politics

One of the main arguments for Brexit was that Britain would be able to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries on its own. Nearly 5 years after Brexit has come into effect the UK has only negotiated trade deals with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and as this video explains none of...

This is what this video proposes and I like the idea. In fact I have been in favour of such a system since I was a university student. It's a great combination that satisfies both people who want a more federalized EU as well as the people who want to maintain local authority. The Swiss system...

In four days American citizens will decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be the next US president. The race is so close that it's impossible to call. Even the best political forecasters that got the previous elections right are divided about 50-50 this time. Whoever wins, it's going...

Puerto Rico has be part of the United States since 1898. To put this in perspective, five U.S. states were admitted into the Union after that time - namely Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico (1912), Arizona (1912), Alaska (1959) and Hawaii (1959). In fact, Alaska and Hawaii only became U.S. territories...

With the looming US presidential election, I thought it would be interesting to post about an important trend in US politics, namely that religiously active people are considerably more likely to vote than the the inactive and unaffiliated. This trend was identified by Pew Research in 2019. In...

Euronews: Austria's Freedom Party secures first far-right election win since World War II "Austria's Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreich) has secured the first parliamentary election victory for a far-right party in post-World War II Austria. A projection for ORF public television...

The US-based Pew Research Center published a new report named Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics. The nationwide survey found that 65% of Americans say they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics. 89% were angry about politics these days, while only 10% were...

I was wondering what Europe would look like if the various separatist movements had their way. I checked the list of active separatist movements in Europe and selected only the regions with reasonable claims of independence based on the percentage of population supporting independence. This is...

I have been meaning to start a thread like this for many years. I thought it might be too provocative, but I see how many Americans themselves are dissatisfied with their own country and the situation seems to be getting constantly worse. To many outside observers it has been clear for quite...

I posted a thread on how Europeans viewed themselves and how much they identified with things such as one's family, gender, age group, nationality, region, level of education, occupation, sexual orientation, ethnicity, political orientation, or religion. If you had to choose three things to...

The salary of politicians is a topic that a lot of people like to broach because most of us feel like their taxes are paying these salaries (and yet many people are dissatisfied with their politicians). But the question few people ever ask is: "Do politicians in my country earn more or less than...

The OECD has just released the new stats of trust in government. The results are edifying. The Swiss have the most confidence in their leaders (84.6%), which is not surprising considering that Switzerland may be the only direct democracy in the world (at least in some cantons). They are followed...

That's not a joke. You read it well. That's what the Belgian economic magazine Trends explains in this article. It concerns mostly accidental Americans, that is foreigners who were born in the US while their parents were working there (usually for a few years as expats) and were automatically...

I have made a summary of all the known paternal lineages of the Founding Fathers. I wish I could find those of James Madison, John Jay and the Morris family (Gouverneur Morris, Lewis Morris, Richard Morris, etc.).

I have created 9 new maps based on the EU Commission's Eurobarometer poll results for Autumn 2019. I will compare them with other maps I made earlier. Democracy This map shows the percentage of the population that is satisfied with the way democracy works in their country at the moment (well...

Over the years I have created dozens of maps of Europe to help visualise the cultural, political, socio-economic, legal or lifestyle differences between countries. I thought it would be interesting to make similar maps for the United States, using the same scales and colours to facilitate...

Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the street in Belarus after the rigged presidential election confirmed a renewed presidential term for dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. BBC News: Belarus protests: 'We can breathe for the first time in our lives' Six...

On 15th July the French Parliament voted to make ecocide (mass damage and destruction of ecosystems) a crime, with 99.3% approval. President Macron calls for ecocide to be made a crime in international law. Six days later, the Belgian Green parties, who are the second largest political group...

I have mentioned and summarised the concept of Spiral Dynamics in this thread. I find the concept fascinating and extremely useful to study the evolution of societies in history, but also to understand the current socio-political situation in modern countries and forecast how societies are going...

Adam Przeworski, a Polish-American professor of political science at New York University, has written several papers and books regarding the relationship between economic prosperity and the stability of democratic regimes. He was able to calculate the life expectancy of a democracy based on...