Worldcrunch
-Essay- PARIS —The rendez-vous was for last January 21, on the anniversary of Louis XVI’s death. A friend had tipped me off that hundreds of French citizens gather each year in Paris to honor their last king and lament their fallen monarchy. Les Royalistes held mass for Louis and Marie-Antoinette, followed by pro-monarchy street protests. […]
What is happening in India is casting a long shadow on the forthcoming U.S. elections.
*Other than Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping push for a second term, we will also see Maduro’s Venezuela and Myanmar (also) testing the limits of democracy in the coming weeks.
Every U.S. election carries consequences beyond America’s borders. But Nov. 3 stands out for multiple reasons: a lethal pandemic has killed more than one million people across the world, once thriving economies are in tatters, U.S. isolationism has created an international power vacuum that is allowing right-wing autocrats to thrive across continents. And then, there’s […]
-Essay- PARIS — I do my best not to get pulled into the rabbit hole of U.S. election coverage. It’s hard to imagine, at this point, how any poll or tweet or scandal could possibly affect the outcome. Can our global news site really find a new angle to help explain Donald Trump? Can anyone? […]
Welcome to Monday, where South Africa halts AstraZeneca vaccine after poor results on local variant, 180 are feared dead in India glacier collapse, and Tom Brady makes Super Bowl history. We also look at the unlikely feud involving Indian farmers, top cricket stars — and Rihanna. • COVID-19 latest: South Africa halts use of AstraZeneca […]
From Venezuela to Hungary, populist leaders are carving away at fundamental checks and balances in slow and often subtle ways.
Facebook, Google and other platforms are not doing enough to make political ads more transparent.
With a now-leaderless Democratic Party and no charismatic successor to take over from Berlusconi, his one-time backers may migrate to more extremist parties.
The leftist leader had some worthy accomplishments during his long tenure as Bolivian president. But his quest for indefinite leadership cost him in the end.
Election winners Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner will soon take over leadership of the country. But they’ve also lost momentum already …
Politics in the region have become even more complex since the Cold War era of revolutions and military juntas.
WARSAW — Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) won last weekend’s parliamentary elections. So why was longtime party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski so obviously glum during his victory speech? The first answer is in the performance of other Polish political parties: combined, the three main blocks of the democratic opposition received more votes in total […]
The expected reelection of the conservative ‘Law and Justice’ (PiS) party could usher in new restrictions against the rights of people to live as they choose.
An interview with Peronist candidate Albérto Fernández, who together with his running mate — former president Cristina Kirchner — is looking to unseat Mauricio Macri.
PARIS — He looks the part. Michel Barnier, the former French cabinet minister and longtime EU political fixture, could easily be plucked by Hollywood casting agents to play the role of European Commission president. Whether he gets the job in the coming days is a question too complex for any movie script — or news […]
Social media dialogue and reader comments on news stories suggest that the far-right’s xenophobic rhetoric resonates for immigrants.
The recent EU election results show that younger voters in particular are sick and tired of slow-motion climate policies.
With his untruths, bad choice of friends and unwillingness to apologize, India’s prime minister is everything our parents taught us not to be.
The question ‘If not Modi, then who?” points to a worrying lack of understanding of how a parliamentary democracy works.
In Algeria, the Bouteflika clan was driven out of power. In Turkey, Erdogan’s AKP has “only” lost ground in the big cities. In both cases, the government’s legitimacy is being deeply questioned, in a context of economic recession and democratic demands.
Inflation and recession are doing little to bridge the South American nation’s deep political divide.
Turkey’s politics has been shaken up after President Erdogan’s ruling AKP lost major cities in nationwide municipal elections. Results in the biggest city hang in the balance.
Zuzana Čaputová becomes the country’s first female head of state, and brings hope to Slovaks looking to end to corruption and to others for a response to populism across Europe.
With no other elections set for the coming years and the AKP party’s increasing use of bully tactics, Turkey’s local poll is a last chance to send a true political message.
Fears of an economic meltdown in Mexico provoked by the new socialist president have not materialized, even if the economy has slowed and must remains to be seen.
-Analysis- It’s a striking contrast in both age and public exposure. Defying a sometimes repressive police force, a bold youth-led Algerian street protest movement has risen up against the North African country’s aging and largely invisible leader. Tens of thousands demonstrated over the past couple of weeks against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to seek a […]
CAIRO — The Democratic Party chalked up victories across the United States in the midterm elections on November 6, gaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. And even if the Republicans still hold control of the Senate, the outcome of the midterms breaks up the Republican monopoly in […]
America’s midterm elections saw Democrats recapture the House, but lose ground in the Senate. A nation as divided as ever, though with new checks on Trump.
-Analysis- BERLIN — Democracies are made of constant ups and downs. Sometimes one party is on top, the next it’s another. And what may look like a dramatic election result often is, in reality, nothing more than the natural ebb and flow that characterizes healthy democracies. Every now and then, however, comes a moment when […]
After 17 months in power, Emmanuel Macron is touching the depths of unpopularity. He still has ways to bounce back, but should start by re-reading the author of ‘The Prince.’
Jair Bolsonaro is threatening to curtail rights and liberties, and bring the army back into politics. He’s also the front-runner heading into Sunday’s presidential election.
The French president is the populist Italian Interior Minister’s favorite target. But is Salvini attacking Macron to mask his own failure to unite Europe’s nationalists?
The choice of two radical candidates in Colombia’s second round of presidential elections does not oblige people to vote for one or the other. Let them cast a blank vote.
Governments in several Latin American states are facing angry voters who may remove them from power, but perhaps of greater concern is the spreading wrath against all politicians, everywhere.
After last week’s sham election, the international community — starting with the nations of Latin America — need to isolate Maduro and encourage peaceful, democratic regime change.
New restrictions in Chile effectively target poorer migrants, many of whom are Afro-Caribbeans from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They also coincide with a rightward shift in opinion.
Little room is left for the movement led by Alexei Navalny to challenge Vladimir Putin’s bid for reelection.
CAIRO — “Angry” was the way many described President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s improvised speech during the inauguration ceremony of the Zohr natural gas field on January 31. The president declared that the only way Egypt’s national security could be compromised was over his “dead body” and the “dead body of the military.” But with whom […]
Calling rulers like Venezuela’s Maduro or Nicaragua’s Ortega democratically elected leaders is to mock the real meaning of elections — and democracy.