Reflections on the Mandate Recall On April 10, 2022, Mexico had its first “mandate recall”, an exercise of participatory democracy inaugurated by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the current Mexican president. Widely known by just his initials, AMLO won by a record 30 million votes in 2018, in a historic election with the highest turnout in Mexican history , with a victory margin of 32.44 points. After …
Before the war in Ukraine, the European Union was on course towards political decoupling from the common liberal democratic project. That decoupling was driven by increasing energy dependence on Russia and trade dependence on China. The war has put those energy and trade ties into question, along with the political and economic leadership of the EU. Germany, and to a lesser extent France, have been seen to have …
The triumph of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez has initiated a new political configuration. Their call for a Great Nacional Accord seeks not only governability but also advancement of peace in a broad sense. In addition, they will have to respond to the expectations that their triumph has generated in a large part of the Colombian population. * On June 21, two days after Election Day, Francia Márquez …
Roe v. Wade is now history, and with it the U.S. constitutional protection of a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. A half century of medical practice, normative evolution, and legal precedent has been overturned by a Supreme Court stacked with conservative, Trump-appointed judges who have long made clear their opposition to the idea that reproductive freedom is a fundamental right. …
John C. Eastman, the Trump lawyer behind the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is again in the media spotlight. The New York Times now reports that Eastman not only worked behind the scenes with right-wing activist and SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas to roll back the election results, but also that on Christmas Eve 2020 he emailed another Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, with some explosive inside …
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has now completed its second two-hour hearing, with its third hearing scheduled for this afternoon. The Committee has clearly done much important work, and its presentation of its findings is off to a good start. At the same time, unless the Committee finds ways to communicate more broadly and deeply, so that its …
While some countries around the world still continue to exert draconian laws in a bid to suppress free speech, Sierra Leone is making some gains towards a press that is more stable and viable. In 2020, the government of Sierra Leone repealed the Criminal and Seditious Libel law and this has helped to make tremendous strides towards press freedom. We have no journalists in jail in relation to …
At the time of writing this, Sokoto State in Northern Nigeria is burning following the mob lynching of a 22 year old student, Deborah Yakubu, over a voice note she posted on a WhatsApp group asking her classmates to stop posting religious messages on the group intended for school work, and ostensibly insulting the Prophet in the process. Deborah was dragged out of the protection of the school’s …
There is no Crimean Tatar for whom the day of May 18th does not evoke strong emotions. This year, May 18th commemorates seventy-eight years of their mass deportation; almost 200,000 Crimean Tatars were torn from their beds in the middle of the night, and forced into cattle wagons.¹ Accused of collaboration with the Nazis by Joseph Stalin, they were declared the traitors and enemies—despite many of the male Tatars …
The imperial formations and colonial relations framing Russia’s war on Ukraine Framing the War Two months have passed since the beginning of Russia’s second recent invasion of Ukraine. Predictions of the outcome of the conflict have shifted from certainty of a full Russian occupation to a stalemate resulting in protracted war. Uncertainty over probable resolutions mirror myriad causal accounts explaining Russia’s aggressive behavior. Regrettably, almost all such interpretations …
