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Last Saturday, Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s longtime opposition leader and head of the Movement for Democratic Change party, announced a new coalition intended to finally topple President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country since it attained independence in 1980. The grouping, known as MDC Alliance, features Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti, government critics who had previously broken ranks with Tsvangirai but now say they’re determined to join forces to defeat Mugabe in elections planned for next year. “We owe it to the thousands of Zimbabweans to make sure that in our lifetime we can remove the beast called ZANU-PF,” Biti […]

Two countries in South America are currently working on writing new constitutions, and while one is showcasing its democratic credentials, the other continues its slide deeper into an economic and political crisis. Chile has spent years consulting its citizens and probing lawmakers across the country in preparation for replacing a charter that was written in secret under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet nearly 40 years ago. Venezuela, meanwhile, will replace one controversial constitution—which was adopted in 1999 under the late President Hugo Chavez, a revolutionary to his supporters, and an illiberal authoritarian to his critics—with another that could be drafted […]

Amid the torrent of news this week regarding multiple brewing crises from North Korea to Venezuela, one item of seemingly minor importance managed to filter through. It was a personnel matter, a bureaucrat’s decision, but one that highlights the magnitude of the current struggle to develop an international system for conflict resolution, accountability and justice. On Sunday, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria confirmed that its most prominent member, Carla del Ponte, had resigned from the body. The resignation points to a major flaw in the system: the ability of powerful players, in this case Russia, to thwart […]

A data breach scandal involving the government’s failure to safeguard information from access by private contractors has ended the tenure of top ministers in Sweden’s government and threatened to bring down the ruling coalition. The scandal has also exposed the precariousness of the country’s newly fractured political system. In an email interview, Jonas Hinnfors, professor of political science at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, explains the causes and implications of the scandal, and how a divided political system may or may not allow the ruling coalition to survive. WPR: What is the nature of the so-called data breach scandal, when did […]

The past nine years spent editing World Politics Review have put me in a privileged position to observe not only global affairs, but also media coverage of global affairs. In that time, a number of trends and evolutions in online media have dramatically changed the way we collectively are informed about the world, at times for better, but often for worse. Never has there been so much global news available to the average reader. But the way news is now delivered means that quantity has not necessarily translated into quality. Although this column normally focuses on the actual issues WPR […]

Since June, Singapore has been gripped by a public spat between the three children of the city-state’s revered founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, over the future of a family home. While some have downplayed the episode—which involves Singapore’s current prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, Lee’s eldest son—as a mere family feud, in reality the dispute reflects broader concerns about the future of Singapore’s politics and the government’s ability to manage domestic and foreign policy changes in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era. The heart of the dispute is technically over what to do with a bungalow at 38 Oxley Road, in […]

Mission accomplished? That was doubtless then-President Barack Obama’s expectation as he anxiously watched a team of American Navy SEALs kill al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, six years ago. It was clearly Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s hope last month when he visited the city of Mosul, newly liberated from the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But consider this: Al-Qaida had some 400 combatants on Sept. 11, 2001. Today it is stronger than ever, with several thousand adherents in countries from the Arabian Peninsula to Southeast Asia. If Western powers like the United States and the United Kingdom and their regional partners like […]

President Donald Trump’s desire to be true to his domestic political base while offering some concessions to policy experts is settling into a pattern. On climate change, relations with Mexico, the Iran nuclear agreement and Cuba, the president has so far been willing to make tactical shifts while keeping some superficial semblance of his campaign promises. It is not a serious or sustainable way to make national security policy. This past week, the transcripts of Trump’s early exchanges with the leaders of Mexico and Australia were released—and the foreign policy community gasped. The leaked conversations provided unexpected insights into the […]

LIMA, Peru—Peru’s political establishment has been shaken by investigations and allegations of corruption, with one former president and his wife jailed while prosecutors investigate charges of money laundering against them, and another former president facing possible extradition from the U.S. in a similar case. What began as several national investigations into suspicious bank transfers and real estate purchases gained urgency following revelations from Brazil about an international bribery network managed by the construction conglomerate Odebrecht. The company’s executives have admitted to paying approximately $800 million in bribes to public officials in a dozen countries in order to obtain billions of […]

The latest round of elections in East Timor ended peacefully, far removed from the tumultuous and violent period of a decade ago. But the country that has become a model of post-conflict democracy is not without its challenges, including an increasingly complex and contested political arena and a troubled economy. In an email interview, Sue Ingram, a longtime practitioner, consultant and adviser on governance and statebuilding in fragile states, explains how East Timor found its political footing after the 2006 crisis and what is on the horizon. WPR: What is the significance for East Timor of holding elections without U.N. […]

It’s been quite the turnaround. Almost nine years after Iceland, a country with just over 300,000 inhabitants, became the poster child for the 2008 global financial crisis, many indicators show the economy is doing better than ever. After the 2008 crash, Icelanders engaged in extensive debates about what had precipitated the crisis and how best to prevent such devastation from occurring again. Many still fear another crisis is around the corner, wondering whether it’s “2007 all over again,” while others believe a “New Iceland” has freed itself from the conditions that led to the last crash. Listen to Thorgils Jonsson […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. Plans for an annual festival in Singapore supporting LGBT rights came under threat last year when the government denied sponsorship requests from multinational companies. In the end, however, the Pink Dot festival went ahead with the backing of more than 100 Singaporean companies. In an email interview, Linda Lakhdhir, a legal adviser for the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, describes Pink Dot’s significance and the challenges facing LGBT Singaporeans. WPR: What is the general human rights situation for […]

Does the United Nations have to go back to square one in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Mounting violence in the DRC threatens to put one of the organization’s longest-running large-scale peacekeeping operations in an unsustainable position. At a time when U.N. officials and diplomats in New York are talking about limiting blue helmet operations in the face of U.S. budget cuts, the organization faces a security test in the DRC that could highlight why it really needs more military resources, not fewer. There have been U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC since 1999. The first international personnel were deployed to […]

The border standoff between Indian and Chinese troops on the remote Doklam area in the Himalayas is approaching the two-month mark with no end in sight. Simultaneously egged on and hemmed in by nationalistic fervor at home, neither government can afford to back down, making escalation a real risk. India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, met with China’s state councilor, Yang Jiechi, and President Xi Jinping at the end of July, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement to quell the border row. The most serious dispute between India and China in decades, the standoff at Doklam represents […]

On July 30, Senegal held legislative elections, the second such vote since President Macky Sall took office five years ago. He and his party won overwhelmingly, claiming 43 of the country’s 45 electoral districts in a victory that underscored Sall’s strong position as his re-election campaign approaches in 2019. But a tough electoral battle in the capital, Dakar, as well as an opposition victory in the city of Touba, suggest that his political supremacy is far from complete. And opposition accusations of intimidation and voting irregularities raise questions about the state of democracy in Senegal. Heading into the recent vote, […]

While not as dangerous as Iran and North Korea, Afghanistan remains one of America’s thorniest and most frustrating security challenges. Since the George W. Bush administration intervened in that country after the attacks of 9/11, the United States has tried to create an Afghan government and train security forces that could stabilize the country and eradicate extremist organizations like al-Qaida that had been given sanctuary there under Taliban rule. The idea was that after some period of international help, the government and security forces of Afghanistan would be able to stand on their own. Unfortunately this has not worked. While […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. Turkey’s education system became fodder for international news stories this summer after authorities announced they would no longer teach Darwin’s theory of evolution in high school. The move takes place in the context of a dramatic expansion of religious education under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In an email interview, Dr. Lisel Hintz, assistant professor in the European and Eurasian Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, explains how education has been used as a tool […]