Despite a multitude of forecasts predicting the victory of Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s former foreign minister, in that country’s presidential election, preliminary results indicate that another contender, Ashraf Ghani, the former Finance Minister, might indeed be the winner. This result makes sense given the traditional domination of the Pashtuns in the central government of Afghanistan.
The fact that Rashid Dustum, an influential Uzbek from the north of the country, will be Ghani’s...
Interview with Aleksei Sarabyev
The Syrian presidential elections were held on June 3, 2014, with Bashar al-Assad emerging victorious.
Aleksei Sarabyev
, head of the Information and Publishing Department at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, talks to RIAC about how this ...
Should the Republicans grab Congress at the approaching November 4 elections, the incumbent administration would effectively come to an end, with Barack Obama becoming a lame duck for the two remaining years of his term.
No Exceptions
The U.S. midterm elections are known to frequently oust the president's party from ...
Assad will remain. However, the devil, as always, is in the details
The Syrian crisis continues to occupy a central place in world politics, even as the events in Ukraine have become the primary focus. The presidential elections in Syria will essentially change nothing: their easily predictable results will confirm the legitimacy of the rule of Bashar al-Assad for those who recognize it, and serve as a bone of contention for those who consider his rule illegitimate....
... reservations about the election, it marks a transition to a new political phase.
First, Ukraine managed to show that there is a functioning political space covering most of the country, though it’s still possible to dispute the formal legitimacy of the elections.
Second, the revolutionary fervor is coming to naught. Tired of chaos and unpredictability, people want a respectable and prudent leader who seems able to solve problems. Only this can explain why billionaire Petro Poroshenko, a pillar of the ...
... marked the end of the first phase of the Ukraine crisis. The time is right for making initial and tentative conclusions.
The situation in Ukraine is far from stable, but the country gets a legitimate head of state, to be followed by fresh parliamentary elections and a new constitution. A full-scale civil war has not broken out, and Ukraine has not unraveled—although both dangers remain. There is still a chance to reconstitute Ukraine on a sustainable basis, taking full account of the country's ...
Interview with Farkhod Tolipov, Director of Caravan of Knowledge
Interview
Afghanistan’s presidential elections on April 5б 2014 did not deliver an outright winner, and the second round is scheduled for late May. Although people in Afghanistan, the adjacent regions and the wider world all cherish the hope that the future Afghan president will usher in ...
The Electoral Cycle and its Geopolitical Dimension
In 2013, Latin America entered a new electoral cycle. Between 2013 and 2016, there will be presidential elections in 17 countries of the region (of the larger countries, only Mexico does not fit this cycle, as its election will take place in 2018). This election marathon will hit its peak in 2014, when seven presidential election campaigns will take place ...
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Zbignev Ivanovski
, Doctor of Political Science, Head of the Center for Political Studies at the RAS Institute for Latin American Studies, Professor of Global Processes Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
At the recent National Congress elections the ruling party lost ground to ex-president Alvaro Uribe’s party. Does this affect current president Juan Manuel Santos’ prospects for next May’s presidential elections?
The results of the parliamentary elections in Colombia ...
... the country’s political system saw radical changes, with a new constitution adopted in 1997 that had genuinely democratic features and facilitated the engagement of the general population in the political process.
The January 2001 parliamentary elections were won by the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) with the rich businessman Thaksin Shinawatra at the helm. Because the TRT did not win an absolute majority, a coalition government was formed. However, during the next election in February 2005, the ...
