Democracy

Mexico Election Preview

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW, Mexico Institute director Duncan Wood previews the upcoming general election. He discusses the polling dominance of front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador and talks about other things to look for when Mexicans go to the polls on July 1.

Guests

Secularism and India’s Electoral Democracy

On the eve of India’s first general elections in 1951, the first to be held in free India, and on the basis of a universal adult franchise, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, former minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s government and former president of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha, extolled the virtues of a multiparty democracy, and urged the formation of a new “national political party with faith in India’s culture and traditions.” Mukherjee would go on to found the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, predecessor of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

'Election Interference: Ensuring Law Enforcement Is Equipped to Target Those Seeking to Do Harm': Nina Jankowicz Testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee

Nina Jankowicz, a Global Fellow with the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute and a leading authority on Russian disinformation campaigns, testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary at a June 12 hearing titled "Election Interference: Ensuring Law Enforcement Is Equipped to Target Those Seeking to Do Harm."

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Italy at the Crossroads

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW we examine the outcome of Italy’s general election in which populist parties surged to power, but none held enough seats to build a government.

Fed Up With Corruption, Fresh Faces Take On Brazil’s Political Old Guard

Pedro Markun once thought hacking Brazil’s political system was the best way to change it.

For the last decade, the 32-year-old computer programmer roiled the political establishment with digital intrusions, like cloning the presidential blog to allow comments.

Now, he wants to do more than just shake up the establishment. He wants to defeat it at the ballot box in a bid for a seat in Congress.

Questioning Our Assumptions: Survivorship Bias and Predictions of Arab Gulf Stability

It is never a bad idea to question your assumptions. We are years removed from the maelstrom of instability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that left some regimes in tatters, but the aftershocks are still being felt. One prediction (nay, assumption) to come out of the “Arab Spring” was that the Arab monarchies—the regimes that survived the destabilizing unrest intact—was their ability to manage coalitions of disparate constituencies, which provided these countries with a degree of stability absent in the collapsed regimes. 

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