Number of results to display per page
Search Results
22. Costa Rica's Rush to the Right
- Author:
- Andrés León Araya
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Abstract:
- With second round presidential elections on April 3, the country faces high levels of voter abstention, an increasingly right-wing Congress, and a choice between two candidates ringed by controversy.
- Topic:
- Politics, Elections, Democracy, Presidential Elections, and Right-Wing Politics
- Political Geography:
- Central America and Costa Rica
23. Progressive Politics Makes Gains in Colombia's Conservative Antioquia
- Author:
- Juliana Martínez
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Abstract:
- After a record-breaking presidential primary, the Colombian Left has a fighting chance at winning the top office and challenging the legacy of the country's most powerful politician.
- Topic:
- Politics, Conservatism, Leftist Politics, and Presidential Elections
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
24. The Feminist Revolution That Wasn't
- Author:
- Yoletty Bracho and Marisela Betancourt
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Abstract:
- Chavismo co-opted women’s rights rhetoric but failed to deliver on core feminist demands. For grassroots movements, abortion access remains a key struggle.
- Topic:
- Politics, Women, Feminism, Abortion, and Grassroots Organizing
- Political Geography:
- South America and Venezuela
25. How Authoritarian Legacies Play a Role in Shaping Electoral Volatility in Asia
- Author:
- Don S. Lee and Fernando Casel Bertoa
- Publication Date:
- 02-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- East Asia Institute (EAI)
- Abstract:
- High electoral volatility can result in the disillusionment of the democratic system, allowing illiberal politicians and anti-political-establishment parties to gain a foothold. In this briefing, Don S. Lee, an Assistant Professor in the School of Governance and the Department of Public Administration at Sungkyunkwan University, and Fernando Casal Bertoa, an Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, evaluate the impacts of different authoritarian legacies on electoral volatility across Asia. Their study also analyzes the effect time has on the electoral stability of democracies across varying authoritarian legacies. Finally, they explain how through deliberate routinization of political behavior, political leaders can protect democracy and stabilize party politics, regardless of their country’s authoritarian history.
- Topic:
- Politics, Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- Asia
26. South Korea’s 2022 Presidential Election: A Vox Populi that is Evenly Divided
- Author:
- Jung Kim
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- East Asia Institute (EAI)
- Abstract:
- During the recent March election, presidential candidate Suk-yeol Yoon of the opposition party overtook candidate Jae-myung Lee of the current ruling party by a close margin. Jung Kim, Professor at the University of North Korean Studies, points out that upon entering office, present-elect Yoon will be faced with the challenges of a divided cabinet, divided government, and divided public. He explains that this is due to extensive partisan mobilization and that the future of Korean democracy lies in the Yoon administration`s response to such multi-level challenges.
- Topic:
- Politics, Elections, Democracy, and Presidential Elections
- Political Geography:
- Asia and North Korea
27. Political Polarization in Asia: Cleavages and Agencies of Polarization in India, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand
- Author:
- Sook Jong Lee
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- East Asia Institute (EAI)
- Abstract:
- Political polarization is a process of simplifying politics by presenting either-or-choices to the public. In many cases, polarization damages democracy by dividing the electorate into two mutually mistrustful camps. Political polarization is mainly used by political elites, including government and party leaders, as a strategy to mobilize their supporters and concentrate their power. Based on the literature of political polarization, EAI Senior Fellow Sook Jong Lee (professor at Sungkyunkwan University) examines four Asian case countries (India, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand). The author notes that characteristics of political polarization differ from country to country, which is evidenced through the division of political ideology during various Thai military coups and the separation between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India. She also warns against the possible aftermaths of political polarization such as the breakdown or erosion of democracy.
