The entrenchment of inequality in the United States damages the economy, degrades politics and corrodes the American dream. A new reality is also an epic challenge of leadership, says Godfrey Hodgson.
A lengthy political crisis in Nepal has exposed deep divisions over the country’s future, in which matters of identity - national, ethnic, caste, class - are to the fore. A new federal constitution is intended to address these. The obstacles in its way could be removed by rethinking the “identitar
The narrow defeat of a populist-nationalist coalition, and in particular the advance of a party advocating Slovak-Hungarian collaboration, could open Slovakia to a better era, says Juliana Sokolova.
A decade of wars has produced a strategic shift very different from what Washington and its allies intended - less towards unipolar order than the complexities of multipolar disorder. This poses a challenge to policy-makers and analysts alike, says Arshin Adib-Moghaddam.
A series of careful reports into the leaked emails of climate scientists provides a consistent account of the "climategate" saga. This allows a welcome refocus on the problems of climate change and the role of the IPCC, says Øyvind Paasche.
The new constitution which the Kyrgyz people voted in on 27 June 2010 seeks to break the presidential pattern of government. But the recent violent upheaval has left the government weak. America and Russia both need Kyrgyzstan to thrive as a country ruled neither by despotism nor fundamentalism. T
The choice of a successor to the president killed in the "second Katyn" tragedy was always going to be an emotionally and politically complex process. The result suggests that the Poles and their institutions have passed both tests, says Adam Szostkiewicz.
Six months after the catastrophe in Haiti’s capital, the realities of insecurity, displacement and poverty co-exist with opportunities and agents of reconstruction. Johanna Mendelson Forman offers a view from the ground.
The European Union needs to undergo a revolution founded on “pragmatic wishful thinking” that will make it more modern, global, networked, and effective. But for “EU 2.0” to become possible, says Kalypso Nicolaïdis, there must be a new governing idea for the European project: sustainable integrati
The violent protests of July 2009 in Urumchi revealed deep-rooted problems in Beijing’s policy towards the Uyghur people of Xinjiang region in China’s far west. The path to resolution can only be unblocked by acknowledging the Uyghurs’ right to speak, says Henryk Szadziewski.
A number of different visions of China’s future as a leading world power are competing for public attention and influence. Among them are populist ideas that challenge Beijing’s official rhetoric about “building a harmonious world”, says William A Callahan.
Albania’s iron communist regime survived until 1990, five years after the death of its great dictator, Enver Hoxha. But the country’s political path since then is full of unburied ghosts, says Bernd Fischer.
