Showing results for "Affairs of State" in Social Sciences

The Trump administration’s bureaucratic problems do not come from an insidious, undemocratic “deep state” but simply from the state—the large, complex hive of people and procedures that constitute the U.S. federal government.

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In “Iran’s Next Supreme Leader” (May/June 2017), Sanam Vakil and Hossein Rassam convincingly argue that the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will mark a turning point in the Islamic Republic. They are right that Khamenei desperately wants a smooth transition and is insisting that someone personally and ideologically close to him take over the helm once he dies.

Europe currently finds itself in the throes of its worst political crisis since World War II. Across the continent, traditional political parties have lost their appeal as populist, Euroskeptical movements have attracted widespread support. Hopes for European unity seem to grow dimmer by the day. The euro crisis has exposed deep fault lines between Germany and debt-ridden southern European states, including Greece and Portugal.

New twist on an old story.

In January 2015, after jihadists attacked the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, European leaders linked arms to lead a procession of millions through the French capital, chanting “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) in an expression of solidarity with the victims and contempt for their killers. Muslims all over the world also condemned the attacks, as did a number of Islamist organizations, including perhaps the most influential one - the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

On March 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection, thanks in part to a desperate last-minute pledge to his right-wing base that the Palestinians would never get a state so long as he was in power.

By many measures, over the past year, the Islamic State (also called ISIS) has been surprisingly effective on the battlefield, having amassed a significant amount of territory in Syria and Iraq.

On January 30, after word got out that a large number of U.S. State Department officials were preparing a formal, well-argued dissent against President Donald Trump’s cruel executive order on immigration, the White House reacted with stung indignation. Even before the cable was submitted by an astonishing total of nearly a thousand State Department staffers, Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, issued an extraordinary rebuke to the professional diplomats.

 Beijing’s newfound assertiveness is a sign of desperation, not ambition. 

Today’s China seeks not to marginalize competing groups and belief systems, the way Beijing did during the Mao era, but to co-opt them. 

Conventional wisdom says the state can best foster innovation by just getting out of the way. In fact, government has historically served not as a meddler in the private sector, but as a key booster of it - and often a daring one, willing to take risks that businesses won’t.

"Growing Fresh Produce in a Mostly Frozen State" is from the Food section of The New York Times. It was written by Kirk Johnson and narrated by Fleet Cooper.

"A News Agency with Scoops Directly from Islamic State, and a Veneer of Objectivity" is from the Culture (Arts) section of The New York Times. It was written by Rukmini Callimachi and narrated by Barbara Benjamin-Creel.