Gotabaya Rajapaksa has won the Sri Lankan presidential election after a closely fought race against ruling party candidate Sajith Premadasa, with the country’s Election Commission declaring him the winner on Sunday. “I would like to inform everyone that I will execute everything you trusted in me [to do],” Rajapaksa said at the results announcement, flanked by his brother Mahinda, a former two-time president.
Many people, including economists, wonder why a scheduled 3% fare increase on the Santiago metro triggered mass protests that paralyzed the entire country. In fact, the popular response should come as no surprise, and understanding it is crucial to devising better policy solutions.
Taken together, domestic economic management, recent political and geopolitical choices made at home, the regional and global consequences of Trump and Trumpism, the geo-economics and geo-politics of China’s rise, are all beginning to pose a challenge to the extant Rising India narrative. The old narrative is taking a beating. A new narrative can only be built on the foundations of improved economic performance and better management of domestic political challenges.
Now that the old rules governing macroeconomic cycles no longer seem to apply, it remains to be seen what might cause the next recession in the United States. But if recent history is our guide, the biggest threat stems not from the US Federal Reserve or any one sector of the economy, but rather from the White House.
China’s growing engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in recent years has captured the attention of policymakers, business leaders and foreign policy observers across the region. It seems nearly everyone these days wants to talk about China’s evolving presence and role in the region…But largely absent from the conversation has been a serious, dedicated look at the normative impact of relations with Beijing on governance.
How Africa’s population evolves, and how the continent’s economies develop, will affect nearly everything people near and far assume about their lives today.
Pakistan’s powerful military is struggling to keep its grip on power as the country seethes with anger over the rising cost of living caused by sluggish economic growth, political victimisation, narrowing space for freedom of expression, and the militarisation of politics.
The dominance of the BJP, however, has surprisingly little do with its economic track record. Modi has succeeded politically despite—not because of—the economy, which is in the midst of a protracted downturn that began on his watch. For his second term, the prime minister has doubled down on the grand economic promises he made in his 2014 campaign and gone still further, setting a goal of turning India into a $5 trillion economy by 2024. But his government has struggled to articulate just how it will bring about India’s economic renewal.
To the extent that any nation has a grand strategy, China surely does. The vision is no secret: Xi Jinping vows to make China great again. This resonates deeply: Since imperial decline in the First Opium War (1839 to 1842), every Chinese leader has sought the same, with broad popular support. Xi’s strategy for a modern China of unprecedented power and influence requires recapturing lost glories at home and abroad. It clearly entails reincorporating Taiwan, together with other unresolved island and maritime claims.
