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14 in 14, Australia, CAR (Centrafrique), Catalonia, DRC / Congo, Eritrea, European Union, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Spain, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam

14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014

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Though I rang in the new year with a list of 14 world elections to watch in the coming year (and 14 more honorable mentions to keep an eye on), I wanted to showcase a few more thoughts about what to watch for in world politics and foreign affairs in 2014.

Accordingly, here are 14 possible game-changers — they’re not predictions per se, but neither are they as far-fetched as they might seem.  No one can say with certainty that they will come to pass in 2014.  Instead, consider these something between rote predictions (e.g., that violence in Iraq is getting worse) and outrageous fat-tail risks (e.g., the impending breakup of the United States).

There’s an old album of small pieces conducted by the late English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, a delightfully playful album entitled Lollipops that contains some of the old master’s favorite, most lively short pieces.

Think of these as Suffragio‘s 14 world politics lollipops to watch in 2014.

We start in France… Continue reading 14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014 →

14 in 14

14 in 2014: Fourteen world elections to watch in 2014

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2014

As we say farewell to 2013 and welcome 2014 at midnight tonight, it’s once again time to survey the world electoral landscape in the year ahead.

Though 2014’s election calendar gets off to a slow start, it will be a year with the ability to profoundly remake global politics — capped off by elections in two of the three most populous democracies in the world (India and Indonesia) and a set of midterm elections in the third (the United States) that could transfer full legislative power to the Republican Party.

To get into the 2014 spirit, here are Suffragio‘s top 14 world elections to keep an eye on in the months ahead, starting with the first election of the year that’s set to take place this coming Sunday:

Next: Bangladesh

14 in 14, United States

14 in 2014: US midterm elections

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14. United States midterm elections, November 4.USflag

Though US president Barack Obama and his administration’s top officials — secretary of state John Kerry, national security adviser Susan Rice and defense secretary Chuck Hagel — will continue to set the tone for US foreign policy through January 2017, US voters will elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate, the upper house of the US Congress.

In particular, the Republican Party hopes to finish what it started with the 2010 midterm elections by winning control of both the House, where it currently enjoys a 232-to-200 majority, and the Senate, where the Democratic Party (and two independent allies) holds a 55-45 lead.  A bevy of gubernatorial elections (in 36 out of 50 states) will also decide who controls 12 out of the 15 most populous US states, including California, Florida, New York, Texas.

Midterm elections — and control of Congress — can effect huge results on American foreign policy.  Just recall the way that the 2006 midterm elections forced the nearly immediate resignation of former president George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and signaled a new era in the US occupation in Iraq.

If the Republicans succeed, it would make Congress a much more muscular voice of opposition to Obama’s signature foreign policy initiatives — most notably with regard to Iran, with which the administration hopes to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear energy program.  But the enhanced scrutiny from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other committees to hold hearings on everything from Iran to the 2011 Benghazi consulate attack in Libya to the Obama administration’s ongoing global efforts to stop terror from Pakistan to Somalia to Yemen, could complicate Obama’s final two years in office.  The Republicans would also be able to pass legislation designed to embarrass the Obama administration or attempt to rein in executive power.

 Next: 14 more to watch in 2014

14 in 14, Brazil

14 in 2014: Brazil general election

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13. Brazil general election, October 5 (presidential runoff on October 26).brazil

Though Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff holds a wide polling edge that favors reelection, her broad support is not necessarily deep, as demonstrated by the massive anti-government protests in 2013 that resulted from increased public transportation fees and eventually targeted Brazil’s stagnant economy, poor job opportunities and political corruption.  An economy that was not long ago soaring grew by just 0.9% in 2012 and is expected to grow by a hardly stellar 2.5% in 2013.  What’s more, Rousseff (pictured above) still has to get through most of 2014 — and there’s plenty of time for the opposition to upend her lead.  She’s running for what would be the fourth consecutive presidential term for the social democratic Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party), itself testament to the enduring popularity of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Her prospects became more difficult in October 2013, when former presidential candidate Marina Silva decided to join forces with the candidate of the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party), Eduardo Campos, the two-term governor of Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil.  Though it unofficially supported Lula da Silva’s reelection in 2006 and formally supported Rousseff in 2010, the PSB left Rousseff’s government in September 2013.

Though Campos is (for now) the presidential candidate, his running mate is by far a much more popular figure nationally.  One of Brazil’s most prominent politicians of African descent, Silva served as Lula da Silva’s environment minister between 2003 and 2008, where she earned a reputation as a staunch defender of Brazil’s fragile rain forests and often found herself at odds with the more business-friendly instincts of others within her own government.  Running as the candidate of Brazil’s Partido Verde (PV, Green Party), she won 19% of the vote in the first round of the October 2010 presidential election, and she was trying to found a new ‘sustainability party’ in 2013 before obstacles made that path impossible.  Campos, who likewise served in Lula da Silva’s administration as minister for science and technology between 2004 and 2008, became Pernambuco’s governor in 2007 and was reelection with 82% of the vote in 2010.

