Trending Globally: Politics and Policy

On the morning of July 9, 2022, tens of thousands of Sri Lankans gathered in front of the country’s Presidential Palace. By the afternoon, they had overwhelmed the guards and entered the grounds. The country’s President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the property and ultimately, the country. It was the culmination of a protest movement known as the ‘Aragalaya’ which had been growing for months amidst Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and its leaders’ corrupt, inept response. For the next few days, surreal images were broadcast around the world of Sri Lankan citizens of all stripes milling throughout the Palace, picnicking on its lawns, and swimming in its pool. But almost as surprising as the images was how quickly, within weeks, the country seemed to revert to the status quo. Or did it? On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an expert on Sri Lankan politics and founder of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka. He explains where the crisis came from, what led to the surreal protests this summer, and where the Aragalaya goes from here. Watch Dr. Saravanamuttu’s talk at the Watson Institute’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia. Learn more about the Center for Policy Alternatives. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

To mark the end of Hispanic Heritage Month, Trending Globally teamed up with the Watson Institute’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies to explore the breadth of ‘Hispanic Heritage’ in 2022.  In the first part of the show, Dan Richards talks with Dr. Pablo Rodriguez about how the growing Hispanic and Latinx population in the U.S. is changing the country’s electoral politics. Dr. Rodriguez is a medical doctor, public health advocate, and political commentator based in Rhode Island, and he’s observed and analyzed this transformation first-hand. They discuss the wide-ranging effects of this demographic change, and why its political implications are so hard to predict. In the second half Dan talks with Susan Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Boston University and author of Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America. Her book tells the story of Cuban-American immigration policy since World War II, and the geographic, economic, and geopolitical quirks of history that created it. In telling this singular story, Eckstein casts a new light on all U.S. immigration policy.Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.edu.Learn more about Watson’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Learn more about and purchase Cuban Privilege: The Making of immigrant Inequality in America. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. Find transcripts and more information about all our episodes on our website.

From the Watson Institute at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I’m Dan Richards. On September 13, 2022, a young Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was detained by the country’s ‘morality police’ for improperly wearing her hijab. Three days later, she was dead. Authorities claimed it was the result of a heart attack, but images of her in the hospital – bruised and bloodied – suggested otherwise. Those images, along with the government’s cover-up surrounding the details of her death, have sparked a protest movement in Iran unlike any the country has seen. On this bonus episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards spoke  with anthropologist and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies  Nadje Al-Ali about these protests, and about the unique role gender has come to play in them. These protests are, and always have been, about much more than hijabs, as Nadje explains. They’re part of a much longer story of political resistance in the Middle East. Many of us, especially in the West, would do well to understand that story.Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.edu.Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. Listen to Shervin Hajipour's song 'Baraye'.

On Sunday, September 25, the far-right Brothers of Italy party won a commanding victory in Italy’s general election. They’ll be the leading party in the country’s right-wing governing coalition, and their leader, Giorgia Meloni, is likely to become prime minister. In Italy’s last general election, in 2018, the Brothers of Italy received roughly 4% of the vote. This year, they received around 26% – more than any other party in the country.  Between 2018 and 2022, Meloni and her party rallied voters over common far-right concerns like immigration, the influence of international elites, and the rise of a supposed “LGBTQ Lobby.”Along with ideological concerns, Meloni and her party have employed a consistent mood that’s familiar across our politics: anger. Today, it can seem like cultivating anger is a key to political success. But how effective is it as a political strategy? And how, exactly, is it deployed? These are questions that Watson Professor and Political Economist Mark Blyth, Rhodes Center Postdoctoral Fellow Nicolò Fraccaroli, and Brown University undergraduate Nadav Druker '23 are uniquely suited to answer. Using data from over 18,000 Italian Facebook posts over the last decade, they’ve analyzed the presence of political anger in the rollercoaster of contemporary Italian politics. They then devised a new and fascinating way to measure this anger, and in the process are helping shed light on how the emotion is used, and the effect it can have. On this episode, Dan Richards talked with Mark, Nicolò, and Nadav about Italy's elections, how the results fit into their research on political anger, and what it can teach us about politics in Italy and around the world. Questions? Comments? Ideas for topics or guests? Email us at: trendingglobally@brown.eduRead Mark, Nicolo, and Nadav’s paperListen to the Rhodes Center PodcastListen to Mark and CarrieLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

