Democracy

This year’s elections in Brazil will have the largest number of congressional candidates up for reelection since the country’s re-democratization in 1985. A survey by news portal UOL’s platform Congresso in Foco shows that at least 457 Members of Congress — 33 Senators and 424 Federal Deputies — will attempt to keep their seats. That total is 15 percent higher than in the last general elections, in 2014, and the highest ever recorded for Congress.

In the final blitz before the election, expect two loud narratives to remain dominant—and, in the process, to drown out a number of key election storylines.

It’s no surprise, given the sky-high degree of political polarization in Pakistan, that two clashing narratives are dominating the country’s public discourse in the lead up to a national election on July 25.

A fellow at the Kennan Institute from September 2014 to May 2015, Audrey L. Altstadt is a history professor and co-director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.