The combination makes for an amazingly balanced ticket.  Campos’s geographic base is Brazil’s northeast, while Silva has more support in the south and southeast.  Campos is popular among business interests and could credibly appeal to conservatives who chafe under the increasingly regulatory intervention of Rousseff’s administration, while Silva is popular among younger Brazilians who are disenchanted with politics as usual.  They’re both opposition candidates who nonetheless have ties to Lula da Silva, bringing some continuity with Brazilian policy over the past decade.  Together they could build a credible anti-Rousseff coalition from among voters to her left and to her right, especially in a runoff.

Brazil’s center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Brazilian Social Democracy Party) will likely be represented by Aécio Neves, who served as governor of Minas Gerais, the second-most populous state in Brazil and home to Belo Horizonte, from 2003 to 2010.  As governor, Neves cut the state’s budget and promoted investment, transforming the state’s fiscal outlook in a way that attracted national and international regard.  In 2010, he was elected to the Senado Federal (Federal Senate), the upper house of Brazil’s Congresso Nacional (National Congress), and in 2013, he became the leader of the PSDB, making him the favorite to become its 2014 presidential contender as well.

With so much time until the election, the presumed candidates aren’t fully settled — and parties don’t have to make decisions until 2014.  Silva and Campos could change places on the ticket, for example.  Conceivably, Rousseff could step aside for former president Lula da Silva, though he announced early in 2013 that he wasn’t running and that he was supporting Rousseff for reelection.  If Neves falters on the campaign trail, José Serra, the former São Paulo mayor, São Paulo state governor, planning minister and health minister could replace him on the ticket.  But at age 71, Serra is seen as yesterday’s man — he lost the 2002 presidential race to Lula da Silva by a wide margin and lost a second bid in the October 2010 race to Rousseff by a margin of around 56% to 44%.  What’s more, he lost a comeback bid to return as mayor of São Paulo in October 2012 by a similarly wide margin.

Brazil will also elect one-third of its Senate (27 out of 81 seats) and all 513 members of the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies), the lower house of the National Congress.  Despite over a dozen major parties with at least 10 deputies, the parties align into a ‘lulista’ bloc and a center-right bloc, which gives Rousseff a majority in both houses, including 50 senators and 325 deputies.  Other parties who support Rousseff’s government, however, are still undecided as between Rousseff and Campos, including the second-largest party in the National Congress, the big tent Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), and the center-right Partido Progressista (PP, Progressive Party).

Next: US Midterms

14 in 14, Scotland, United Kingdom

14 in 2014: Scotland independence referendum

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12. Scotland referendum on independence from UK, September 18.United Kingdom Flag Iconscotland

Separatists from Québec to Barcelona will be watching Scotland’s historic vote on independence in the autumn, which could end over three centuries of union between Scotland and England, bringing the United Kingdom as we know it to an end.

Scottish nationalists, buoyed by the economic hopes of North Sea oil, have increasingly floated the idea of independence since the 1970s.  Scotland’s rift with Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s only alienated the country further from Westminster, and the election of Labour prime minister Tony Blair in 1997 led to the devolution of many Scottish domestic matters to a new regional parliament at Holyrood.  Since 2007, the Scottish government has been led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) and first minister Alex Salmond.  In the most recent May 2011 Scottish elections, the SNP was so popular that it won a majority government — a feat that the Scottish electoral system was specifically designed to avoid.

Salmond and his popular deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon will lead the ‘Yes’ campaign for Scottish independence following the agreement that Salmond and British prime minister David Cameron struck in March 2013 on the referendum’s date and its terms.  Proponents are likely to paint a vision of Scotland as an independent nation that has more in common with the Nordic welfare states than with Anglo-American capitalism.  Though Scotland’s 5.3 million residents comprise just around 8.4% of the total UK population, Scotland has retained a proud and distinct culture and a discrete linguistic and intellectual tradition, and it veers politically to the left of England.

Cameron, the leader of the center-right Conservative Party, will help lead the ‘No’ campaign, which has already been christened the ‘Better Together’ campaign.  But the relative unpopularity of Cameron and the Tories in Scotland means that he’ll need help from the centrist Liberal Democratic Party and the center-left Labour Party.  In particular, Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor of the exchequer under prime minister Gordon Brown (both of whom are Scottish) is chairing the ‘Better Together’ effort.  Although the ‘No’ campaign will try to convince Scots that they are, in fact, better off staying in the United Kingdom, it will also point to obstacles that an independent Scotland could face.  Chief among those obstacles might be Scotland’s position in the European Union — although Scots are generally more pro-EU than their English counterparts, it’s not clear whether an independent Scotland would automatically join the European Union or would be forced to apply for readmission.  Scotland would also face protracted negotiations with England (or perhaps the ‘United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’) over splitting the current UK debt burden, as well as defense, currency, immigration, citizenship and other myriad arrangements.

