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As New Zealand gears up to a general election this November, there’s a new party on the scene that I suggest outsiders keep an eye on. New Zealand is among the world’s healthiest democracies. In 2017, when the far right were gaining support globally and social democrats were in the doldrums, New Zealand bucked the…
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Suppose an island appears in the Pacific Ocean. An island that has never existed before. Many people of the world decide to settle it, until it has a similar population and settlement pattern to New Zealand. We can guess that the islanders would want their own government. They would want it to be democratic. And…
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What a fitting cover! The title Against Elections: The Case for Democracy (2013) may sound like a contradiction to most people. It shouldn’t be. In the Western world, we have an ingrained view that “democracy = elections”. But David Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian and author, makes a provocative but strong case in this book…
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Conservatism is a philosophy of sex and death That’s an actual quote from Danny Kruger’s book Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood and Nation (2023) and it makes sense in context. I read this book because I think it’s healthy to sometimes read from different perspectives to your own. Kruger wrote it to argue…
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If you fancy a career in politics, watch Zack Polanski and study how he speaks: Who would’ve thought of it, a politician who actually answers the question! Leaders are often overrated in politics. John Bartle and Ivor Crewe once calculated that Tony Blair, an undeniably charismatic leader, improved his party’s vote share by less than…
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A protest against the killing of Renee Good last Wednesday, only hours after it happened. The 2010s saw more people take part in political protests than any decade before. The 2020s are shaping up to be bigger still — on the day I write this, the US is facing another big wave of protests over…
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When confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, John F. Kennedy had on his mind a book that he had recently read. It was The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s newly-published and now-classic account of how the European powers blundered into the First World War. Kennedy was impressed by the book and encouraged many…
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Zohran Mamdani (left) out campaigning in Flushing last June. The New York City mayoral election has drawn more attention than usual this year, thanks to the initially surprising rise and eventual victory last night of the radical left candidate Zohran Mamdani. At a time when American democracy is declining at an alarming speed thanks to…
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In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent’s politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world…
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Frome, a mid-sized town in the English county of Somerset A few of us have predicted that radical assembly-based parties could be The Next Big Thing in politics. But how would one actually work? Assemblies What do we mean by assembly-based? This would partly mean that the party would use the incredible potential of randomly-selected…
