Good Authority

In the last few years, militaries have carried out coups in numerous African countries, including Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad and Mali. Does this signify the beginning of a much broader continent wide “coup epidemic?” Or are these coups mostly affecting especially weak states that face specific challenges? Where is democratic resilience strong and where is there a risk of continued democratic backsliding?   A Good Chat on Africa Good Authority’s Africa experts Ken Opalo and our editor-in-chief Kim Yi Dionne joined me to discuss these issues. Ken is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the author of the substack An Africanist Perspective. Kim is an associate professor at UC Riverside and the co-host of the podcast Ufahamu Africa. Both Ken and Kim contributed to a recent issue of the Journal of Democracy on Africa. Ken’s essay highlights that Africa’s coups were concentrated in countries with weak state capacity and that were facing security threats and/or political dysfunction. Therefore, he believes these coups are unlikely to spread across the continent. Kim’s essay explores a democratic success story – Malawi – highlighting the importance of domestic checks and balances for democratic resilience. Our conversation delves deeper into the themes and content of these essays. We discussed the role of security threats, economic distress, African regional organizations, and outside assistance from the United States and China. We also talked about the upcoming South African elections and the rise of economic populism on the continent.

Political scientist John Sides and author Michael Tesler discuss the 2024 elections focusing on early polls, candidate familiarity, economic impact, racial realignment, campaign strategies, and potential battleground states.

Political scientist Simon Hix has developed a forecasting model that predicts a sharp right turn in the upcoming European elections in June. This includes a big increase in the number of seats for far-right parties in the European Parliament but also an overall shift away from the left. Simon and I talked about why we can expect such a big increase in support for far right parties, where it is happening (pretty much all over Europe), and what the consequences might be. Echoing the last episode of this podcast with Dan Kelemen, we discussed whether and how Europe’s center-right parties may or may not form coalitions with the far right. This type of shift has wider implications The clearest consequences of the sea change in political power may well be for environmental issues and climate change. As I have written earlier on Good Authority, the far right appears to be attracting new voters based on its opposition to environmental regulations and energy transition policies. The recent farmers’ protests in several European countries are just the latest example.  Simon predicts that environmental policies that narrowly passed just recently would not be successful in the next European Parliament. This may matter beyond Europe, which is often seen as a leader on green policies. Finally, we discussed some of the foreign policy implications. The European far right is quite divided over Russia and Ukraine. They also have different views on NATO and whether European states should increase their common defense efforts – an issue that looms large with the possibility of a new Donald Trump presidency.

The well-documented rise in right-wing populism has spawned no end of explanations. Are voters' preferences shifting? Do populist candidates capitalize and build on existing sentiments? This reading of an article by John Sides explores the recent paper by political scientists Oren Danieli, Noam Gidron, Shinnosuke Kikuchi, and Ro’ee Levy, which presents an interesting new angle on why populist parties across Europe have experienced a surge in electoral support.

The European Union prides itself on being a cooperative community of liberal democracies. Yet, the E.U. increasingly faces problems with countries that are backsliding. Listen to Good Authority editor Erik Voeten interview Dan Kelemen, the McCourt Chair at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Dan has written extensively about these issues and has been a vocal critic of the European Commission and European politicians for ignoring Hungary’s democratic backsliding.

Layna Mosley, an expert on the politics of sovereign debt, discusses the reasons behind the debt crisis faced by developing economies, the impact of interest rates, challenges of renegotiating debt repayment, complexity in resolving debt crises, and radical solutions and political changes in the context of the sovereign debt crisis.

To take stock of the December 2023 COP28 in Dubai, Good Authority editor Erik Voeten speaks with climate policy expert Joanna Lewis, who was there and who has been going to the annual Conference of Parties, or COPs, for over 20 years.

Topics discussed in the podcast include the avoidance of nuclear war, ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan, challenges faced in repealing certain laws, and the UK policy of deporting unauthorized migrants to Rwanda and its implications for the Good Friday Agreement.

With mounting casualties, an expanding humanitarian crisis, and rising global political tensions, the question of how the Israel-Hamas war might end is on everyone’s mind. Good Authority’s Erik Voeten spoke with Barbara F. Walter, a leading expert on civil wars, violent extremism and domestic terror. 

Good Authority's mission is to bring insights from political science to a broader audience. Here, political scientists draw on their expertise and the discipline’s research to provide in-depth analysis, illuminate the news, and inform the political conversation.