Comparative Politics

Rather than tangible economic grievance, decades of cross-national empirical research show that feelings and perceptions of sociocultural threat are the principal drivers of surging authoritarian sentiment among the electorate and the demagoguery that rises up to service it.

In a modern, multicultural society, certain citizens simply become overwhelmed by growing complexity and rapid change. These individuals fear a loss of their social order, status, and familiar way of life. Whether rational or not, this trepidation provokes intolerance of threats to the collective order, in which they are unusually invested.

About a third of the population in Western countries is predisposed to authoritarianism, which is about 50 percent heritable. Authoritarians have an inherent preference for oneness and sameness; they favor obedience and conformity and value strong leaders and social homogeneity over freedom and diversity

The job of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) is to vet prospective nominees for peerages. In December 2020 it concluded that – of a list of 16 proposed political peerages (seven Conservative, five Labour and four crossbench) – there was one it could not support. This was the enoblement of Peter Cruddas, the controversial former Conservative party co-treasurer. But Boris Johnson ignored HOLAC’S advice and went ahead with the appointment, stating that he had “considered the Commission’s advice and wider factors and concluded that, exceptionally, the nomination should proceed.” Three days after he took his seat, Cruddas donated £500,000 to the Conservative party. News of Cruddas’s latest donation has prompted suspicion that the ‘wider factors’ the prime minister considered related primarily to the finances of the Conservative party.

the frequency with which Boris Johnson has decided to act contrary to the advice of advisory bodies strengthens the case for giving them actual enforcement powers

The purpose of ethical regulation is to ensure that decisions in government are made in a transparent and objective way for the good of the country, not the benefit of an individual or a minority. Equally important is that the public should have confidence that this is the case. By casually bending or breaking the rules and ignoring the advice of ethical regulators, the prime minister risks hollowing out the credibility of these institutions

A quarter of Africa’s 54 leaders have been in power for more than twenty years. To reach that milestone they have all either evaded or never had to bother with presidential term limits. And this trend has picked up steam. Since 2015, thirteen African incumbents have evaded term limits, reversing a two-decade trend of gradually expanding respect for term limits prior to this period.

the erosion of term limits does not happen in isolation, but is part of a broader pattern to weaken democratic checks and balances and evade the rule of law

Countries where African leaders have evaded terms are significantly less democratic, more corrupt, and conflict-prone compared to African countries where term limits have been upheld

“I can’t believe in the richest country in the world. …” This is the expression of incredulity and dismay that precedes some story about the fundamental impoverishment of American life, the fact that the lived, built geography of existence here is so frequently wanting, that the most basic social amenities are at once grossly overpriced and terribly underwhelming, that normal people (most especially the poor and working class) must navigate labyrinths of bureaucracy for the simplest public services, about our extraordinary social and political paralysis in the face of problems whose solutions seem to any reasonable person self-evident and relatively straightforward.

The American commonwealth is shockingly impoverished.

American liberals and leftists tend to over-valorize the Western European model, but there is no doubt that the wealthy countries at the core of the EU have far more successfully mitigated the most extreme social inequalities and built systems for health and transportation that far outstrip anything in the U.S. Even in their poor urban suburbs or, say, the disinvested industrial north of France, you will find nothing like the squalor that we still permit—that we accept as ordinary—in the USA. Meanwhile, in our ever-declining adversary-of-convenience, the Moscow subway runs on time.

Brothers of Italy’s rise shows it could potentially reach a broader electorate compared to the parties that in postwar Italy took the inheritance of the post-fascist tradition. Despite having enshrined strong anti-fascist principles in its postwar constitution, Italy still has a somehow ambivalent relationship with its fascist past, and several political parties and groups have been tied, more or less openly, to that tradition

Brothers of Italy still sports the flame symbol used by the Italian Social Movement in its logo.

Forza Italia is a shadow of its former self, and the League’s ambitions are severely reduced by Salvini’s disastrous record as deputy prime minister in 2018-2019. The political juncture makes Brothers of Italy appealing to conservative voters who are politically homeless.

the mistrust of expertise is not just caused by Trumpian disinformation and the occasional scientific misstep or accident. In the U.S., it is also the consequence of a society-wide failure to hold morally bankrupt elites who preside over massive expert systems like banking, investment, health care and yes, governance, accountable for their crimes and abuses

we must combine careful messaging with efforts to make the United States a more trustworthy society, in which the lords of our expert realms are not able to evade all responsibility for their misdeeds by throwing money at the right people

Tunisia faced its biggest crisis in a decade of democracy on Monday after President Kais Saied ousted the government and froze the activities of parliament, a move his foes labelled a coup that should be opposed on the street.

after a day of protests against the government and the biggest party in parliament, the moderate Islamist Ennahda, following a spike in COVID-19 cases and growing anger over chronic political dysfunction and economic malaise

huge crowds gathered in his support in Tunis and other cities, cheering, dancing and ululating while the military blocked off the parliament and state television station

the sense of relief, joy and pride Egyptians felt over their success. The dredger and a fleet of tug boats had worked day and night to unclog one of the world’s most important waterways, eventually refloating the Ever Given in a week — Egyptian can-do beat the expectations of experts who predicted it would take twice as long.

served as a reminder of how much of their potential is stymied by a political economy that deters experimentation, punishes innovation and ultimately pushes many Egyptians to seek opportunities abroad

Centered on a bigotry of low expectations is the idea that Egyptian workers are uniquely unimaginative and unindustrious, and that these traits — rather than the greed and grift of their rulers — are to blame for the country’s economic failings.