- Topic:
- Politics, Democracy, Polarization, and Democratic Backsliding
- Political Geography:
- India, Asia, South Korea, Philippines, and Thailand
28. Violent Fraternity: An Interview with Dr. Shruti Kapila
- Author:
- Shruti Kapila and Mahia Bashir
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- Historical considerations of modern South Asia have been marked by a predisposition towards political, material and socio-cultural analyses. Seldom has the remit of ideas as autonomous objects taken centre stage in the historiography of modern South Asia. Shruti Kapila’s new book Violent Fraternityveers off this established trajectory and breaks new ground by looking at ideas as the wellspring of political innovation and fundamental to the republication foundations of the nations of India and Pakistan during what she terms the ‘Indian age’. A work of remarkable scope that defies easy summarisation, the premise of Violent Fraternity is that violence became fraternal in 20th-century India: it was the intimate kin rather than the colonial other that became the object of unprecedented violence. “Violence, fraternity and sovereignty,” Kapila writes, “made up an intimate, deadly and highly consequential triangle of concepts that produced what has been termed here the Indian Age” (p.4) India’s founding fathers, who as opposed to the conventional figure of the detached scholar-philosopher were also actively straddling echelons of the political world, repeatedly engaged with the question of how to forge life with others in an intimate context rife with hatred and violence. In seeking these answers, they authored a new canon of political thought that defied “fidelity to any given ideology, whether it be liberalism, Marxism or communism”. As Kapila demonstrates, global political thought of the Indian age departed from its western counterpart by reconceptualising the place and potential of violence. In the western canon, the state has been the natural habitus of violence. However, Indian political thinkers like Tilak and Gandhi dissociated violence from the orbit of state, and in a radical rewriting of established political vocabularies, posited violence as an individual capacity, thereby reconceptualising the notion of sovereignty and summoning a subject-centred political horizon. Dr. Shruti Kapila is an Associate Professor of Indian History and Global Political Thought at the University of Cambridge and presently the Co-Director of the Global Humanities Initiative. Her research centres on modern and contemporary India and on global political thought in the twentieth century. In her recent book Violent Fraternity and in her earlier work on intellectual history of modern India, Dr. Kapila has pushed the boundaries of the field beyond its conventional focus on the West. In our interview, we spoke about modern India’s founding fathers and their intellectual contributions, writing global intellectual histories of the non-west, the future of the field of global intellectual history and Dr. Kapila’s engagements beyond her illustrious academic career.
- Topic:
- Politics, History, Intellectual History, and Violence
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
29. Inclusion and Exclusion in International Ordering: An Interview with Glenda Sluga
- Author:
- Glenda Sluga and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
- Publication Date:
- 09-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- The image of two men, sitting awkwardly across each other in a solemn conference table, suddenly sprouted everywhere in my Twitter feed last winter. As a terrifying war erupted over competing visions of eastern Europe’s place in the international order, this somewhat surreal picture of the rulers of France and Russia conferencing offered little respite. It was precisely at this time that I had the pleasure to converse with the incoming Toynbee Prize Foundation President Glenda Sluga about her most recent monographThe Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon (Princeton University Press). As the so-called international order comes under increasing pressure in Ukraine and beyond, Sluga’s timely book invites us to engage with the “two centuries of multilateral principles, practices, and expectations” to understand the promises and limits of our contemporary arrangements (p. xi). It places the recent meeting between Macron and Putin in the context of the rise and consolidation of “a new professional, procedural, and bureaucratic approach to diplomacy, based on the sociability of men” (p. 6). After all, our modern notions of international “politics” or “society” were forged in the aftermath of a previous European-wide conflagration that had France and Russia at its helm: the Napoleonic wars. Sluga’s account does not aim to blindly celebrate nor to categorically condemn this modern political imaginary of international ordering. Others have dismissed the post-Napoleonic diplomatic constellation as reactionary or have lauded it as protoliberal. Sluga, above all, is interested in questioning it. She invites us to: reflect on for whom this order has been built; push against the ways it narrows our perspective; and grapple with its inner tensions and contradictions (p. 282). At the heart of the book, I would suggest, lies a concern about the paradoxical record of European modernity: a project that “has offered an expansive horizon of political expectations but delivered a voice only for some” (p. 7). By taking women, non-Europeans, and “non-state” actors seriously as political agents, she shows how bankers, Jews, or ambassadrices were ironically crucial in the making of a system that came to exclude them from the historical record. And, unsurprisingly, these exclusions lead to tensions that threaten to upend international order from within and without—from 1821, 1848, or 1853 to 2022. In our conversation, we attempt to make sense of these paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of international ordering.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Politics, History, Exclusion, International Order, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Europe
30. Walking out of the Woods: EU Industrial Policy between the Energy Crisis and Decarbonisation
- Author:
- Pier Paolo Raimondi
- Publication Date:
- 12-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Europe is in the midst of a profound and complex energy crisis. This is not limited to the gas sector as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but involves all energy sources. French nuclear generation, for example, has fallen to a thirty-year low over the past year due to maintenance works and corrosion.[1] Due to extreme heat over summer, unprecedented drought has reduced hydropower generation as well as the possibility to import coal by river.[2] Oil has not been immune to turbulences either. The EU embargo on Russian crude oil finally began on 5 December 2022, coupled with a price cap at 60 US dollars/barrel generating uncertainty over future supply and prices. In February 2023, the second step of the embargo, on refined products, will kick in, with diesel potentially becoming the next chapter of the European energy crisis.[3]
- Topic:
- Politics, European Union, Institutions, Industry, Decarbonization, and Energy Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Europe