Polls show that Scottish voters today oppose independence — around 40% to 55% of voters would vote ‘No,’ and just around 25% to 35% would vote ‘Yes.’  But the campaigns won’t hit top speed until later in 2014 after the UK vote to elect members to the European Parliament.

Next: Brazil

14 in 14, Indonesia

14 in 2014: Indonesia presidential election

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11. Indonesia presidential election, July 9.Indonesia Flag

Indonesia will directly elect its president for just the third time in 2014, and it’s the first direct election for which outgoing, term-limited president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known popularly as ‘SBY’) won’t be on the ballot.

His most likely successor is the young, popular governor of Jakarta state, Joko Widodo, who came to office in 2012 after defeating the incumbent, Fauzi Bowo, who belongs to Yudhoyono’s own Partai Demokrat (Democratic Party).

Widodo (pictured above, left, with SBY), who served as the mayor of Surakarta in Java between 2005 and 2012, has become an overnight political sensation in Indonesia — drawing comparisons to another world leader who spent his youth in Indonesia.  He belongs to the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDI-P, Indonesian Democratic Party — Struggle) that was founded by former president Megawati  Sukarnoputri, who is herself the daughter of Indonesia’s first post-independence president Sukarno.  Though Megawati has expressed some interest in running for president in 2014, she trailed SBY by a comically wide margin in the previous two elections — she lost 60.8% to 26.8% in the most recent July 2009 election, and she lost by a margin of 60.6% to 39.4% in the September 2004 runoff.

Widodo, like Yudhoyono a decade ago, has a pristine, anti-corruption reputation.  In his year as governor, he’s attempted to boost Jakarta’s minimum wage, begin construction on the long-delayed Jakarta subway line, visited some of Jakarta’s poorest neighborhoods, and instituted a universal health care program, though critics argue it’s a populist scheme and that its implementation was flawed.

SBY will leave office in 2014 with a mixed reputation — he brought economic and political stability to Indonesia, which has achieved an average GDP growth of 5.8% in the nine years between 2004 and 2012, and it’s expected to fall just shy of 6% growth in 2013.  His government finalized a peace agreement with the breakaway province of Aceh, and SBY has managed to keep the lid on most separatist tensions within the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.  But Yudhoyono has also failed to root out Indonesia’s widespread and endemic corruption.  Despite helping Indonesia recover from the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami, the country continues to lack adequate infrastructure.

Aburizal Bakrie, a businessman who served as coordinating minister for economy from 2004 to 2005 and as coordinating minister for people’s welfare from 2005 to 2009, is likely to become the presidential candidate of Partai Golongan Karya (Party of the Functional Groups, known as ‘Golkar’), Indonesia’s ruling party from 1966 to 1999 during much of Suharto’s authoritarian reign.  Wiranto, a former Golkar member and retired general with a record of human rights abuses in East Timor (during its struggle for independence in the 1990s), may once again run for the presidency.  Prabowo Subianto, a former general and Megawati’s 2009 vice-presidential running mate, may also run as the candidate of a minor center-left party, the Great Indonesia Movement Party.

One early test of support will be Indonesia’s April 9 parliamentary elections, which will determine the members of both houses of the People’s Consultative Assembly — the 560-seat Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (People’s Representative Council) and the more limited 132-member Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (Regional Representative Council).  Though the Democrats are currently the largest party in the Indonesian assembly, they govern in coalition with Golkar and several other parties.  But polls show that the Democrats could not only fall behind the PDI-P, which leads parliamentary opinion polls and could emerge from opposition for the first time in a decade, but also Golkar. 

Photo credit to ANTARA/ABROR.

Next: Scotland

14 in 14, Turkey

14 in 2014: Turkey presidential election

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10. Turkey presidential election, expected in July.Turkey

Turkey will choose its first directly elected president in summer 2014, and it’s long been assumed that the country’s controversial prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the leader of the ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party), wants the position.

With a record of strong economic growth over the past decade, the presidency just a few months ago seemed like it was Erdoğan’s for the asking.  Having vanquished the old Kemalist order — wherein the Turkish military ‘guaranteed’ Turkish democracy by overthrowing Islamists that it didn’t like — Erdoğan showed promise in his early years as prime minister as a leader with the ability to revitalize Turkish political life and to transform Turkey into a truly representative democracy.

