Despite major challenges, India’s multicultural democracy has thrived for more than 70 years. But can it survive Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist agenda?

Here to help us answer this question is Milan Vaishnav. Vaishnav is the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics.

Opinion Has It

Is India’s Democracy Dying?

Is India’s Democracy Dying? | Milan Vaishnav

The Communist Party of China, founded a century ago, has been in power for more than seven decades – and it has big plans for the future. What do those plans entail, and is the Party still strong enough to implement them?

Here to help us answer these questions is Rana Mitter. Mitter is the director of the China Centre at the University of Oxford, and a professor of the history and politics of modern China.

Onpinion Has It

The Communist Party of China at 100

The Communist Party of China at 100 | Rana Mitter

Even when the world isn’t gripped by a pandemic, staging the Olympic Games can create serious problems for local populations. So, why do cities and countries keep seeking to host them?

Here to help us answer this question is Jules Boykoff. Jules is an associate professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon, and a former member of the US Olympic Soccer team. He’s the author of NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Beyond.

Is it Time to Cancel the Olympics

Is It Time to Cancel the Olympics? | Jules Boykoff

With many low-paying jobs going unfilled, it seems that the COVID-19 crisis has forced a much-needed adjustment in a labor market where workers had long suffered from a decline in bargaining power. But, as pandemic-support programs end and automation accelerates, workers face serious risks.

Project Syndicate

The US Economy’s Great Adjustment

The US Economy’s Great Adjustment | Betsey Stevenson

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the swiftest and most comprehensive contraction of global economic activity ever. With crises set to proliferate – not least because of climate change – the successes and failures of the pandemic response should serve as lessons for governments everywhere.


Economic Crisis in the Anthropocene | Adam Tooze

After over a decade on the fringes of the global monetary system, digital currencies are increasingly being embraced by companies, governments, and citizens around the world. Are they set to become an integral part of the global monetary system?


Is Crypto Going Mainstream? | Sheila Warren

While elections alone don’t necessarily make a state democratic, they do offer a glimpse into the strength and legitimacy of a democracy. What can we learn from recent electoral outcomes?


Voting in a Time of Democratic Erosion

Voting in a Time of Democratic Erosion | Francesca Binda

The Taliban has announced its interim government, and its all-male, often-hardline makeup seems to have confirmed many observers’ worst fears. Why did the US mission in Afghanistan fail, and what is in store for the country under Taliban rule?


America’s Afghan Debacle | Annie Pforzheimer

The unprecedented fiscal spending that many governments unleashed in response to the COVID-19 crisis has fueled an increasingly heated debate over the risks posed by public debt. But the debate is far from new, and history holds important lessons that should inform it.


Debt Wars | Barry Eichengreen

In the Sino-American great-power drama, Taiwan has taken center stage, as China has ramped up pressure on the island. How much danger is Taiwan in – and how far will the US go to defend it?


Trouble over Taiwan | Bonnie Glaser

Twenty years ago, the September 11 terrorist attacks invigorated America’s sense of itself as the “indispensable nation.” But its actions since then have failed to improve global security and have endangered those who it claimed to be helping.


The End of the Indispensable Nation | Stephen Wertheim

In 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, effectively ushering in a new global monetary non-system with a single pillar: the US dollar. Fifty years later, that pillar is showing signs of strain. Can the world muster the cooperation needed to manage whatever comes next?

Toward Bretton Woods 2.0?

In the latest edition of PS Voice, Jim O’Neill discusses how to beat antimicrobial resistance, which threatens millions of lives, with Gavekal Dragonomics’ Anatole Kaletsky and Leonardo Maisano of Il Sole 24 Ore.

PS Voice: The Super Germ Threat

Most experts agree that the euro is undermining the EU. To dismantle it, however, would be extremely costly, and federalization isn’t feasible in the current political climate. Instead, Yanis Varoufakis suggests a different path: simulating a functioning federation. 

In this episode, editors Whitney Arana and Jonathan Stein talk with the former Greek finance minister about his proposal to save the EU and his “New Deal” solution to some of the bloc’s most pressing challenges.

Yanis Varoufakis on a New Deal to Save the EU

With more than a million displaced people having found safety within Uganda’s borders, the region’s most willing supporter of refugees is feeling the strain. But a recent UN-backed effort to raise money for the crisis overlooks the fact that Uganda's president instigated many of the conflicts from which the refugees have fled. In this episode, PS editors Jonathan Stein and Whitney Arana speak with Helen Epstein, a professor at Bard College, about the real story behind the region’s current challenges.

Helen Epstein Unpacks Uganda’s Refugee Crisis

Greece’s former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, discusses China’s growing role in Southern Europe and EU politics with Anatole Kaletsky, Co-Chairman of Gavekal Draganomics, David Alandete, Managing Editor of El Pais, and Torsten Riecke, Handelsblatt’s international correspondent.

PS Voice: Yanis Varoufakis on China

As new technologies subject the world’s economies to massive structural change, wages are no longer playing the central redistributive role they once did. Manuel Muñiz, Dean of the IE School of International Relations in Madrid and a Senior Associate at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, says that unless this decoupling of productivity and wages is addressed, the political convulsions many countries are experiencing will only intensify.

Manuel Muñiz Says Economic Growth Is No Longer Enough

Solutions to poverty are varied, and include improvements to education, agriculture, health care, and even transportation. But as Keetie Roelen, co-director of the Center for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies, in Brighton, England, argues, another aspect of poverty – the sense of shame that it imposes – receives far less attention than it should.

