| | | | Mayors Challenge Eastern Europe's Populist Order | | Eastern Europe's populists face a new challenge from big-city mayors, Tim Gosling writes for Foreign Policy. Eastern and Central European politics can split along a rural-urban divide similar to America's, and cities are revealing some liberal momentum: In Hungary's recent elections, opposition candidates won in 11 cities, including Budapest, where green candidate Gergely Karacsony defeated the governing populist party.
The capitals of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have all elected liberal, opposition mayors, Gosling points out. Their "political outlooks are far from uniform," he writes. "Warsaw's Rafal Trzaskowski is a former minister from the center-right Civic Platform, Matus Vallo runs Bratislava at the head of a team of independent technocrats, and Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib is an activist physician from the upstart, anti-establishment Pirate Party. But they are united in their opposition to the illiberal tendencies of their national governments."
Control of capitals entails practical implications. Populist leaders can no longer dole out favorable contracts and jobs in the capitals, Gosling writes, and city resources will no longer back their agendas. Gosling suggests it's a political opportunity on which liberals can build. | | Can Free Trade Undo a Colonial Legacy in Africa? | | In Africa, "[c]olonialism left a Balkanised continent of primarily subscale economies," the Financial Times writes in an editorial. "Most of them have arbitrary borders. Sixteen are landlocked. The African Continental Free Trade Area is an opportunity to remake the continent in its own image and in its own interests."
Africa is embarking on an ambitious free-trade zone, the FT writes, with 54 of 55 countries having signed up; it would lower tariffs to zero on 90% of goods and hopefully would simplify customs procedures. Intra-African trade has remained relatively stunted, compared to other world regions: As a Brookings paper noted in January, intra-African exports accounted for 17% of total African exports in 2017, which "remains low compared to levels in Europe (69 percent), Asia (59 percent), and North America (31 percent)."
As the FT writes: "Too many African countries are stuck in colonial-like trading arrangements, exporting raw materials and importing manufactured goods." The free-trade area presents an opportunity for higher-value exports, more manufacturing, and a more specialized economy, in the paper's view—not to mention more than $3 trillion of continental GDP that would make Africa's free-trade area the world's largest. | | In Iraq, a New Protest 'Language' | | | It's been noted that protesters in Lebanon are abandoning old sectarian scripts, and Harith Hasan writes for Middle East Eye that Shiite demonstrators in Iraq have similarly turned away from sectarian allegiances. Protesters have used a new "language" to express their demands of Iraq's government, Hasan writes: Today's movement "is a confrontation and a negotiation between the old language of 'sects' and a new language of citizenship and social justice." | | Can Modi Deliver More Than Nationalism? | | At Foreign Affairs, Milan Vaishnav writes that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under the gun to deliver promised economic reforms—despite his Bharatiya Janata Party having become an electoral dynamo unparalleled since the height of Jawaharlal Nehru's Congress Party. Modi promised to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024, while it currently sits at an IMF-projected $2.94 trillion for 2019, and growth slumped to a six-year low of about five percent earlier this year.
Modi's government has yet to back away from state-owned companies and hasn't managed to privatize the country's banking sector; progress takes time, but Modi uses cultural appeal to bring together his broad tent of Hindu supporters, Vaishnav writes, meaning he could find it difficult to drive an economic agenda—and it's only a matter of time before voters demand results. | | The International System is Unfair—Just Ask the Kurds | | | The plight of Syrian Kurds is only the latest example of a stateless group being cheated by the international system of nation-states, Malka Older writes at Foreign Policy. Though it's difficult to conceive of a world without countries, Older points out seemingly rectifiable problems: Stateless groups lack seats in supranational bodies like the UN, their leaders are not considered as heads of state, and they have no diplomats. Broadly, the nation-state system is "poorly equipped" to deal with today's challenges, Older writes—as shown by the power of terrorist groups, multinational corporations, and cross-border election interference backed by non-governmental actors. | | | | | | |
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