Trending Globally: Politics and Policy

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Marc Dunkelman, Watson Institute fellow in International and Public Affairs and author of the new book “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back.” In the book, Dunkelman explores how American progressives transformed from a movement dedicated to ambitious, effective, centralized government projects (think the New Deal or Medicaid) int...

In 2022, OpenAI, Inc. launched a free version of its software ChatGPT, ushering in a new phase in the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Since then, a constant stream of breakthroughs in AI tech by a handful of companies has made clear that artificial intelligence will reshape our planet more profoundly and more quickly than many of us imagined. Some of these promised changes are thrilling...

In the 19th century, about one in three Americans moved every year. In the 1960s, that figure had shrunk to one in five  In 2023, it was one in 13.  In other words, a smaller percentage of Americans are moving today than they have at any time in our history. As Yoni Appelbaum, historian and deputy executive editor at The Atlantic makes clear in his book, “Stuck: How the Privileged and th...

On February 23, Germans went to the polls. While the establishment center-right CDU/CSU alliance won the largest share of votes, the results revealed a country experiencing profound political and social change. The far-right AfD party received an unprecedented 20% of the vote, while the incumbent center-left party, the SPD, suffered its worst loss in over 100 years.  So, what does this electi...

On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Tyler Jost, a political scientist and assistant professor at the Watson Institute.  Tyler is an expert on international security and Chinese foreign policy, and his new book “Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation,” explores how leaders (in China and beyond) make decisions about when and how to engage in military conflict. Ar...

The Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol is a stately room just off the Great Rotunda, whose walls are lined with — you guessed it — statues. The statues celebrate notable figures from all 50 states. For most of its existence, there wasn’t a single statue of a Black American in this hall. But that changed in 2022 when a statue of Mary McCleod Bethune was delivered to the Hall from Florida. Bethune, w...

On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump was once again sworn in as President of the United States. The ceremony was moved indoors due to the cold, where Trump declared in his inaugural address that no president has ever been tested like he has, and that “the new golden age for America starts now.”  However, it wasn’t all speeches and ceremonies on Monday — Trump also signed dozens of executive or...

While there are many hurdles to addressing the climate crisis in a meaningful way, there’s been one consistent bright spot in climate news over the last decade: the price of renewable energy — particularly solar and wind power — has dropped dramatically. By many measures, they’re now cheaper to produce than fossil fuels.  So does that mean that when it comes to a “green transition,” the harde...

In the last two presidential elections in the United States, one issue has entered our political debates in a way we haven’t seen in recent history: the health and future of American democracy itself. And as Rob Blair, a political scientist at the Watson Institute and co-founder of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, explains, this isn’t without reason.  “I am not especially bullish on the fut...

In January of 2019, journalist Elizabeth Rush joined 56 scientists and crew people aboard an ice-breaking research vessel to study the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. The glacier, which is about the size of the state of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” for the effect its disintegration would likely play in the rise of global sea levels.  “If we lose Thwaites, there's great c...

On November 5, Americans went to the polls and once again elected Donald Trump president of the United States. By this point, you probably know the broad strokes of his victory: He won every swing state and, unlike in 2016, the popular vote as well.  It also seems clear that a key part of the Democratic Party’s message — that another Trump term would threaten democracy and push the nation tow...

On November 5, all eyes will be on the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for the White House. But no matter who wins the presidency, there’s another close competition that will have a huge impact on U.S. politics: the fight for control of Congress. In fact, next year’s Congress will play a role in our politics even before the next president is sworn in; th...

Remember the supply chain problems of 2020 and 2021? The story we were told was that COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world’s ability to make and transport goods, leaving us with shortages of everything from surgical masks to infant formula (not to mention seven dollar eggs). However, it turns out that the real story behind those shortages is more complicated, and has less to do with the pandemic t...

While no one knows how this November’s election is going to go in the U.S., there’s one thing most experts agree on: It’s likely going to be close. Very close. Poll after poll suggests that, especially in a few key states, support for the two candidates is evenly split in a way we haven’t seen in decades.  So, with just about four weeks to go before election day, Dan Richards spoke with two e...

Even for an election year, the last few months have seen a head-spinning amount of political news in the United States. So, on this episode, Dan Richards spoke with someone uniquely suited to help make sense of the race as it enters the homestretch. Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN based in Washington covering Democratic politics. He’s also a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and teac...

Many Americans see a potential Trump victory in this year’s election as a threat to American democracy. Whether you share that concern or not, the rise of Donald Trump and the prospect of a second Trump term have brought up new and unsettling questions about presidential power and the fragility of our democratic institutions.  But as Corey Brettschneider explains in his new book “The Presiden...

In March 2020, the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives of Pope Pius XII — also known as the Vatican’s “secret archives” — were opened to scholars from around the world. Historian and Watson Professor David Kertzer was one of those scholars.  What he found there is helping to reframe the role that the Catholic Church — and its then-leader, Pope Pius XII — played in World War II.   Pius XII’...

This is the second part in our two-part series on South Africa’s politics 30 years after the election of Nelson Mandela, and with it, the end of apartheid.  Around the same time as that anniversary this past spring, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress — the political party...

Over the course of 2024, roughly half of the world’s population will participate in national elections.  On this episode, we take a closer look at two of them: this summer’s elections in the United Kingdom and France.  In the U.K., the center-left Labour Party won in a landslide in July, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule. In France, an alliance of left-leaning parties banded tog...

This spring marked the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s president and the end of apartheid, the system of legalized racial segregation that had existed in South Africa for decades.  Around the same time as that anniversary, there was another momentous event in the country: South Africans went to the polls in May, and for the first time in 30 years, the...

On June 4, results came in from the largest democratic election in history. Over 640 million people voted in India’s election, which took place at over one million polling places across the country over the course of six weeks.  Many predicted that India’s prime minister Nerandra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dominate the election, grow their ranks in Parliament,...

For this week’s show, we’re sharing an episode of “Humans in Public Health,” a podcast from The Brown School of Public Health. It makes a great follow-up to our episode earlier this month about Rhode Island’s first-in-the-nation legally approved proposal for a safe injection site (also known as an overdose prevention center) and how such programs will hopefully fit into the fight against America’s...

At the Watson Institute, the beginning of summer means commencement festivities, moving trucks, and bittersweet goodbyes. In American politics, the beginning of summer means something very different: the approach of the Supreme Court's summer recess and, with it, the handing down of the Court’s final decisions from this term. This year’s cases will have profound effects on the 2024 election, gun r...

Mexico, like the United States, has a gun violence problem. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and most of those murders come from firearms. In 2019, for example, almost 70% of  the country's 35,000 murders involved firearms. But unlike the U.S., Mexico doesn’t have tens of thousands of licensed firearms dealers.  It has two.  So how do so many guns make their way...

In February of this year, Providence became the first city in America to approve opening a state-sanctioned overdose prevention center. Sometimes known as safe injection sites, these are facilities where people can bring illegal drugs and consume them under the supervision of trained volunteers and health professionals.  It’s one of the boldest experiments in the U.S. of an approach to addres...