Democracy and Institutions

BY ERIN GREGOR Populism may have toppled the domino theory. On April 7, 1954, just before Vietnamese nationalists led by communist Ho Chi Minh won a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of countries falling like dominoes to communism. “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over […]

BY JASON HUNG The “bookstore incidents” In January 2018, Hong Kong-based Swedish Chinese publisher, Gui Minhai, was snatched by mainland Chinese authorities in Ningbo, China. Supposedly, Gui was on his way to Sweden’s consulate in Shanghai to renew his Swedish passport. It was the second time Gui went missing in two and a half years. […]

BY KEVIN FRAZIER Distrust in the federal government pervades the United States. Its ubiquity threatens the stability of institutions and their capacity to govern. That’s why I recently sat down with Jeh Johnson. As General Counsel of the Department of Defense and, later, Secretary of Homeland Security under the Obama Administration, former Secretary Johnson established […]

Amidst the ongoing debate on how Singapore’s Government responds to inequality-related issues, Theophilus Kwek points to misalignments between the policy lens of the technocratic state, and the naked human eye through which its constituents must view the same issues. He argues that we must go beyond purely data-driven perspectives of inequality, and include street-view perspectives in policy considerations too.

In this episode of the Middle East Weekly podcast, we discuss the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents in Istanbul, the formation of and challenges facing Iraq’s new government, the re-instatement of sanctions on Iran, and an election boycott in Bahrain. Khashoggi was murdered when he visited the Saudi […]

BY NATHANIEL EISEN What are the stakes of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard? Is affirmative action on the line, or just the jobs of a few discriminatory admissions staff? Experts disagree. The lawsuit, brought by a group representing Asian Americans who claim they were denied admission to Harvard College based on their race, […]

Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) is a member of Saudi Arabia’s swelling youth population. Even as MBS courts favor with his young subjects, his efforts may not meet high expectations for reform.

Mexico’s Andres Manuel López Obrador was a populist candidate. Will he become a populist president?

A team of law students from the Singapore Management University’s School of Law propose enacting laws in Singapore that mandate the disclosure of radicalised individuals to the authorities, given the increased threat of terrorism posed by self-radicalised individuals, whilst taking into account legal and social policy considerations.

BY MICHAEL AUSLEN Indiana is hardly the poster child for voting rights. In 2005, it became the first state in the country to pass a strict photo identification (ID) requirement for voting—a measure criticized as an unfair barrier to participation for poor and minority communities.[1] When the US Supreme Court refused to throw out the […]

BY KOREY TE HIRA Every two years, thousands of Americans run for office promising to “clean up Washington” and usher in a new kind of politics.  Why then do we see these same promises being made every election cycle? Looking to nature, we find the answer. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection describes […]

BY DINA MONTEMARANO If you’ve been following the US midterm elections, you’ve likely heard the media buzz about how many women are running for elected office this year. They’re calling it “The Year of the Woman.” A record number of female candidates are running for office. 256 women won House and Senate primaries. Sixteen are […]