In the fall of 2021, tens of thousands of Afghan citizens were evacuated out of Afghanistan as the Taliban re-took the country. Many of these people resettled in the United States, and many more will resettle here in the coming years. Yet despite their growing numbers in America, and their unique relationship to the United States, there’s much we don’t know about their specific needs as refugees. On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear from one man who fled Kabul with his family about their journey from Afghanistan and resettlement in Rhode Island. You’ll also hear from researchers at Watson’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and Rhode Island’s Refugee Dream Center, who are working together to learn how these refugees can be better supported after such a traumatic evacuation and rapid resettlement in a new country. In the process of this research, these experts are also learning firsthand what needs to be done to make humanitarian evacuations safer and more humane. Because sadly, whether we’re talking about Myanmar, Ukraine, or countless other places in crisis, there will be many more emergencies requiring humanitarian evacuations in the future, resulting in refugees who must make new lives for themselves in communities around the world. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. Learn more about the Refugee Dream Center. Meet Omar, Adam, and Alexandria and learn more about their work on Wednesday 9/21 at the Watson Institute. Read a recent article by Brown University on the research collaborationOne final note: This is Sarah Baldwin’s last episode as host of Trending Globally. We’re sad to see her go, but the show won’t be going anywhere. Dan Richards (who you’ve heard before, including on our last episode with Andrew Schrank) will be filling in as our host, and we’ll also be having guest hosts in the coming months. We’re excited for what’s come, and so grateful for everything Sarah brought to the show. Thank you, Sarah! 

High-profile unionization drives at companies like Amazon, Apple, and Starbucks have focused attention on organized labor in the US in a way unseen in half a century. The attention isn’t without merit: there were more successful union elections in 2022 than in any year since 2005, and public approval for organized labor is the highest it's been in over 50 years. Yet despite these signs of a growing labor movement, the percentage of Americans belonging to unions is still substantially smaller than it was during the peak of organized labor participation in the 20th century. So how should one think about the state of organized labor today? On the eve of Labor Day weekend, maybe it’s also worth revisiting why we should care about the state of organized labor in the first place. On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear from Andrew Schrank, professor of sociology and international and public affairs at Watson and an expert on organized labor, about the past, present, and future of the labor movement in America. Because, as he explains, it’s more than just workers’ wages on the line: our country's prosperity and stability might depend on giving workers a greater voice in the future of our economy.  Read Andrew Schrank’s 2019 article ‘Rebuilding Labor Power in the Postindustrial United States’Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

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’s legacy is heavily debated. Some people want him to be made a saint. Others call him ‘Hitler’s Pope,’ blaming him for aiding the Nazi regime and ultimately, facilitating the Holocaust. What David found is a much more complicated story. He’s put together his research into a gripping new book, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. It’s a page-turner of a book, filled with larger-than-life characters, set at a moment in European history when the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s also completely true. On this episode of Trending Globally: David Kertzer discusses Pope Pius XII and World War II, and what this story can teach us about the need for moral leadership in times of crisis. Learn more about and purchase The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and HitlerLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

In 1973, the Supreme Court made abortion a constitutional right in its Roe v. Wade decision. This June, in a 6-to-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court undid that right. The decision set off shockwaves across the country, and brought up questions not only about reproductive rights, but about the relationship between the Supreme Court and US politics at large. Dobbs vs. Jackson was only one of several wide-ranging, polarizing decisions of this Supreme Court term. On this episode of Trending Globally, Wendy Schiller, professor of political science and the director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Watson, helps explain this term’s monumental decisions, and ground them in American politics and history. At a moment when the reach of the court seems to extend further than ever and its opinions fall on an increasingly divided nation, there’s never been a more important time to assess how our judicial system works – and how it doesn’t. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

This past year, Trending Globally has been teaming up with the Costs of War Project to explore the effects of 20 years of America’s post-9/11 wars. Past episodes have explored America’s growing military presence around the world, the refugee crisis these wars have created, and the effects they’ve had on our planet and environment. This episode takes a closer look at how these wars have changed life in the United States – in cities, towns, and communities across the country. The first part of the episode focuses on a transformation that’s become all too visible in the past few years: the militarization of America’s police. The second part of the episode focuses on a less-visible phenomenon, but one that’s killed more servicepeople and veterans than all 20 years of combat combined. Guests on this episode:Dr. Jessica Katzenstein Dr. Ben Suitt Learn more about the Costs of War ProjectLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

For many politicians, policymakers, and voters, the 2016 election of Donald Trump was a shocking lesson in the massive role tech companies, like Facebook and Twitter, play in our politics. Since then, their role has only gotten bigger. And as our guest on this episode of Trending Globally explains: that’s a huge problem for democracies around the world. Frances Haugen worked as a product manager in Facebook’s Civic Integrity Department from 2019-2021. While there she saw firsthand how Facebook’s algorithms are designed to maximize user engagement at all costs, with disastrous effects.In 2021 Frances anonymously leaked tens of thousands of internal documents to The Wall Street Journal, and became known as the ‘Facebook Whistleblower.’ Since then she’s testified before Congress, and helped start a global movement to better understand and regulate ‘Big Tech.’On this episode of Trending Globally, political economist and Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth talks with Frances about the problems tech giants like Facebook pose to our politics, and what we can do to fix them. This episode was originally broadcast on the Rhodes Center Podcast, another show from the Watson Institute. If you enjoy this interview, be sure to subscribe to the Rhodes Center Podcast for more just like it. Find transcripts and more information about all our episodes on our website. Learn more about the Watson Institutes other podcasts. Read the Wall Street Journal’s expose on Facebook.