International Politics

As a reaction to the violation of human rights during the elections in 200/2002 many countries sanctioned Zimbabwe and its president Mugabe. However nowadays, it seems that these sanctions are rather aiding Mugabe than harming him.

Hungary receives massive aids from Russia in constructing new power plants. It is not only generosity, but mere a fiendishly clever economic strategy. Still legal and political risks have been neglected.

It ist the worst result of an election winner in Czech history. Almost all established parties recorded losses and voter turnout was one of the lowest since 1989.

In an interview, political scientist Vladimíra Dvořáková of the University of Economics, Prague, enumerates the causes of the current turbulence on the Czech political scene.

Our Cambodia office director Manfred Hornung has registered with Cambodia's National Election Committee (NEC) as an independent observer for the parliamentary elections. In his articles he reports about worried citizens and protests on the election day.

In July a three-year process of the reform of the Hungarian electoral procedure law has come to an end. With the changes in the voting system the leading Fidesz-KDNP party foremost seeks to convert its relative popular majority into an absolute majority in Parliament. An analysis of the reform's effects.  

A few months after Miloš Zeman first took office as president, we are now seeing the logical outcome of introducing a semi-presidential system. The current clash between the president and the Czech Parliament is a direct result of the political redistribution of power and could significantly influence the future form of the relationships between the government, the parliament, and the president.

On Wednesday, the 7th August, the Czech government loses the confidence vote in parliament. True victor of the battle for power is President Miloš Zeman because he has created a very strong power center and is now dominating the political space.

On the 31st of July 2013, Zimbabwe held its seventh presidential election. Robert Mugabe leading the Zimbabwe African National Unity (Patriotic Front), ZANU PF, has contested every one of them in his 33 years in power.

In wars, rape has been used as a tool to go beyond the physical and military defeat of the enemy, to subdue a society politically and morally. The present article, written by psycho-therapist Dr. Jamal Khalil Sobh, sheds light on the repeated war crime of rapes of women, including the recent tragic incidents in Syria.

Since 2010 the Fidesz-KDNP coalition adopted a new constitution with so far four rounds of constitutional amendments. This analysis issued by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the Eötvös Károly Institute highlights the specific concerns in relation to the Fourth Amendment.

Tímea Szabó is co-president of the new green left party Dialogue for Hungary (PM). In the interview she talks about the new party's strategy after the split from the green party LMP in January. 

With the constitutional amendments adopted on the 11th of March, Viktor Orbán has once again caused a surprise. The reactions of the Western European public show that there is still an inadequate grasp of how political power is exercised by Orbán’s government. European democrats now finally need to formulate a common position against the power centralization in the country.

The new right-wing populism is not the rehearsal of something old but a new political phenomenon – and it is here to stay. In this, the new right-wing populism is the severest challenge to the European project since the beginnings of European integration. 

After passing the Electoral Procedure Act, we are still far from knowing the final rules less than a year and a half ahead of the next parliamentary elections. However, the new electoral system turns out to be a measure of the governing party to increase its chances of winning the 2014 general election, while oppositional parties will be forced to organise their activist network and engage in a door-to-door campaign more effectively than before. 

The debt and financial crisis in Europe has accentuated three major areas in need of reform: national debt, the stability of the financial system, and the unbalanced distribution of incomes and wealth. There are instruments of reform that could work effectively for all three areas.  

The anthology „Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus“, supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office in Beirut, is one of the six books to receive the „English PEN Award for Outstanding Writing in Translation“ in the year 2013. 

Is the Czech Republic “a European state without Europeans”? Vladimír Handl analyses the dissolution of the Czech consensus, its relationship to the German approach in rescuing the EU, the “nation-state-based” current in Czech politics and the risks of Euroscepticism.

During the three years of Europe’s crisis many supposedly rock-solid certainties about the European Union have been shaken up. Today, even dedicated Europeans do have to admit that, in its present shape, the EU may be one of the casualties of the crisis. At our conference Europe’s Common Future such concerns about a possibly disastrous failure of the Eurozone were palpable. 

Germany appears to have come into its leadership role in the crisis involuntarily. Nevertheless, it is time that Germany also acknowledges that the crisis can only be overcome together with solidarity and stability and a sustainable future foundation for the European Union.