Democracy
Finland and Sweden Want to Join NATO. Turkey Has Just Reminded Everyone That Alliances Are Not Democracies.
Only a few months ago, that would have seemed almost unimaginable. Both countries had spent decades outside the alliance, maintaining military non-alignment while cooperating closely with Western institutions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed that calculation…
Sinn Féin Just Became Northern Ireland’s Largest Party. That Does Not Mean Ireland Is About to Reunify.
For the first time since Northern Ireland was created a century ago, an Irish nationalist party has won the largest number of seats in its devolved legislature. Sinn Féin emerged from Thursday’s Assembly election with…
Slovenia Just Gave a Party That Barely Existed a Landslide. Is That Democratic Renewal or Political Instability?
Last week I wrote that France’s old party system had largely disappeared even though its constitution and electoral institutions remained intact. This week, another European election has produced an even more striking example of how…
Macron Has Won Again. That Does Not Mean France Has Chosen Macronism.
He defeated Marine Le Pen tonight with 58.55% of valid votes against 41.45%, securing a second five-year term and becoming the first French president in two decades to win re-election while still governing. On the…
France Still Has the Same Democracy. It No Longer Has the Same Political System.
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on 24 April, repeating the runoff of 2017. Macron finished first with 27.85% of the vote and…
Imran Khan May Lose Power. The More Important Question Is Whether Pakistan’s Institutions Can Win.
Pakistan has spent the last week approaching what should, in principle, be a fairly ordinary event in a parliamentary democracy: a prime minister may no longer possess the confidence of parliament. The reality has become…
Europe Thought Trading With Russia Would Make War Less Likely. Now Trade Is Part of the War.
For years, one of the strongest arguments for economic interdependence was that countries which trade extensively with one another become less likely to fight. War is expensive when your factories depend on somebody else’s inputs,…
Boris Johnson Says He Thought It Was a Work Event. That Isn’t Really the Most Important Question.
On 20 May 2020, Britain was living under some of the most extraordinary restrictions on ordinary life imposed in peacetime. People could not freely meet friends and family. Weddings and funerals were heavily restricted. Millions…
A Fuel Price Has Brought Kazakhs Into the Streets. It Probably Isn’t Only About Fuel.
Residents of Zhanaozen, a city in western Kazakhstan’s oil-producing region, have begun demonstrating after the price of liquefied petroleum gas rose sharply at the beginning of the year. LPG is widely used to fuel cars…
Libya Was Supposed to Elect a President This Week. It Couldn’t Agree on the Rules.
The date itself was symbolic. 24 December marked seventy years since Libya declared independence in 1951. After Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship, the uprising that overthrew him in 2011, a decade of political division and years of…
Biden Invited the World’s Democracies to a Summit. First, Someone Had to Decide Who Counts.
The stated objectives were difficult to disagree with: defending democracy against authoritarianism, fighting corruption and promoting human rights. Biden argued that democracy is facing a global challenge and that democratic governments need to demonstrate that…
Austria Is Planning to Make COVID Vaccination Compulsory. How Much Choice Do We Give Up to Protect Everyone Else?
That is an extraordinary escalation in government power over an individual’s medical decision, and it deserves a more serious argument than either “vaccines work, so obviously everyone should be forced to take them” or “my…
