Democracy and Governance

BY PATRICK KIBBE Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for a case that could be worse for the American public than Citizens United v. FEC, and unleash countless millions of special interest dollars into political campaigns. In this case ­– McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee v. FEC – Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama […]

Shifting global demographics continue to produce political discourses on immigration. In the United States, history continues to repeat itself through the forged rhetorical relationship between individuals who speak English and individuals who are considered “American.” As the debate over immigration reform intensifies, so do efforts to regulate/restrict all languages deemed “foreign.” In Arizona, both officeholders and seekers who do not read, write, speak and understand English “sufficiently well” risk having their candidacy revoked. This was the case with former city-council candidate in the southern Arizona border city of San Luis, Alejandrina Cabrera. This essay argues that the political history of Arizona, as it pertains to matters of an English-only society, has historically operated within the restricted parameters of a paranoid style whereby the Cabrera case illustrates its modern metamorphosis.

Adequately summarizing the impact of the Latino vote in the United States’ November 2012 elections is a difficult task because, at least as of the time of this writing, the existing data is preliminary. But the postelection news headlines and all available exit polls illustrate the increasingly influential power of Latino voters in American politics […]

After presiding over economic decline marked by hyperinflation which brought Zimbabwe to its knees, president Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party have emerged as victors in the recent harmonized elections in Zimbabwe. Mugabe got 61% of the vote and his ZANU-PF party won 158 of the 210 parliament seats, giving […]

BY ABIGAIL BELLOWS If you are a child in India under the age of five, there is a 42 percent chance you are suffering from malnutrition. According to Reuters, every day across India, three-thousand children your age will die as a result. The government of India runs the world’s largest food distribution system for the […]

Real regime change in Libya means new leaders and new technocrats. The international community must help train them. In November 2011, Dr. Mahmoud Jibril, former Interim Prime Minister and chair of Libya’s National Transitional Council, opened the Harvard Arab Weekend conference on a pessimistic note: “for 42 years, Qaddafi managed to minimize the government.” Talking […]

BY ABIGAIL BELLOWS As pro-democracy revolutions swept the Arab world last year, citizens in the world’s two largest democracies also rose up. In India, a massive anticorruption movement spearheaded by activist Anna Hazare started in April 2011 and boomed in August. In the United States, Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements sprung up in […]