Economics
Pakistan Thought It Had Contained the Taliban Insurgency. Peshawar Suggests the Problem Was Never Really Gone.
On Monday morning, hundreds of people gathered for prayers inside a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines compound. The location should have been among the more secure places in the city. Police Lines contains police headquarters…
Lula Is President Again. Brazil’s Institutions Did Not Need Bolsonaro’s Permission.
Twenty years after first entering the presidency, twelve years after leaving it, and after a political journey that included corruption investigations, imprisonment, the annulment of his convictions and an extraordinary return to electoral politics, Lula…
The Taliban Has Banned Women From University. This Is Not Only a Human-Rights Disaster. It Is a Strategy for Power.
On Tuesday, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education instructed every public and private university in the country to suspend education for female students until further notice. The order was effective immediately. By Wednesday morning, women arriving…
Pedro Castillo Was Democratically Elected. That Did Not Give Him the Right to Dissolve Democracy.
Peru had a president on Wednesday morning. By Wednesday evening, that president had attempted to dissolve Congress, been impeached, arrested and replaced by his vice-president. The speed of the collapse makes the sequence almost difficult…
Anwar Ibrahim Finally Became Malaysia’s Prime Minister. His Hardest Compromise Came After He Won.
Anwar Ibrahim has spent almost a quarter of a century moving between the centre of Malaysian power and its political margins. He served as deputy prime minister during the 1990s, appeared positioned to succeed Mahathir…
Rich Countries Have Finally Accepted the Principle of Paying for Climate Damage. Now Comes the Difficult Part.
After negotiations extending beyond the conference’s scheduled conclusion, governments at COP27 in Egypt reached an agreement early today that developing countries have demanded for decades: the creation of a dedicated fund to address loss and…
Inflation Was Supposed to Decide the Midterms. American Voters Had Other Things on Their Minds.
American voters went to the polls on Tuesday in an election that was widely expected to punish President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Inflation remains unusually high, petrol and food prices have placed substantial…
Lula Won Brazil by 1.8 Percentage Points. Winning the Country Will Be Harder.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to the Brazilian presidency twelve years after leaving office. In last Sunday’s runoff, Lula received 60,345,999 votes, or 50.90% of valid ballots, against Jair Bolsonaro’s 58,206,354 votes, or…
Britain Has Its First British Asian Prime Minister. Representation Matters, but It Is Not the Same Thing as Equality.
Rishi Sunak became prime minister of the United Kingdom on Tuesday. The immediate political explanation is remarkably simple. Boris Johnson withdrew from the Conservative leadership contest, Penny Mordaunt failed to secure sufficient nominations from Conservative…
Liz Truss Lasted 44 Days. Britain May Be Politically Chaotic Without Being Institutionally Unstable.
Her premiership lasted 44 days, making it the shortest in British history. She entered office promising a fundamental change in economic policy based around lower taxation and faster growth. Her government’s mini-budget then triggered severe…
Liz Truss Can Change Britain’s Tax Rates. She Cannot Order Anyone to Trust Her.
Liz Truss has been prime minister for less than a month, and her government’s economic programme has already produced one of the most dramatic confrontations between politics and financial markets Britain has experienced in years.
Britain Buried Its Queen. It Is Also Deciding What Her Seventy Years Meant.
On Monday, Britain held the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. Around two thousand people attended the service, including presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and representatives from countries across the world. Archbishop of…
