000-strong crowd at a stadium in Twickenham, just west of London. There, they watched England play Wales at rugby, shook many an unwashed hand and joined heartily in celebrations as England narrowly bested its rival. But here in Dublin, Ireland’s normally bustling capital, the rugby field was empty that day. That was because the government had cancelled Ireland’s scheduled match with Italy as one of its first precautions against the spread of the novel coronavirus. Days later, the […]

When the coronavirus hit Italy with a fury early along its path around the world, few politicians seemed better positioned to benefit from the crisis than Matteo Salvini. The populist leader of Italy’s far-right League party, who stood at the top of the polls, immediately pounced on the opportunity to promote his core nationalist ideas while disparaging the government, hoping to trigger the elections that he hoped would make him prime minister. But in an unexpected twist, Salvini’s dream of capitalizing on COVID-19 is being thwarted. It’s early yet, but Salvini could turn into one of the most prominent political […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. In the latest sign of an escalating campaign in Washington to pin the blame for the coronavirus pandemic on China, President Donald Trump’s administration is weighing aggressive economic action against Beijing. Facing criticism for his disastrous response to COVID-19 in the U.S., Trump has elevated China to the forefront of his reelection bid, claiming that it bears all responsibility for the coronavirus outbreak and the economic devastation it has wrought. In a Fox News town hall on Sunday, Trump […]

For most of the past three years, many close observers of American politics shuddered at the thought of what would happen to the United States if it faced a genuine crisis during Donald Trump’s presidency. Even many of his elite supporters in the Republican Party, in the media and in business cannot have failed to wonder how a man who struggles to organize his thoughts into clear and linear sentences would be able to marshal the full resources and unified will of the United States to deal with a national emergency. It is no longer speculation after the initial months […]

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, declared victory against her country’s coronavirus outbreak last week. “There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand,” she announced, as COVID-19 had “currently” been eliminated from the country. New Zealand’s director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, echoed the prime minister, saying that the continued downward trend in new infections “does give us confidence that we have achieved our goal of elimination.” The country of 5 million people has confirmed around 1,200 cases of COVID-19 and 20 deaths so for, and recorded no new infections earlier this week. New Zealand ranks among the world’s […]

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the entire world—but in vastly different ways. In particular, efforts to “flatten the curve” could create huge but unquantified costs for the most vulnerable. As a result of measures to contain the coronavirus’s spread, the specter of “biblical” hunger now hangs over much of the globe. At the same time, social distancing strategies remain an unattainable mirage for the hundreds of millions of people living in crowded quarters in the developing world. For fragile and conflict-affected countries, the pandemic represents a grim, dual challenge that risks threatening a precious good: peace. Many of these countries […]

Hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants have returned home from neighboring Iran in recent months, fleeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Iran has more than 94,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a death toll of 6,000, although the real figures are likely higher. The exodus has raised concerns of an impending spike in coronavirus cases in Afghanistan. In an email interview with WPR, Annalisa Perteghella, a research fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Center at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, discusses the high risk of coronavirus transmission in Afghanistan and the impact the pandemic […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the strategic competition between the U.S. and China, and whether the current tensions between Washington and Beijing over the origins of the outbreak will have a lasting impact on bilateral ties. Listen: Download: MP3 Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:COVID-19 Could Reignite Trump’s Trade War With China Why the Coronavirus Pandemic Won’t Lead to a New World OrderBeware of China’s Coronavirus PropagandaIn Israel, Netanyahu Outplays His Political Opponents, Again‘In Many […]