The prognosis of a thirty-year war looked outlandish as Saddam's regime toppled, persuasive as Iraq's insurgency erupted - and now less plausible amid American forces' retreat. But two core issues continue to give it life.
A veteran Georgian diplomat has chosen to enter his country's disputatious political arena. A hard decision that had to be made, says Tedo Japaridze.
Morocco’s experience of the Arab spring of 2011, including constitutional reform and a parliamentary election, exemplifies the country’s political distinctiveness within the region. The events of 2012 will demonstrate how far hopes of real change can be sustained, says Valentina Bartolucci.
The government of Hungary led by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party is alarming many by its establishment of ever-greater control over the country’s institutions and public life. A group of thirteen Hungarian intellectuals and public figures, who opposed Hungary’s communist regime in the 1970s - am
A sympathetic film portrayal of Britain’s most divisive modern prime minister fits a broader mood of reappraisal of her years in power, says David Hayes
oD Russia continues publication of a remarkable exchange between two leaders of the Russian protest movement — writer Grigory Chkhartishvili, a.k.a Boris Akunin and politician-blogger Aleksey Navalny. In this part, the discussants compare their forecasts for the year ahead. 2012 will present an hi
The refusal of Italy's official agencies to acknowledge the extent of racist crime in the country reinforces the damage inflicted on its victims, says Judith Sunderland.
The Arab uprisings of 2011 are provoking the European Union into a rethink of its approach to encouraging democracy in its neighbourhood. A European Endowment for Democracy with a new kind of mandate could be at the centre, says Jacqueline Hale
By electing to follow an aggressive policy of imperial nationalism, Putin and his inner circle missed the emergence of a serious domestic crisis that threatens the very existence of their regime. These same factors may also, however, subvert the country’s growing pro-democratic protest movement, s
Feminism needs to recapture the state from the neoliberal project to which it is in hock in order to make it deliver for women. It must guard against atomisation and recover its transformative aspirations to shape the new social order that is hovering on the horizon, says Rahila Gupta
The still uncertain outcome of the eurozone crisis makes predictions for 2012 difficult. But its singular impact in the European Union's newer member-states could include a revived appreciation of the benefits of federalism, says Krzysztof Bobinski.
