Elections
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…
Chile Got Richer. Its Voters Still Want to Change the System.
Gabriel Boric is 35 years old, a former student protest leader and left-wing congressman who was not even born when Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973. He defeated José Antonio Kast, a conservative candidate whose…
Sudan’s Generals Have Taken Power. The Warning Signs Were Already There.
The timing is difficult to ignore. Last Sunday, I wrote that Sudan had removed Omar al-Bashir in 2019 without fully removing the political principle that men with guns ultimately decide who governs. On Monday morning,…
Poland Doesn’t Want to Leave the EU. It Wants to Decide Which EU Rules Apply.
Britain spent years arguing about whether membership of the European Union had taken too much sovereignty away from Parliament. Eventually, British voters chose to leave. Poland is now creating a different and potentially more difficult…
Germany Has Voted. For the First Time in Sixteen Years, Merkel Wasn’t Really on the Ballot.
That feels significant beyond Germany. Merkel became chancellor in 2005, which means an entire generation of Europeans has grown up knowing only one German leader. She governed through the global financial crisis, the eurozone crisis,…
Guinea’s President Changed the Rules to Stay in Power. Then the Army Changed Them Again.
On 5 September, gunfire erupted around the presidential palace in Conakry. Hours later, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya appeared on television surrounded by members of Guinea’s special forces and announced that President Alpha Condé had been removed…
The Last American Soldier Has Left Afghanistan. So What Did Twenty Years Achieve?
There was no peace treaty. There was no victory parade. The government America spent twenty years supporting had already disappeared, the Taliban controlled Kabul, and the final days of the evacuation had been marked by…
Kabul Has Fallen. Twenty Years of War Ended in a Week.
There will undoubtedly be an argument that America gave Afghanistan twenty years, enormous amounts of money and a military, and Afghans simply failed to use them. That explanation absolves the foreign power almost perfectly. It…
Haiti’s President Was Assassinated. Who Governs the Country Now?
Since then, Haitian authorities have arrested a number of suspects, including former Colombian soldiers, while several others were killed by police. Investigators are still trying to determine who organised the operation and why. Those questions…
Ethiopia Declared Victory. Seven Months Later, It Lost Mekelle.
For months, forces aligned with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had continued fighting the Ethiopian military and its allies despite the federal government’s capture of Mekelle last November. Recently, those Tigrayan forces launched a major…
Holding an Election Does Not Necessarily Make a Democracy
Abiy was not originally elected prime minister in a national election. He came to power in 2018 after years of anti-government protests forced a political transition within Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. He promised reform, released political…
What Does an Election Really Tell Us?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP campaigned intensely across the state, hoping to replace Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress. The election became one of the biggest political battles in India. Today, the result…
