Democracy
Germany’s Far Right Has Won a State Election for the First Time Since the Nazi Era. The More Important Question Is Why Economic Improvement Has Not Produced Political Confidence.
Germany has crossed a political threshold that would have seemed almost unthinkable a decade ago. In today’s state election in Thuringia, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, is projected to finish first with roughly…
Sheikh Hasina Has Fallen. Bangladesh’s Harder Test Is Whether Removing an Authoritarian Government Can Produce Better Institutions Rather Than Another Cycle of Political Revenge.
Bangladesh has experienced an extraordinary political rupture in the space of one week. On 5 August, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India after fifteen consecutive years in power, following weeks of student-led…
Venezuela Is Voting Today. The Real Test Is Not Whether Ballots Are Cast, but Whether the Government Would Accept Losing.
Venezuelans are voting today in the most consequential presidential election the country has held in years. President Nicolás Maduro, who has governed since Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, is seeking another six-year term against Edmundo…
Joe Biden Has Left the Race. The Most Important Question Is Why It Took a Crisis for His Party to Confront the Problem.
Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election today and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris, ending an extraordinary three-week crisis inside the Democratic Party and pushing the United States into territory no major modern presidential campaign…
France Has Blocked the Far Right From Power. That Does Not Mean the Political Problem Producing the Far Right Has Been Solved.
France’s snap parliamentary election has produced one of the strangest outcomes in recent European politics. After the National Rally finished first in the opening round and appeared capable of winning a parliamentary majority, the second…
Labour Has Won a Landslide. That Does Not Mean Britain Suddenly Became a Labour Country.
Britain has just produced one of the largest parliamentary reversals in its modern political history. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in the 4 July general…
Narendra Modi Won a Third Term. Indian Voters Also Took Away His Party’s Majority. Both Facts Matter.
Narendra Modi was sworn in today for a third consecutive term as prime minister of India, but he begins that term under a political structure very different from the one that governed India for the…
The ANC Liberated South Africa. Thirty Years Later, Voters Have Told It That History Is Not a Permanent Mandate.
South Africa has just crossed one of the most important political thresholds since the end of apartheid. In the 29 May general election, the African National Congress fell to roughly 40% of the national vote,…
Taiwan Has a New President. China Answered With War Games. The Real Contest Is Over Whether Pressure Changes Political Identity or Hardens It.
Taiwan inaugurated Lai Ching-te as president on 20 May after his victory in January’s election, extending the Democratic Progressive Party’s control of the presidency into a third consecutive term. Four days later, China concluded two…
Nearly One Billion Indians Can Vote. The More Important Question Is Whether the World’s Largest Election Is Also Becoming a Fairer One.
India began voting this week in what is, by scale, the largest democratic exercise in human history. Nearly 970 million people are eligible to vote across a seven-phase election running from 19 April to 1…
Erdoğan Won Turkey’s Presidency Less Than a Year Ago. His Party Just Suffered Its Worst Local-Election Defeat in Two Decades.
Turkey voted in local elections today, and the emerging result is striking. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, the AKP, appears to have suffered its worst nationwide local-election result since it came to…
Senegal’s Government Tried to Delay an Election. Its Institutions Pushed Back. That Is What Democratic Resilience Actually Looks Like.
Senegal votes today in one of the most consequential elections in its post-independence history, but the fact that the election is happening at all has become almost as important as who eventually wins it. President…