But 2013 may become the year in which Erdoğan lost the magic touch with respect to ruling Turkey — the year in which the world finally took notice that he crossed the line from populist democracy into soft authoritarianism, though the signs were always there for anyone to see in the way that his government slowly squeezed out political rivals (most notably through the series of politically motivated ‘Ergenekon’ trials).  His heavy-handed response to the Gezi Park demonstrations in May/June 2013 and the use of force to disperse protestors near Taksim Square showed that Erdoğan’s real weakness wasn’t creeping Islamism within Turkey so much as his disdain for liberal democracy.

Though the Turkish presidency is largely a ceremonial position, with a handful of constitutional duties and other roles in representing Turkey to the rest of the world, Erdoğan hasn’t been shy about indicating his interest in holding the same office that the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also once held.  He hasn’t also been shy about his interest in amending Turkey’s constitution to transform it into a more powerful US-style presidency.

As the leading figure within Turkey’s ruling party, Erdoğan would have become a president with extraordinary powers, appointing in his place a pliant prime minister — not unlike the relationship that the Russian or French president has with their respect prime ministers when the presidential party holds a parliamentary majority as well.

But within the past couple of weeks, Erdoğan has faced a new internal threat in the form of a corruption crisis that’s already led to the resignation of three members of his cabinet, causing an internal rift within Turkey’s Islamist camp between Erdoğan loyalists and a cabal of Gulenists, the followers of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania in self-exile.  He leads the Hizmet movement, which boasts the support of around 1 million Turks, including many members of the Turkish bureaucracy, security forces and judiciary.

Turkey’s main opposition party, the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, the Republican People’s Party), is in no shape to win the presidency — even if the AKP hadn’t tilted the political playing field so much in its own favor, the CHP would already have been hampered by weak leadership and its image as the remnants of the old Kemalist order.

So what is Erdoğan to do?  If he survives the latest crisis, he may still be able to claim the presidency, but he’ll need to make amends with the Gulenists and with other top members of his own party, who may believe it’s time for Erdoğan to move along quietly.  It’s possible that Abdullah Gül (pictured above), Turkey’s president since 2007, a former foreign minister and also a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, could run for a second term instead.  While it was once thought that Gül and Erdoğan might switch places, with Gül becoming prime minister under an Erdoğan presidency, it may well be that Erdoğan limps on as prime minister through the June 2015 parliamentary elections, when the AKP chooses a new figure to attempt to lead it into its second decade in power.

Next: Indonesia

14 in 14, European Union

14 in 2014: European Union parliamentary elections

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9. European Union parliamentary elections, May 22-25.European_Union

If for no other reason, the upcoming elections for the European Parliament will be the most important since direct EP elections began in 1979 because under the new Lisbon Treaty, it will be the European Parliament that decides who will become the next chair of the European Commission, the chief executive organ of the European Union (though German chancellor Angela Merkel has argued that the treaty’s language indicates that the Commission appointment need only ‘take into account’ the EP elections).  In any event, it still means that early in 2014, each of the major cross-national party groupings within the European Parliament will designate their nominees to succeed José Manuel Barroso, the former center-right Portuguese prime minister who will step down in November 2014 after a decade heading the Commission.

The eight European Parliament will have 751 members, over 56% of whom will come from just six member-states: Germany (96), France (74), the United Kingdom (73), Italy (73), Spain (54) and Poland (51).  Four states, Estonia, Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus, will elect the minimum number of representatives (six).

Between 1979 and 1999, the Party of European Socialists (PES) and its predecessor was the largest group in the European Parliament.  Its members include the major center-left socialist/social democratic parties of Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and the labour parties of Ireland, Malta, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Since 1999, however, the European People’s Party (EPP), a group of center-right and Christian democratic parties, have held the largest number of seats.  In the most recent 2009 elections, the EPP won 265 seats to just 183 for the PES.  The EPP’s members include the major Christian democratic parties in Benelux, the Austrian People’s Party, the French UMP, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union Greece’s New Democracy, Hungary’s Fidesz, Ireland’s centrist Fine Gael, Italy’s Forza Italia, Portugal’s Social Democratic Party, Poland’s Civic Platform, Spain’s People’s Party and Sweden’s Moderate Party.

The third-largest group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE), contains includes most of Europe’s liberal parties, notably Belgium’s Open VLD, the Danish Venestre, Luxembourg’s newly elected Liberals, the Dutch VVD, the British Liberal Democrats, and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil.

Other groups include:

  • the European Green Party (which includes essentially all of Europe’s green and ecological parties),
  • the Party of the European Left (whose members include the German Die Linke and Greece’s SYRIZA),
  • the slightly eurosceptic Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (whose members include the Czech Civic Democrats, the UK Conservatives and Poland’s Law and Justice Party),
  • the Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy, formed in 2009 as another slightly euroskeptic group (whose members includes Italy’s Northern League, the Danish People’s Party and the Finns Party), and
  • the European Alliance for Freedom, formed in 2010 as a staunchly euroskeptic, far-right group (whose members include the French National Front, the Dutch Party of Freedom, the Flemish Vlaams Belang and Austria’s Freedom Party).