Keetie Roelen on the Psychosocial Side of Poverty

With President Vladimir Putin the only viable candidate in the presidential election in March, a fourth term is all but guaranteed. Yet, as The New School’s Nina Khrushcheva explains, what isn’t certain is what another six years of Putin’s rule will mean for Russia, Europe, and the world.

Nina Khrushcheva on Russia in 2018 and Beyond

While smart people disagree on what artificial intelligence will mean for humanity, there is little question that AI will change how people work, relax, and relate to one another. Harold James thinks that some of these changes will be less welcome than others.

In this episode, host Greg Bruno discusses a recent column by guest Harold James. Read it here --> http://bit.ly/2BjXY4u

Princeton's Harold James Asks: Will AI Make Us Stupid?

When Americans vote on November 6, Donald Trump will not be on the ballot, but the future of his presidency will be. Veteran Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew explains why this midterm election will be so consequential.

Elizabeth Drew on America’s Midterm Mess

For more than two generations, economic orthodoxy has held that governments that invest and regulate the least govern best. But Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, discusses how state-led investment and regulation can boost economic growth and human welfare.

Diane Coyle on Measuring, and Managing, More Sustainable Growth

When it comes to tackling the challenges of inequality, are we asking the right questions? Or, for that matter, measuring the right indicators? Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2015, says no, and it's masking a public health crisis. 

**Also featuring Princeton University professor and economist Anne Case

Measuring Inequality | Angus Deaton & Anne Case

Nearly five years ago, Hoda Muthana and Shamima Begum left their respective homes in Alabama and London and traveled to Syria, where they swore loyalty to ISIS. Now they want to return home. But can they? A new UN report examines the question.

The Female Jihadi | Aleksandra Dier

According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, his creation was supposed “to make the world more open and connected.” After massive privacy breaches and the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech, that mission lies in ruins. Roger McNamee, an early investor in the platform, joins our podcast to discuss what went wrong.

*NB at 14:47: It was Michael Cohen's Rockefeller Center office that was raided by the FBI in April 2018. Paul Manafort's home was searched in August 2017.

Facing Up to Facebook | Roger McNamee

Last week, we spoke with Yascha Mounk, a professor on liberal democracy and populism at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. We discussed the state of the EU in the run up to last week's European Parliament elections. During our conversation, we also touched on the role social media has played in democracy. Here's this week's outtake.

Outtakes: Yascha Mounk on Democracy and Social Media

Over the last few weeks, Opinion Has It host Elmira Bayrasli sat down with three experts to discuss the legacy of the Tiananmen Square protests, 30 years after they were violently crushed by the Chinese Communist Party. That episode was published last week. 

During the conversation with Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, Elmira asked about China's progress in the use of surveillance and tools of repression. Here's what Sophie had to say for this week's outtake.

Outtakes: Sophie Richardson on Chinese Surveillance

When Mao Zedong declared in 1968 that “women hold up half the sky,” many were taken aback. No one expected such a progressive stance from the Communist founder of the People's Republic. 

Today, however, rather than seeing women as a key driver of economic advancement, China’s leaders have been cracking down on the feminist movement. Leta Hong Fincher, a scholar on women in China, explains why.

The War on Women: The View from China

The War on Women: The View from China | Leta Hong Fincher

From #MeToo to gender identity, the zeitgeist has never been more amenable to shattering stereotypes and correcting wrongs. Yet health care remains stuck in the past. Asha George, Chair of Health Systems Global, describes how discrimination in health systems can create dangerous gaps in care.

When Gender Bias Creates Unequal Health Systems | Asha George

For the last several years, populist leaders have wreaked havoc on the institutions and norms that have underpinned the liberal world order. And their policies are increasingly placing the global economy at risk.

Understanding Economic Populism | Allison Schrager

Thirty years ago this week, the world watched in awe as thousands brought down the Berlin Wall, marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Today, however, democracy is in crisis, and authoritarianism is once again on the rise – including in countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain.

Revisiting the End of the Cold War

Revisiting The End Of The Cold War | John Lewis Gaddis

Does the solution to widening economic inequality lie in a wealth tax? We speak to Emmanuel Saez, an adviser to Elizabeth Warren who helped design the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” plan.

How to Tax the Super Rich

How to Tax the Super Rich | Emmanuel Saez

“Make America Great Again” was a powerful campaign slogan in 2016, appealing in states that mattered to voters who felt that the US economy had passed them by. Winning them over – or winning them back – will be crucial to Democrats’ chances in November’s presidential and congressional elections. 

In a live recording at the Brooklyn Public Library, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and author Anand Giridharadas discuss how to do it.

**Photo credit: Gregg Richard of Brooklyn Public Library

Live from Brooklyn Public Library: How Democrats Can Win in 2020

For decades, globalization has been narrowing the scope of national sovereignty. Does the COVID-19 pandemic – which has highlighted, yet again, the interconnected nature of today’s most pressing challenges – augur the end of the nation-state’s primacy?

Daniel Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University and the author of The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency.

The COVID-19 World Order

The COVID-19 World Order | Daniel Drezner

Opinion Has It by Project Syndicate features conversations with leading economists, policymakers, authors, and researchers on the world’s most pressing issues. Tune in for biweekly analyses and insights with our host Elmira Bayrasli, Foreign Policy Interrupted co-founder and Project Syndicate contributor.

Project Syndicate

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