In-Depth Archive

Russia’s bold military interventions in both Ukraine and Syria have put Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions back at the center of analysis and debate. Despite last year’s confident claims in Western capitals that Moscow would be unable to sustain its efforts in both countries, there is no indication that the Kremlin plans to alter its policies in 2016. To the contrary, Russian President Vladimir Putin, having decided that core national interests are at stake, has made it clear that he will stay the course. At the same time, however, Russia continues to pay a heavy economic price exacted by international sanctions and […]

When Spain went to the polls last December, the outcome sent the country into a state of political limbo. Neither the incumbent conservative Popular Party (PP) nor the main opposition party, the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), captured the majority of seats necessary to form a new government in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s parliament. The PP won 28.7 percent of votes; the PSOE won 22 percent. At the same time, two political newcomers, bolstered by the economic crisis that has gripped Spain since 2011, managed to capture a third of all votes cast. The resulting 20 percent for […]

For more than six decades following India’s independence in 1947, urbanization remained an afterthought for policymakers, who hardly recognized the positive relationship between urban expansion and economic development. It wasn’t until 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi became India’s youngest prime minister and brought with him a new, young brigade of leaders, that those in power began to acknowledge that urbanization could serve India’s economy. Gandhi’s initiatives on urbanization, while new, were nonetheless hesitant. Through the 1990s and the early 2000s, analysts increasingly spoke of India’s “urban turn” and hinted at the beginnings of a serious investment in urban infrastructure and connectivity. […]

Depending on whom you talk to and what month it is, the United States and the European Union are either on the brink of a digital trade war or reaching a historic e-commerce deal. EU-U.S. cooperation over the trans-Atlantic digital economy seemed to first fall apart in October 2015, when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down a critical data-sharing deal known as the Safe Harbor Agreement. In doing so, Europe’s highest court put major companies such as Facebook and IBM at risk of breaching EU privacy law by simply conducting their day-to-day business operations. National data-privacy authorities have […]

Assessments of the largest emerging economies—China, India and Brazil—and their global influence have been as volatile as each of their stock markets. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the buoyancy of their economies supported both a global recovery and their status as the rising powers of the 21st century. Now, the boom decade after 2001 seems a distant memory. As China’s economy slows from supercharged to respectable growth and rebalancing curbs its demand for commodities, growth in commodity-producing countries, Brazil among them, has slumped. Even India, which surpassed China’s growth rate for the first time in 2015, […]