Saudi Arabia has ramped up its crackdown on dissent, as recent cases make clear that the country is willing to surveil its citizens abroad and severely punish them for exercising their right to free expression within the jurisdiction of democratic countries, a worrying trend that appears to only be getting worse.
For decades, British commentators have expressed concern over other societies that have faced death spirals of governance. Now it is beginning to dawn on many senior political figures in the U.K. that their own system may be drifting dangerously close to the kind of existential crisis they used to think could only happen elsewhere.
Israel’s fifth parliamentary election in four years secured a dramatic political comeback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is set to form a government that will include the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism. The coalition already threatens to undermine Israel’s partnerships with Gulf States and the U.S.
Since June, a series of strikes by railway workers represent the U.K.’s largest industrial action in decades. Long dormant, British trade unions are hitting their stride again, and the leadership and grassroots members are mobilized. Yet their resurgence poses a peculiar set of challenges for both of the U.K.’s dominant parties.
In June, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of a “heightened threat environment” ahead of the midterm congressional elections. In the months since then, terrorism analysts have continued to express concern that the country could suffer a spasm of political violence tied to the elections on Nov. 8.
Israeli voters went to the polls for the fifth time since 2019 on Tuesday, in elections that many expected to deliver the same kind of “Groundhog Day” outcome of indecisive deadlock that characterized the previous four ballots. Instead, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a stunning political comeback, overcoming his legal jeopardy stemming from corruption trials and a toxic personal brand that had splintered the Israeli right to win an outright majority. For the past three years, opposition to Netanyahu had driven the formation of an “anyone but Bibi” coalition among political factions that otherwise had little to nothing in […]
Efforts by the Biden administration to accelerate its quiet diplomacy with Venezuela have already produced some breakthroughs. But the greater challenge comes next, as Washington tries to leverage sanctions to incentivize Caracas to allow greater space for the opposition to compete in the 2024 presidential election.
Italy’s new far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is in Brussels today for her first meetings with EU leaders. Such pro forma courtesy visits to Brussels are commonplace, but hers raises the question of how the bloc’s other leaders will manage the optics of working closely with Italy’s first far-right leader since World War II.
Political polarization is not exactly new in Latin America, but it has sharply intensified. The next possible flashpoint is Bolivia, where political, economic, ethnic and regional divisions have exploded in the past and threaten to do so again, over an arcane but combustible issue: When should the country hold its national census?
Of all the autocrats who have managed to secure their survival by providing “stability” in a volatile region, Cameroonian President Paul Biya has arguably proven the most skilled. But the structural pressures currently building up around Biya indicate how misguided it is to rely on authoritarian systems to sustain political stability.
The highest-level negotiations between the two sides in Ethiopia’s civil war began last week in South Africa, amid low expectations they will end the two-year war. Nevertheless, the African Union-led talks have been extended, suggesting that, if both sides are not ready to stop fighting, neither are they ready to stop talking.
Iraq’s parliament approved a new government last week, bringing an end to the year-long political deadlock that followed the country’s 2021 parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani will head the new government, backed by a coalition dominated by parties representing Iran-backed Shiite militias.
In May 2022, Australia’s Labor Party swept back to power with promises to get down to the business of modern climate leadership, and they’ve largely followed through on that promise. But the Labor Party faces an even more daunting challenge in its bid for global climate leadership: Australia is a major fossil fuel exporter.
Since taking office in May, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has sought to follow through on campaign promises to reorient the country’s foreign policy, including with the U.S., China and Japan. But if Yoon and his advisers were correct in their premises, they were naive about how this promised reorientation would work in practice.