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The Iranian decision not to immediately retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, 2024, in part reflects a concerted effort by regional, Chinese, Russian, and Western diplomats to convince Iran that de-escalation and diplomacy was the wiser course. It also reflects recognition by the new administration of President Masoud Pezeshkian--whose inauguration preceded the Haniyeh killing by only a few hours--that such a military retaliation would likely provoke a massive Israeli response backed by the U.S. and other Western allies that would doom Iran's chances of re-engaging with the West and relieving onerous economic sanctions. A wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah across the Israel-Lebanon border does not appear to have changed this calculus for Iran, which is confronting severe domestic economic problems and a growing gap between the regime and society. Still, any progress in improving U.S.-Iran relations will have to await the results of U.S. presidential elections. Keywords: U.S.-Iran Relations, Gaza War, Ismail Haniyeh, Masoud Pezeshkian, In choosing to assassinate Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have several motivations: to kill a senior figure in [...]

Is the success of the electoral left in contemporary Mexico linked to the emergence of a new social pact? This article outlines the trajectory of the electoral left, parsing out its understanding of neoliberalism as a political economy of corruption and the budding features of actually existing post-neoliberalism in the country., A recent Gallup poll tallied the approval rating of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of the Morena party, now six years into his presidential administration in Mexico, at 80 percent. [...]

The unrest that Senegal experienced between 2019 and 2024 has caused much concern about the democratic model for which the country has been known. The discussion that follows traces the [...]

In this editorial, I'm updating a post I wrote late on Labor Day. The information was so interesting I didn't want to wait, so I ran the story on NRL [...]

Earlier this year, pro-lifers had high hopes for the Supreme Court as the justices considered the legality of the government's 2000 approval and subsequent protocol changes in FDA v. AHM. [...]

As the U.S. veers into another major election year, some higher education scholars predict that issues related to the ivory tower will inevitably take center stage. Timely issues such as [...]

As the 2024 US presidential election approaches, Iranian hackers are stepping up their cyber-influence operations to disrupt the electoral process and undermine voter confidence in the US. Iran-backed groups, particularly [...]

IN EVERY ISSUE / [From the Editor] Business, Politics, and Cultivating Resilience Abbie Lundberg // @abbielundberg Editor in chief BUSINESS DOESN’T OPERATE IN A vacuum. Sometimes external conditions exert a [...]

The year was 1992, a presidential election year in the United States, and I was teaching a graduate course on media ecology. One of the books assigned for the class […]

This article investigates whether campaign speeches during the US presidential elections can help predict foreign policy behavior. We use speeches made by Donald J. Trump during his bid for president in 2016. We compare the analysis from 2016 with his actual foreign policy decisions during his tenure, 2017-2020. Operational code analysis and leadership traits analysis approaches are used to analyze candidate Trump's foreign policy beliefs and strategies associated with them. We use Profiler Plus software to conduct content analysis which produces OCA and LTA results. We use three separate datasets to analyze Trump's beliefs and traits focusing on his general foreign policy speeches, the MENA region, and a third one only about Islamic State and Syria. Our results show that Trump's profile indicates a foreign policy orientation that avoids involvement in affairs that are perceived as beyond immediate interests. The consistency between his beliefs and traits during the 2016 campaign and his actual foreign policy behavior leads us to conclude that individual level analysis, and specifically OCA and LTA approaches, are useful tools to analyze, explain and predict foreign policy. Keywords: Political Beliefs, Leadership Typologies, Contextualized Sampling, Campaign Speeches, Foreign Policy Analysis, Introduction Donald Trump's election as the 45th United States (US) President took many observers by surprise. Many foreign policy decisions during his presidency also surprised academics and followers of US [...]

THE NEW POWER ELITE by Heather Gautney OXFORD UNIVERSITY, 336 PAGES, $29.95 IN THE ANNALS of quixotic American presidential runs, the candidacy of Cornel West--the seventy-year-old academic, social critic, and [...]

The viability of populism--a political strategy used by charismatic politicians to forge highly personalistic ties with voters--is preconditioned on the alienation of voters from non-populist, patronage-based or identity-based parties. In Indonesia, a collapse in the ties between voters and such parties has opened up strategic space for charismatic political entrepreneurs to make personalistic appeals to atomized voters through the media, without relying on the organizational infrastructure of political parties to connect them to grassroots politics. Since the introduction of direct presidential elections in 2004, the mobilization of party infrastructures has become increasingly irrelevant to a candidate's chances of success, with media-based populism now the default mode of electioneering. However, constantly changing electoral rules have made it increasingly difficult to register a new political party and for that party to nominate a presidential candidate. As a result, populist presidential candidates have been forced to enter into pre-election coalitions with existing parties as a condition of running for president. This article argues that electoral rules have therefore played a crucial role in sustaining the systemic importance of political parties within Indonesia's presidential democracy despite the weak bonds between parties and voters, thus ensuring the cooperation of presidents with party bosses. Keywords: Populism, electoral systems, party institutionalization, political linkages, presidentialism., The viability of populism--'a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers' (1)--depends [...]