Democracy and Governance

BY NYASHA WEINBERG At 3 a.m. on June 24, I lay awake stunned. Results came pouring in confirming that the debunked polls of the previous week were right, and the markets were wrong. The UK was leaving the EU. Alienated voters had let out a collective “roar of rage,” turning their back on Europe and […]

BY PATRICK WHITE Last night as I sat watching the results come in from around the UK on the Brexit referendum, anxiety slowly turned to anger as the votes for leaving the European Union began to pull away from the votes to remain. That anger was not primarily directed at the growing Brexit vote tally. Instead it was directed at the […]

BY CHARLIE SAMUDA Back in 2013, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, bowing to pressure from within his own party, announced plans to hold a vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU). The short-term consequence has been an emotional and often ugly campaign, which comes to an end today—voting closes in just a few […]

In 2012, a record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the presidential election. Despite the record turnout, another 12.1 million eligible Latinos still chose not to vote. The 48% voter turnout rate amongst Latinos is no small feat, but it paled in comparison to the 66.6% voter turnout rate of Blacks and the 64.1% of Whites.[i] […]

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appears on the brink of another major crisis, just as the country begins to recover from successive decades of war. Presidential elections scheduled for November 2016 look increasingly likely to be postponed by the Congolese government and tensions are fast on the rise. The authorities have cracked down on […]

Abstract This article advocates for the daily reaffirmation of democracy and protection of human rights in Latin America by politicians and civil society alike. Through the remembrance of the Chilean transition to democracy, the article highlights the tremendous costs that Chileans assumed to move Chile towards a consolidated democracy and the many years it has […]

  BY CHANTE LANTOS-SWETT On Monday, March 7, at 11:30 a.m., more than 3,000 students from schools all across the Boston Public School District stood up from their desks and joined their peers in front of the State House to protest a proposed $50 million cut to the 2016-2017 school year budget. Armed with protest […]

BY JASMINE CHIA, YAN MIN AUNG, AND KARENG BRANG SHAWNG Myanmar has suffered one of the world’s longest running civil wars, one rooted in ethnic conflict. The fighting continues to the present day: the Arakan Army is still launching insurgent attacks in Rakhine state, a state on Myanmar’s western coast, and the Kachin Independence Army, […]

For many, the Iranian elections on February 26, 2016 were a first test for the Iranian public’s reaction to the nuclear deal signed in July 2015. For those who anticipated a dramatic result, either in favor or against the regime, the elections tempered these notions. The main conclusion to draw from the formal results is […]

BY DANIEL TOSTADO Among all the numerous Latin phrases that I have picked up at law school, today this one is most apt: “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum,” –Do not speak ill of the dead. A war of words started innocuously enough on Sunday, when Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor issued a statement on behalf […]

In Fall 2015, JMEPP Co-Editor-in-Chief Kevin Moss interviewed Amb. Francis Riccardione, the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Atlantic Council Vice President and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Below is an excerpt from the interview on the role of Turkey in serving as a model for democracy in the region. For the full interview, please listen […]

Post-GE2015, talk has primarily focused on the euphoric victory of the People’s Action Party (PAP) and analysis of its success factors. Not much analysis, however, has been published from the voter perspective. A common dilemma for the typical voter is having to choose between their needs and their wants: the candidate most able to serve […]