A cornered government, a legislative short of legitimacy, a contaminated judiciary and polarised protesters put Brazilian institutional balance to the test. Immoral deals, Machiavellian manoeuvres and outright dishonesty. No wonder comparisons between Brazilian politics and the American TV show House of Cards are tempting and widespread. Even Netflix made the connection to promote the release of its fourth series in Brazil. This clever marketing initiative prompted Maurício Santoro, a political scientist, to joke on Twitter that “Netflix is the only institution enjoying the trust and esteem of Brazilians these days.” But Brazil’s plight is not fiction, and the quip accompanies …

Dr Hylke Dijkstra has recently published a new book entitled International Organizations and Military Affairs (Routledge, 2016). This book represents the first comparative study of the politics behind the scenes at the United Nations, NATO and the European Union concerning the use of military force. It is also the result of a research project carried out at the DPIR in Oxford. DPhil candidate Dana Landau interviews him on the most pertinent questions that arise from his work.

As any country with a minimally functioning democracy, Brazil has an ambivalent relationship with its mass media. And as in all countries with a minimally functioning market economy, Brazilian mass media have been disrupted by personalised digital platforms. Understanding To two elements, and how they became entangled, is essential if we are to grasp the role of the media in the social turmoil that has engulfed Brazil in the past year or so. But in spite of their deep flaws, newspapers and broadcasters cannot be blamed for the toxic political environment that has taken over the country.

The British political ship is set to weather another storm. On 20th February, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced the start of the race towards the June 23rd referendum on the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) membership of the European Union (EU). This hews consistently with Cameron’s political manifesto presented last election: that the Conservative Party would seek to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership and hold a referendum by the end of 2017. Many of the current debates have been confined largely to freedom of movement, a core principle of the EU that perpetuates inward migration. The tensions are also constructed around three …

In the likely event that Hillary Clinton secures the Democratic nomination by the end of May or early June, the task of uniting the party behind her will be much less onerous than that of whoever emerges from the GOP field. For Republicans, a ‘brokered’ convention looms on the horizon. And, given the severely fractured status of the conservative movement in America, it will be hard for any candidate—Trump or otherwise—to appeal to a national constituency that seems to lack any consensus on what it means to even be “conservative.” Secretary Clinton, on the other hand, would have the time and resources to bring unity to her platform and to her party following what has been an impressive challenge by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

How can we best promote legislative strengthening in new democracies? In a previous article, I talked about a new research project that aims to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge about democracy promotion. That project aims to do more than say ‘context matters’. We want to know what works where and when, and why it does so. This week we’re taking our first steps in that direction with the release of a new policy paper. Nic Cheeseman and I argue that parliamentary strengthening involves several trade-offs. Democracy promoters can’t avoid them, but they can learn to navigate them …