Although the EPP won’t determine its candidate for Commission president until a convention on March 6-7 and ALDE won’t determine its candidate until February 1, the PES has already nominated Martin Schulz, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party and president of the European Parliament since 2012. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, Luxembourg’s Viviane Reding, the Commission’s vice president and current commissioner for justice, former Luxembourgish prime minister and Eurogroup chair Jean-Claude Juncker, former Latvian prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, Swedish prime minister Frederik Reinfeldt and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde of France have all been touted as possible EPP candidates.  ALDE will choose between former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt and Finland’s Olli Rehn, currently commissioner for economic and monetary affairs.

Herman Van Rompuy, former Belgian prime minister and the first president of the European Council, the council of European heads of state/government, will also step down at the end of 2014 after two 2.5-year terms in that position.   The first EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton of the United Kingdom, is also likely to step down.

Given the tumult of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, almost everyone expects that European voters may use the elections as an opportunity to register dissatisfaction with the direction of European governance.  In particular, that could bode well for the stridently leftist MEP candidates — most notably in Greece, where SYRIZA (the Coalition of the Radical Left — Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς) of Alexis Tsipras leads EP polls.  It could also bode well for euroskeptic candidates — most notably in the United Kingdom, where Nigel Farage (pictured above) and his anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is competing for first place with the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in EP polls, and in France, where Marine Le Pen’s nationalist Front National (FN, National Front) leads EP polls.

Photo credit to Lucas Schifes.

Next: Turkey

14 in 14, Belgium

14 in 2014: Belgium parliamentary elections

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8. Belgium parliamentary election, May 25.Belgium Flag

Pity Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo — despite the fact that Belgians last voted in June 2010, the ensuing coalition talks meant that Di Rupo (pictured above) only became prime minister in December 2011.  Just two years later, Belgium is already looking ahead to elections in May, and coalition talks could once again stretch in terms of years, not days or months.

While the agreement that installed the Di Rupo government enacted to a set of political reforms that ended direct elections for the upper house of the Belgian parliament, Belgians will determine all 150 members of the Chamber of Deputies (Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers in Flemish, Chambre des Représentants in French).  With 88 seats up for grabs in the Dutch/Flemish-speaking northern region of Flanders and 62 seats in the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia, the linguistic and regional divide virtually guarantees that no single party can come close to winning an outright majority.

Polls show that the parties have roughly the same amount of support as in 2010.

That means that Di Rupo’s leftist Parti Socialiste (PS, Socialist Party) is likely to emerge as the largest Francophone party.  But it’s followed closely by the liberal Mouvement Réformateur (RF, Reformist Movement).  The Christian democratic Centre démocrate humaniste (cdH, Christian Humanist Center) and Ecolo, Belgium’s Francophone green party, should also win a significant number of seats.

But on the Flemish side, Antwerp mayor Bart de Wever’s Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New Flemish Alliance), which has called for the gradual secession of Flanders from Belgium, seems set to improve on its 2010 total.  The N-VA emerged as the party with the largest number of seats after 2010 (with 27 to 26 for Di Rupo’s Socialists), and it could emerge as the largest party by an even wider margin in 2014.  Its chief competition is the more conventional Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V Christian Democratic and Flemish), which leads the regional Flanders government.  Other parties include the social democratic Socialistische Partij Anders (sp.a, Socialist Party Different), the liberal Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (Open VLD, Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats), the far-right, pro-independence Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest, VB) and the Groen, the Flemish Greens.

The current government brings together the top three Francophone parties (socialist, liberal and Christian democratic), the Flemish Christian Democrats and the Open VLD, leaving the most pro-independence Flemish parties and the two green parties in opposition.  With the federal election scheduled for the same day as elections to the European Parliament, it could maximize turnout among the euroskeptic and the Flemish secessionist electorate, which could leave de Wever and the N-VA in a much stronger position over the next five years.

Next: European Parliament

14 in 14, Colombia

14 in 2014: Colombia presidential election

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7. Colombia presidential election, May 15 (with potential June runoff).Colombia Flag Icon

If Colombians went to the polls today, it’s likely they would reelect Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense secretary who came to power in 2010 as the protégé of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe.

But five months is a long time, especially given that Santos (pictured above) is engaged in high-stakes talks with the longtime guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which has waged an insurgency against the Colombian government for nearly half a century.  Under the conservative Uribe, Colombia firmly emerged from an era of narcoterrorism and cartel-fueled violence that made the country the top battleground in the US war on drugs throughout the 1990s. Colombia today is enjoying rapid economic growth.