Policymakers who face unfamiliar challenges often turn to the past. The problem is they don’t see the messy questions that historians do but, instead, a warehouse of analogies providing easy answers. That seductive simplicity can lead them badly astray.

The actual events of the Chernobyl disaster that took place 35 years ago have been transmuted into a fable about how the revelation of a calamity can undermine an authoritarian regime. That story has led to a ceaseless search for how any disaster in an authoritarian system opposed to the United States presages the imminent defeat of U.S. adversaries from within. It’s an analogy that instructs U.S. policymakers of the fragility of other systems and the inherent superiority of their own. In doing so, it absolves them of any need to shore up the foundations of their own system or prepare for long-term coexistence with a resilient authoritarian rival.

relying on analogical reasoning clutters rather than clarifies thinking about international relations and foreign policy.

In 2019 SOS International (SOSi), a Virginia company with links to the U.S. military, won exclusive access to mines across Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani’s brother is a major shareholder of a SOSi subsidiary. President Ghani granted this SOSi subsidiary, Southern Development, rights to buy artisanally mined ore. Southern Development operates a mineral processing plant on the outskirts of Kabul. The inroads made by SOSi and Southern Development into Afghanistan’s mining sector have roots in a 2011 initiative by U.S. special forces to work illegally with members of a pro-government Afghan militia on mining in Kunar province. Although shut down after an inquiry, these Kunar projects have since been quietly restarted as a private venture, and are benefitting those closest to the president.

The Taliban and other armed groups have battled both the central government and each other for control of the mines, using them to fund their insurgencies. Even former U.S. President Donald Trump coveted Afghanistan’s gold, lithium, uranium, and other mineral riches. In 2017, Trump was persuaded to keep troops in the country by its president, Ashraf Ghani, who dangled the prospect of mining contracts for American companies.

In 2011, American Special Forces operators introduced an eastern Kunar paramilitary commander, Noor Mohammed, and his deputy, known as Farhad, to a small Pentagon business development office called the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations. The Task Force, which operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, aimed to create jobs for locals in key industries like mining as part of a broader counterinsurgency strategy. In theory, good jobs would stop Afghans from joining the militants. “Their mission, to create small-scale, sustainable mining operations for the Afghans, was a solid fit to our FID [Foreign Internal Defense] mission,” said Heinz Dinter, a former Special Forces officer. The commandos asked the Task Force to help the two local warlords, who were illegally dealing in chromite, a valuable anti-corrosion additive used in stainless steel and aircraft paint. Afghan chromite is prized for its exceptional purity. With a crusher provided by the Pentagon, Mohammed and Farhad began to process their ore at Combat Outpost Penich, a small NATO base in eastern Kunar.

On April 23, the U.K. officially proscribed the U.S. accelerationist neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and its alias, National Socialist Order, as a terrorist organization. This designation follows Canada’s similar move in February and comes after the group’s members have been linked to five murders, explosions and hate crimes in the U.S. With group proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000 carrying sentences of up to 14 years for members or those who invite support to the group, designation seems to be a step forward in the fight against white nationalism and right-wing terrorism. But because the group seems to lack a physical presence in the U.K., the move appears to be more for international solidarity and to provide tools to combat online propaganda than one of current and direct operational necessity.

Nearly one-third of terror plots foiled by British police since 2017 relate to right-wing ideology, and the youngest Brit ever sentenced for a terror-related offense was the U.K. head of the affiliated white supremacist group Feuerkrieg Division. As of Dec. 31, 2020, 42 (20 percent) of the people in custody for terrorism-connected offenses in Great Britain were categorized as holding right-wing ideologies

Once proscribed, a designated organization is subject to asset freezing and seizure, in addition to disruptive activity including the use of immigration powers like exclusion, prosecution for other offenses, encouragement of the removal of online material and EU asset freezes. In addition, the penalties for the proscription offenses of membership or support (Terrorism Act 2000, Sections 11 and 12) are a maximum of 14 years in prison and/or a fine; the penalties for the offense of wearing a uniform or publishing an image (Terrorism Act 2000, Section 13) are a maximum of six months in prison and/or a fine of £5,000 at most.