Democracy

The Venezuelan crisis has become the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, with more than 3 million people fleeing the country in the last few years. As conditions in the country worsen, more Venezuelans are expected to leave, causing greater instability throughout the region. Venezuela is a mixture of drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, […]

BY MATT MCDOLE Last week’s Congressional hearing on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a painful moment for many Americans. 20 million watched on television and many more tuned in online – CNN reported this year’s biggest day of live-streaming yet – as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford tearfully recounted being sexually […]

By AMITA ARUDPRAGASAM The United States and Europe have traditionally spent substantial financial and human resources to promote democracy. They fund workshops, research, and civil society organizations with the goal of promoting freedom of speech and association, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. While global democracy is not in peril, democracy promotion […]

The decision to support or reject the opposition in its appeals to AKP voters is bound up with its identity as the representative of official secularism, a reputation that has proved difficult to shake. The memory of the divisive 1970s and the terror-filled aftermath of the 1980 coup remains a deeply impactful force conditioning voter behavior. An understanding of these traumatizing years, which left few segments of society untouched, contextualizes the steep odds against which the opposition was forced to contend.

BY QUINTON MAYNE For many Americans, cities have become a beacon of hope. The can-do, eye-level politics of our city halls is increasingly viewed as an antidote to what seems like a culture of top-down, self-serving, and polarizing party politics inside the Beltway. An important question then is whether city leaders will live up to […]

BY ASHLEY LEE Increasingly, we have come to think of digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as the public sphere, a place where citizens can freely discuss the issues of the day and engage with a diversity of opinions. However, the core business model of these companies—selling ads by harvesting the attention of targeted […]

Dr. Bruce Rutherford, Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, sits down with JMEPP Editor Elissa Miller to discuss political developments in Egypt since the 2011 revolution, including the current state of political Islam and prospects for democratic change in the country. This talk is part of the Middle East Initiative’s Inside the Middle East Q&A series.

BY HAMADA ZAHAWI A year ago I was a part of a delegation from the Harvard Kennedy School competing in the Student Challenge at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE. Against twelve teams, we won with a pitch to incentivize civic engagement through citizen-government digital coins that directly activate the power of the people. […]

BY KATHERINE MANSTED Benjamin Clayton’s recent post is another outing in a long line of U.S. power pessimism, which history will ultimately prove wrong. The world has a penchant for predicting U.S. decline. Indeed, reports of U.S. decline predated its rise. Charles Dickens famously wrote that, to its 19th century citizens, America “always is stagnated, […]

He may be a political insider, but Hassan Rouhani ran his 2017 presidential campaign as an anti-establishment candidate. More than 40 million Iranians voted, and despite the close election President Rouhani won a second term in May with 57% of the votes. When the election results were announced, thousands of people spilled into the streets dancing, singing, […]

BY GRANT TUDOR A World Bank country manager referred to Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty as “an African success story.” This was a common refrain a decade ago, when extreme poverty fell sharply and the HIV epidemic ground to a near halt. Strangely, though, the comment came last year. Uganda’s income inequality is now among […]

BY AROHI SHARMA At 5:52 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, November 3, I put down the phone with the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office, devastated. After spending more than forty minutes waiting for someone to answer my call, I was told that the registrar’s office had not received my vote-by-mail application. I mailed my application […]