When India gained its independence, the southern state of Kerala promised to be nothing but a headache for the new nation. Near the bottom in almost every indicator of development—literacy, health, general wellbeing—the state was a basket case. Yet over the span of fifty years everything had turned around, and suddenly officials in the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram could boast some of the highest scores in general well-being not just in In...
ontent ran rampant as the international community watched with disapproval. Within the same year, in an atmosphere pervaded with public fury and international outrage, the European Commission released an audit of the Liberian state in a report that was “so dramatic… that the EC did not immediately release them for fear of the reaction they might provoke.” The final report showed evidence of such extensive and damaging corruption pract...
by Marissa Tjartjalis Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been accused of many things throughout her political career. Yet until her visit to Egypt this past July, being a “Secret Islamist” was not one of them. Pulling up to the Four Seasons in Cairo, however, Clinton encountered a number of surprising allegations. “Hillary Clinton is the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood,” one sign read in the midst of screaming protesters. “Stop the...
Abukar Arman is the special envoy to the United States from the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. In 1991, the ruling regime in Somalia was overthrown by a number of competing clans and political factions, and since then the country has been torn apart by violent civil war and political instability. In 2004, the TFG was established in an effort to restore peace in Somalia and lay the foundation for national unity. Despite their mandate...
ccording to liberal newspaper La Gazette du Maroc. Yet, Morocco remains far from democratic, as its pervasive election fraud and corrupt legislature indicate. Political liberalization, in terms of meaningful opposition to the state and substantial alternation of power, remains elusive, as does true inclusion of minority groups like women and homosexuals. Morocco’s slow progress seems surprising, given that the king himself, who wields absolute co...
t “evidence points at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist attack.” When the investigation was presented to Lebanese authorities, the Assad government immediately denounced its claim of collusion between the state security services and alleged that the UN investigation had been flawed. The complexities surrounding Hariri’s assassination and the formation of the IIIC compel the international community to reconsider the efficacy o...
Nations Development Program’s at the Columbia Law School. Representing prominent elements of both Libya and Tunisia’s transition governments, Kamal Bashir Idhan, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Libya, and Said Mechichi, State Secretary for Reform in the Ministry of the Interior of Tunisia, told the audience through translators of the recent histories of their turbulent countries and the efforts being made to uphold the ideas of the revoluti...
ud and Yisrael Beiteinu hhave fundamentally different stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much of modern Israeli political discourse regarding the issue focuses on the idea of a two-state solution where a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel. Palestinians have called for Israel to cede all of the territory it conquered in the 1967 war, but Israel has been hesitant to give up this land because of Is...
From Wikimedia Commons This article is the last of a biweekly series called “Highway 270,” which profiled heavily contested states in the 2012 election season. As polling stations open and we await the returns, I offer the last of the “conventional wisdom” for the 2012 presidential election season, as well as my predictions, about which I will probably be sheepishly vague after tomorrow night. In light of CNN’s tremendously helpful “both candid...
Strategy, published in May 2010, mentions the Americas poetically — he writes of developing allies “from the Americas to Africa; from the Middle East to Southeast Asia”—but devotes little attention to specific cases. His 2011 State of the Union address made but one reference to the Americas; rather than discuss policy, he simply announced an intention to travel to the region. And although Obama’s immediate priority for the hemisphere was reinstat...
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