On July 30, Societe Generale, one of France’s biggest banks, was declared an “assisting witness”—somewhere between a suspect and a witness—in a money-laundering case against Teodorin Obiang, the son of Teodoro Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s president who has been in power since 1979. Days later, Maixent Accrombessi, a close aide to Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was held for questioning in a corruption probe in Paris hours before he was set to return to Libreville. His detention was part of an ongoing investigation into the French military-uniform company Marck—which signed a $7.6 million contract with Gabon in 2005—on suspicions of corruption [...]
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 [...]
