Turkey’s Hard Democracy: An Interview with Andrew Arato
From Today's Zaman
After Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party, or AKP) took office in 2002, many liberal intellectuals in the field of international relations and political science were convinced …
The Tragedy of the 2015 Turkish Elections
Examining the AKP victory
The November 2015 election brought a landslide victory to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), increasing its vote almost nine points in 5 months. This surprising comeback would be hard to explain in an ordinary situation where such drastic shifts in voting in a short time period would not be expected. However, it …
After the Victory of The Law and Justice Party
Envisioning a perfect right-wing religious Poland
Karl Marx famously claimed that history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. Sadly, the recent parliamentary elections in Poland seem to show that actually the opposite can happen as well. Although the 2005 parliamentary victory of the Law and Justice (PiS) party ended in a short-lived coalition with two …
Neoliberal B Team Win Canadian Election
Assessing the conservative defeat
The decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was the big news of the 2015 Canadian election. Harper resigned as party leader, and the dirty laundry of his heavily controlled campaign is now being aired publicly. The Harper reelection campaign drew deeply on racist and Islamaphobic politics, attacking a Federal Court of Appeal decision …
Romanian Tragedy, Romanian Miracle
Glimmers of hope in European politics
On Friday night a heavy metal concert at a downtown Bucharest night club burst literally into flames, as a spark from a pyrotechnic display set off a conflagration that caused panic and pandemonium among the roughly 400 young people trapped inside. Over thirty people were burned to …