Western Europe Archive

Earlier this month, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was in Kenya to discuss trade ties and pledge support for counterterrorism operations in East Africa. In an email interview, Mattia Toaldo, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, discussed Italy’s outreach to Africa. WPR: How extensive are Italy’s ties with Africa, and what are the main areas of cooperation? Mattia Toaldo: After the end of the Cold War, and with development aid money drying up, the Italian presence in sub-Saharan Africa quickly waned. But following a policy review conducted two years ago under then-Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, Italy […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. Over the past decade, social democratic parties across Western Europe have been in ignominious retreat. The center-left’s electoral decline has been remarkable. Even where social democrats have attained governmental power, often in coalition with other parties, their experience has been unhappy and often quickly followed by defeat. As a result, many commentators insist that social democracy as a social movement and a political tradition has lost its vitality and is destined to […]

Ever since the end of the colonial period, in 1956 for Morocco and in 1962 for Algeria, France has had a complex and often ambivalent relationship with the two former colonies that formed the core of its North African empire. Social and economic ties have drawn all three countries closer together, but diplomatic tensions, usually involving Algeria, remain. In a recent reversal, however, Morocco has aired resentments over its colonial past after a series of recent spats with Paris, while Algeria has a newfound preference for closer French trade and security ties. French relations with Algiers were strained for many […]

Ever since the 2004 “Orange Revolution” that led to its first turn toward the West, Ukraine’s future alignment between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic bloc has been the subject of much debate and speculation. The promise of a durable Western shift, already dimmed by 2010, receded even further under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, who tried to steer a middle course between Moscow and Brussels with some success until pressure from Brussels and Moscow, but also Ukraine’s pro-European public opinion, made nonalignment no longer tenable. Since the Euromaidan protests that drove Yanukovych from power in February 2014 and through the emergence […]

Today, the phrase “Arctic energy” has become synonymous with snowy oil rigs, icy ocean exploration and Greenpeace activists. The conditional U.S. approval in May of Shell’s plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska has reinforced this narrow delineation of what’s included in polar energy debates. Reflecting how observers and international policymakers view the Arctic more generally, northern energy is written as an extractive narrative. From the opening of shipping routes to warnings of climate change consequences, the Arctic is frequently framed and valued by how it can help those living below the 66th parallel. But there is another […]

In March, Sweden abruptly decided not to renew a five-year defense industry cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia, amid a diplomatic spat after Sweden’s foreign minister criticized Riyadh over its human rights record. The controversy led to headlines around the world and exposed the tension for Sweden, the world’s 12th-largest arms exporter, between promoting global defense sales and advancing democracy and human rights. But this is far from a new issue for Stockholm, and given the worsening security climate in Europe, the Saudi episode is unlikely to change minds in Sweden about the need to export defense equipment, even to non-democracies. […]

In late May, at a high-level Community Party meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping cautioned that religions in China must be free from foreign influence and incorporated into socialist Chinese society. Xi’s warning appears to have its limits: It has not deterred the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, from reiterating his hopes that the embryonic dialogue between Beijing and the Holy See will continue to move forward. But the prospects of warmer ties between Beijing and the Vatican doesn’t play well in Hong Kong, where the city’s Catholic leadership has been a vocal supporter of the democracy movement in […]