Politics

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 […]

BY TOBY VOGHT The British barrister Sir William Gallow famously coined the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” in the early nineteenth century.  The presumption of innocence quickly hopped the Atlantic and has been critical to the American pursuit of a more perfect judiciary. But the highly contentious nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh generated debate about […]

Since 2015, the DR Congo, a major rent-based economy in Africa, has embarked into macroeconomic turbulence with significant inflationary pressures and a severe exchange rate depression, partly due to a commodities slump. The economic downturn has contributed to strengthening the acute social crisis. The country is a fragile state on the edge, a product of […]

Newly minted President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi have one year to enact reform on pressing domestic issues, especially utility services and unemployment. If the government fails to implement changes, it may face another series of popular uprisings.

BY KATYA KLINOVA My great-grandfather went through four labor camps during World War II and died in the fifth one. We try to keep the memory of him alive in the family, and when I tell his story to my school-age nephews, I consider it extremely important to refer to those death camps not as […]

BY DANIELA PHILIPSON In 2017, the average proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments was barely above 23% (World Bank). In Latin America this proportion is a little higher at 29%. While the representation of women in legislative bodies around the world is not predicted by GDP per capita or any other economic […]

BY ADAM GIORGI     Adam Giorgi is a proud Minnesotan seeking the intersection of government service and comic book superheroics. He is a master in public policy student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and he swears he doesn’t draw cartoons during lectures (most of the time).   Edited by Neil Thomas

BY BEN MCGUIRE After a bruising 2016 election, a cascade of Democratic victories has given progressive activists reason to hope for future elections, and the use of new mobilization and engagement technologies in those campaigns is getting a lot of attention. Virginia Republicans barely held their gerrymandered majority after grassroots volunteers across the left powered […]

BY MICHAEL AUSLEN In the weeks since the Supreme Court term ended and Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the bench, many progressives, myself included, have felt the same collective unease. We don’t yet know all that President Trump’s appointment of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will mean for civil liberties, but […]

The decision to support or reject the opposition in its appeals to AKP voters is bound up with its identity as the representative of official secularism, a reputation that has proved difficult to shake. The memory of the divisive 1970s and the terror-filled aftermath of the 1980 coup remains a deeply impactful force conditioning voter behavior. An understanding of these traumatizing years, which left few segments of society untouched, contextualizes the steep odds against which the opposition was forced to contend.

BY BEN MCGUIRE Fresh on the heels of a disastrous G7 summit, Mexico is poised to elect a President whose aggressive approach may scorch as much earth as his northern counterparts. A victory for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) will immediately impact negotiations over NAFTA and immigration. Regardless of how the race […]

A casual observer of Turkish politics would be forgiven for thinking that regional geopolitics, social issues, the Kurdish issue or the hosted refugees are the central points of the election. Not so. Somewhere in Turkey, a political strategist is hammering home to her client: “it’s the economy, saftirik (stupid).”