Uribe turned on Santos shortly after his election, and Uribe is staunchly opposed to the Colombian government’s talks with FARC, which kicked off in October 2012.  Instead, Uribe is supporting former finance minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga and has formed a new political party, Uribe Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), to challenge Santos.

Santos’s approval rating dropped to 25% in mid-2013, and while it’s slowly recovering ground, he shouldn’t necessarily take reelection for granted.  Polls, however, show that Colombians want to stick with Santos — and may resent what they see as Uribe’s attempt to claw his way back into influence over national policy.  On the left, none of the three most likely candidates seem to be able to attract enough support to win the presidency, though former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa might pose the strongest challenge as a business-friendly member of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party).

One issue that could motivate the Colombian left is the removal of Bogotá mayor and former M-19 rebel Gustavo Petro in December 2013 by Colombia’s inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, a Uribe ally — ostensibly over the issue of a 2011 clash between Petro and the city’s garbage collectors.  With Petro and his allies still protesting the decision, the capital city faces fresh elections as well early in 2014 that could highlight the deficiencies and growing pains of Colombian democracy.

 NEXT: Belgium

14 in 14, India

14 in 2014: India parliamentary elections

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6. India parliamentary elections, expected in May.

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In the spring, the country of 1.24 billion people faces a decision — either award a third term to a listless, relatively corrupt center-left government with uninspiring leadership or take a chance on a controversial center-right government that promises economic transformation, but which could inflame India’s Muslim population.

Before May 31, Indians must choose the entire membership of Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of India’s parliament — it currently has 545 members, but can have up to a maximum of 552.

On the left is the familiar Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस).  This is the party of Jawaharlal Nehru. And Indira Gandhi, his daughter. And Rajiv Gandhi, her son. And Sonia Gandhi, his Italian-born wife. And now Rahul Gandhi, their son.  With 206 seats, Congress is the largest party in the Lok Sabha today, and it leads the United Progressive Alliance, which holds a total of 226 seats.

After a decade in office, India’s first Sikh prime minister, economist Manmohan Singh, will step down no matter who wins the elections — and he’ll do so with an economy in the doldrums and a record of having achieved few of the economic and social reforms that Indians expected when he came to power in 2004.  Though he pushed through   reforms to liberalize India’s retail sector earlier this year and a law strengthening punishment for rape after the brutal gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi in December 2012, Singh’s record as prime minister has been panned — much in contrast to his record as finance minister between 1991 and 1996.  GDP growth is expected to rise in 2013 to around 5% after falling for three consecutive years — from 10.5% in 2010 to 6.3% in 2011 to just 3.2% in 2012.  But that comes after the Indian rupee fell nearly 25% in value against the dollar throughout 2013 — and still remains around 13% lower than it was in January 2013.

Sonia Gandhi, Congress’s party leader throughout Singh’s administration, is expected to continue in that role, with her and her son Rahul (pictured above) leading Congress’s campaign.  But Rahul’s relatively lackluster performance on the campaign trail has led some commentators to wonder whether he really cares if Congress wins or loses in 2014.  Rahul recently tried to create some distance between himself and Singh, but it remains to be seen whether Rahul has the political skill to become India’s next prime minister.

On the right is the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी), which last held power between 1999 and 2004, when it lost a disastrous ‘India Shining’ campaign that seemed to disregard the majority of Indians who weren’t pocketing the gains of India’s economic boom at the time, despite GDP growth of around 8%.  This time around, the BJP has embraced Narendra Modi, the thrice-elected chief minister of Gujarat, home to one of India’s strongest regional economies.  He’s popular, not least of which because he’s seen as impervious to corruption, but he hasn’t explained yet how he would translate his Gujarati economic model to the entirety of India.  What’s more, he’s plagued by his role in controversial anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that left over 1,000 Muslims dead.  Modi’s role remains murky, but it was enough for the United States to deny Modi a visa in the 2000s.  It’s a handicap for Modi’s national ambitions, in light of a population of 176 million Muslim Indians who largely mistrust Modi, who got his political start in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, Hindu paramilitary group.

Today, Modi seems like the odds-on favorite to become India’s prime minister, but he and the BJP face challenges.  It’s no secret that former BJP leader and deputy prime minister LK Advani has clashed with Modi in the past, and that Modi’s rise to become the nominal head of the BJP remains controversial.  What’s more, he starts the campaign with just 117 seats in the Lok Sabha.  The second-largest member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, the Janata Dal (United) (जनता दल (यूनाइटेड)), a center-left party with 20 seats that controls India’s third-most populous state, Bihar, when that state’s chief minister Nitish Kumar pulled out of the NDA in June 2013 over differences with Modi.

