State & Power

Opinion

Argument-led analysis that separates verified facts from editorial judgment.

14 September 2026
Opinion

Trump's Mail-Voting Push Is Less About Fraud Than About Who Gets to Write Election Rules

The fight over postal ballots is becoming a constitutional struggle over federal power dressed up as election integrity.

14 September 2026
Opinion

The US-China AI Race Is Becoming an Excuse to Avoid Governing AI

Washington says slowing down would hand advantage to Beijing. Beijing says Western safety demands are containment. That circular logic makes every guardrail look like unilateral surrender.

13 September 2026
Opinion

India's Young Voters Are Not Ungrateful. They Are Tired of Being Told Growth Is Enough

The exam-leak protests exposed a basic weakness in India's political success story: headline growth means less when the path into the middle class feels rigged.

12 September 2026
Opinion

Pakistan Signed a Defence Pact That Its Geography May Not Let It Keep Ambiguous

Islamabad wants Saudi security ties, Iranian dialogue and freedom from another war. The region may force it to choose which objective comes first.

11 September 2026
Opinion

A $5,000 Election-Year 'Dividend' Is Populism With a Treasury Account

Handing voters a huge cheque before an election may be legal policy. It is also exactly the kind of politics fiscal conservatives used to ridicule.

11 September 2026
Opinion

France's Fiscal Crisis Is Becoming a Crisis of Political Credibility

Deficit slippage is not merely a bond-market story. It strengthens the parties that argue France's governing establishment can neither tax, cut nor reform its way out of stagnation.

9 September 2026
Opinion

India Is Normalising Religious Polarisation as Electoral Strategy. That Is a Democratic Failure

Parties can win elections by sorting voters into religious blocs. A democracy pays a long-term price when that becomes the organising principle of politics.

9 September 2026
Opinion

Canada Has Learned the Most American Lesson in Trade Politics: Target the Swing States

Retaliatory tariffs are being designed for electoral geography as much as economic impact, turning trade policy into a form of cross-border political pressure.

8 September 2026
Opinion

Trump's Foreign Policy Has a Coercion Problem: Allies Learn Too

Pressure can extract concessions, but repeated pressure teaches partners to build alternatives. Canada, Europe and even Asian allies are acting on that lesson.

7 September 2026
Opinion

Europe's Political Centre Keeps Calling Voters Extreme Instead of Asking Why They Left

France and Germany offer different systems but the same warning: moral condemnation is not a substitute for political diagnosis.

6 September 2026
Opinion

Pakistan Cannot Keep Calling Itself a Competitive Democracy While Its Most Important Political Rival Is Managed From Prison

Whatever one thinks of Imran Khan, a system that cannot politically process his popularity without incarceration has a legitimacy problem.

5 September 2026
Opinion

India's 'Strategic Autonomy' Works Because Everyone Still Wants India. New Delhi Should Not Mistake Leverage for Immunity

Modi's balancing between Washington, Moscow, Tehran and the Gulf is sophisticated. It is not cost-free.

4 September 2026
Opinion

Zambia's Hichilema Won. That Does Not Excuse What Happened Around the Vote

A likely winner can still damage democracy by weakening the conditions under which victory is trusted.

3 September 2026
Opinion

Birthright Citizenship Should Not Depend on How Creatively a President Can Rewrite an Executive Order

The Fourteenth Amendment is not a drafting puzzle for administrations trying to reach the same rejected outcome by narrower means.

1 September 2026
Opinion

Democracy's 2026 Problem Is Not That Voters Are Too Angry. It Is That Institutions Too Often Look Unresponsive

Polarisation is real, but appeals for moderation will keep failing when citizens experience politics as a system that can describe problems without solving them.

31 August 2026
Opinion

South Africa Cannot Claim Continental Leadership While African Migrants Are Treated as Scapegoats

Pretoria's diplomatic ambitions are incompatible with recurring anti-migrant violence that turns fellow Africans into convenient targets for domestic failure.

30 August 2026
Opinion

India's Growth Story Needs More Transparency, Not More Cheerleading

A country can grow quickly and still deserve harder questions about inflation, data quality and who actually feels richer.

28 August 2026
Opinion

Pakistan's 'No Talks' Doctrine in Balochistan Is an Admission That Politics Has Failed

A state may have to fight armed groups. It should be alarmed when force becomes its only political vocabulary in a province with deep grievances.

27 August 2026
Opinion

America's Supreme Court Size Fight Is a Symptom of a Court That Too Many Voters See as Partisan Power

Capping the court at nine or expanding it both miss the deeper legitimacy problem.

24 August 2026
Opinion

An Election Without Serious Competition Is Administration, Not Democratic Renewal

Ethiopia can hold a national vote and still leave the central political question unanswered: can power realistically change hands?

20 August 2026
Opinion

Europe Has Plenty of Rule-of-Law Reports. The Question Is Whether It Has Rule-of-Law Consequences

The EU is increasingly good at diagnosing judicial, corruption and media-freedom problems. Diagnosis without predictable enforcement can become ritual.

16 August 2026
Opinion

Foreign Powers Keep Paying Djibouti for Stability. They Should Stop Pretending That Makes It Democratic

Military bases and Red Sea geography have made Guelleh useful to almost everyone. Utility should not be confused with political legitimacy.