The BJP thrived in a set of state assembly elections in November and December 2013 in a wide swath of north-central India — it retained Madhya Pradesh (India’s sixth-most populous), retained Chhattisgarh and gained Rajasthan (India’s eight-largest).  But it lost its sole foothold in India’s south when it lost control of the government of Karnataka in May 2013.  There’s also no indication that the BJP can make inroads in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where it placed third in February 2012 state elections behind two UPA-friendly parties, the Samajwadi Party (समाजवादी पार्टी, Socialist Party), which holds 22 seats, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP, बहुजन समाज पार्टी), which holds 21 seats.  In West Bengal, India’s fourth-largest state (and one of its poorest), chief minister Mamata Banerjee has a lock on politics after her center-left All India Trinamool Congress (সর্বভারতীয় তৃণমূল কংগ্রেস) took power in 2011, defeating the even more communist Left Front (বাম ফ্রন্ট), which also has a strong influence in Kerala in India’s southwestern corner.  Both parties belong to neither the UPA nor the NDA after Banerjee pulled her party out of the UPA in 2012.

Yet another worry is the recent rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (आम आदमी की पार्टी), a new party that rose to prominence in Delhi’s state elections in December and that leads Delhi’s new minority government with outside support from Congress.  Whether you think the Aam Aadmi Party marks a cynical brand of populism or an important moment in the fight against corruption in Indian government, its leader (and new Delhi chief minister) Arvind Kejriwal is a suddenly unexpected key player in India’s national elections.

Taken together, it could mean Indians deliver more votes to third parties in 2014 to either Congress or the BJP — but whether they do so in a way that could actually transform Indian governance is less certain.

Photo credit to AFP / Prakash Singh.

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14 in 14, Hungary

14 in 2014: Hungary parliamentary elections

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5. Hungary parliamentary election, expected in April.Hungary Flag Icon

April’s elections will be the first to take place under the rules of the new laws and the new constitution enacted in 2012 by prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose conservative Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance) came to power in 2010 with a supermajority in Hungary’s Országgyűlés (National Assembly).

Orbán (pictured above) is easily the most controversial head of government in the European Union, and he’s been criticized for a governing style that’s taken populist turns and authoritarian twists over the past four years, even aside from the controversial constitutional reforms that are likely to give Orbán and Fidesz an advantage in the upcoming elections.

The number of seats in the National Assembly will shrink from 386 to just 199 — 106 seats will be determined on a first-past-the-post basis in single-member constituencies, while 93 will be determined on the basis of party lists (with a 5% threshold).  That’s a slight change from the previous system when around 54% of the seats were determined by party lists; under the new system, about 53% of the seats are determined on the basis of constituencies.  Moreover, the previous two-round election system has been replaced with a one-round system that no longer features a minimum turnout requirement.

That’s all likely to boost Fidesz, which holds a wide lead against a fragmented, withered opposition.  Polls show Fidesz with a nearly two-to-one lead against the nearest opponent, and the electoral law changes could easily amplify Orbán’s majority.  The Magyar Szocialista Párt (MSZP, Hungarian Socialist Party), which became massively unpopular under former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, attracts just around 20% of voters in polls.  Gyurcsány split from his party in 2011 to form the Demokratikus Koalíció (DK, Democratic Coalition), and opposition unity talks have so far failed.  Meanwhile, the far-right nationalist Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Jobbik) will be looking to maintain its stunning level of support from 2010, when it won nearly 17% of the vote.

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14 in 14, Afghanistan

14 in 2014: Afghanistan presidential election

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4. Afghanistan presidential election, April 5.afghanistan flag

Afghanistan’s president since December 2001, Hamid Karzai (pictured above), is stepping down under the term limits of his country’s new constitution, initiating a new era in the country that will see a vast drawdown of US military forces in 2014 as well.

The most important question isn’t necessarily who follows Karzai but what follows him.  Afghanistan remains less of a nation-state than a patchwork of various groups tied together by tribal and ethnic lines — the experience of Afghanistan as a national identity has more to do with resisting British, Soviet and now US occupation than any other uniting forces.  What seems certain is that at the national level, Pashtun elites will continue to dominate the national government, with relatively autonomous control throughout the rest of the country, and the Taliban certain to retain significant influence in parts of southern Afghanistan and elsewhere.  That means it’s important that the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and other ethnic groups accept the election result.

With that caveat, the leading two candidates seem to be Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.  Abdullah lost the 2009 presidential race to Karzai in a relatively fraud-ridden vote, but it gives him perhaps a leg up in the 2014 contest.  Karzai’s foreign minister between 2001 and 2005, Abdullah is half-Pashtun and half-Tajik, which could boost him among the two largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan.  Pashtuns, concentrated in the broad center of the county, account for about 40% to 50% of Afghanistan’s population and Tajiks, concentrated in the far northeastern corner, account for between 25% and 30%.  Abdullah has already built an impressively broad coalition that, controversially, includes hardline Islamists as well as moderates. Ghani, finance minister between 2002 and 2004, a former World Bank official and chancellor of Kabul University, was a minor candidate in the 2009 election.  This time around, he’s running a stronger campaign with the support of general Abdul Rashid Dostum, perhaps the most important Uzbek political leader.

Karzai’s brother Qayum, a businessman with somewhat murky ethics,  is also running and will likely attract significant support.  But Zalmai Rassoul, who served as national security advisor from 2002 to 2010 and foreign minister from 2010 through October 2013 may be the candidate who most embodies continuity with the current administration.  Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, a top leader of the anti-Soviet mujahideen in the 1980s, who is thought to have had ties to al-Qaeda, is also expected to run, though he’s more recently opposed the Taliban within Afghanistan.

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14 in 14, Egypt

14 in 2014: Egypt referendum, parliamentary and presidential elections

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2. Egypt parliamentary and presidential elections, spring and summer 2014.egypt_flag_new

Egypt will attempt to hit the reset button once again in 2014, beginning with a constitutional referendum on January 14 and 15.  If the referendum passes, the new constitutional reforms provide that acting president Adly Mansour must hold either a presidential or parliamentary elections within three months, with the other election to follow within another three months.

But after the July 2013 coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first elected president, there’s no assurance that the elections will be a fair reflection of the will of the Egyptian electorate.  After a brutal crackdown on pro-Morsi protestors reminiscent of the worst abuses of the authoritarian regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the military interim government branded the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, Morsi (pictured above) remains jailed pending charges for murder and other crimes, and other top Muslim Brotherhood officials are also imprisoned.

There’s no real assurance that the pro-Morsi Freedom and Justice Party (حزب الحرية والعدالة‎), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, will even be permitted to participate in the elections.  It could also mean that Islamist voters of all shades turn to the more conservative, Salafist Al-Nour Party (حزب النور‎, Arabic for ‘Party of the Light’) or to other more radical Islamist groups that have, since July 2013, worked in tandem with the current military regime.  Other secular groups, like the National Salvation Front (جبهة الإنقاذ الوطني‎) of Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who briefly served as the interim vice president of the military government, could win seats, but secular liberals failed in the two previous parliamentary elections in 2011 and 2012 to make a breakthrough.  The Tamarod (تـمـرد‎ ) movement, which powered significant protests against Morsi in June 2013 and which supports the current regime, could also emerge as a more permanent player.

But the most likely result could be the coronation of Egypt’s powerful army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as the country’s new president, who ironically came to power when Morsi himself appointed him to the role in August 2012.  Hamdeen Sabahi, a nationalist liberal who placed third in the May 2012 presidential election, is expected to wage a strong campaign as well.  Since the February 2011 Arab Spring revolts that brought down Mubarak’s regime, political tumult has complicated the economic outlook for Egypt, where a youthful population continues to grapple with too few employment opportunities.

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14 in 14, Bangladesh

14 in 2014: Bangladesh parliamentary elections

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1. Bangladesh parliamentary elections, January 5 (and perhaps again, later in 2014).bangladesh flag icon

Bangladesh is home to 155 million people, making it the eighth-most populous country in the world.  When voters go to the polls just after the New Year, however, it’s certain that the governing Bangladesh Awami League (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ) and prime minister Sheikh Hasina (pictured above) will win reelection.  That’s because the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, বাংলাদেশ জাতীয়তাবাদী দল) is boycotting the vote, largely over Hasina’s refusal to appoint a caretaker government to oversee the election’s administration.

The most relevant precedent is 1996, when the BNP’s leader, Khaleda Zia, was prime minister and Hasina and the Awami League were in the opposition.  The Awami League boycotted the February 1996 elections and the BNP won all 300 seats in the Bangladeshi parliament, but the parties eventually came to a deal on fresh elections, and both parties participated in the subsequent June 1996 elections.

Though the players are chiefly the same — the Zia/Hasina rivalry has influenced the country’s politics since the 1980s — the stakes have grown much higher.  Hasina established the International Crimes Tribunal in 2009 to prosecute the war crimes related to the brutal 1971 war for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.  When the ICT sentenced Islamist leader Abdul Quader Mollah to life imprisonment, protesters came out in droves to Shabagh Square in Dhaka in early 2013 to contest the sentence as too lenient.  The government relented, executed Quader Mollah in December and banned the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (বাংলাদেশ জামায়াতে ইসলামী), even though it’s never galvanized widespread support in Bangladesh.  That, too, caused protests and Quader Mollah’s execution brought international condemnation on Hasina’s government.  The protests on both sides have demonstrated that the wounds of 1971 are far from healed.  The opposition has conducted a general strike that’s threatening the economy, and Hasina has found herself increasingly isolated.

Photo credit to The Hindu.

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