In September of 2024, outgoing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refined the concept of justice for his country. Signing into law heated judicial reforms, he transformed Mexico into the first country to elect all its judges through a popular vote. Somehow, this reform earned the popular vote itself, passing with 343 votes in favor and 129 against. 

While AMLO claimed that passing this reform was in the name of justice “for everyone”, it seems like the reality of these reforms is doing the exact opposite. For instance, 8 of Mexico’s 11 tenured judges have stated they would rather leave their positions than compete for re-election. 55,000 judicial employees have gone on strike against the changes, protesting AMLO’s decisions. The popularity of this reform within the government is, evidently, not replicated among the populace. Now, citizens are wondering how the justice system will work without these experienced judges – or if the system will even work at all. 

For context, most nations have their judges appointed from a pool of candidates. Within the U.S., Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges are all nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate. In Mexico, judges for the top court were previously selected by a similar process, chosen from a list submitted by the President and confirmed by the Mexican Senate.

With AMLO’s reforms, the President no longer decides on who serves as a judge. Instead, this power is bestowed upon the people.

As of November 26th, around 18,000 people have registered to run for Supreme Court seats or federal judicial positions. This means they will be elected by the people, treated largely like political parties. The problem is that in Mexico, political parties and candidates are often swayed by pressure from external influences, including dangerously manipulative drug cartels. 

In Mexico, drug cartels violently target political candidates, with 2024 seeing the highest number of violent incidents against candidates – 506. Because of this, many interested candidates drop out of the race, with hundreds more who decide not to run simply out of fear. 

Furthermore, cartels have a history of paying bribes to political candidates. A report in 2012 revealed that one case amounted to $4.5 million in political protection and favors paid by cartels to candidates. 

Critics of AMLO’s judicial reform fear that cartels’ actions could hurt judicial elections as they do Presidential elections. Specifically, cartels pressurizing judges, who are supposed to maintain objective viewpoints on Mexico’s issues, would end the stability of the country’s judiciary altogether. Judges should not be beholden to cartels in any capacity, and they definitely should not owe money to violent criminal organizations. In court proceedings involving the cartels themselves, it would be concerning to see cartel members escape incarceration because of internal corruption or bribes paid by criminal groups to judges. Cartels are out of democracy’s control, but they have somehow exhibited their control over democracy. 

Aside from the prevailing issue of cartels in elections, another fundamental problem with AMLO’s judicial reforms is that they uncannily resemble college applications. No, really. Candidates for Supreme Court seats and judicial positions require five letters of recommendation from peers and a strong GPA above 3.2. Evaluation committees are burdened with reviewing thousands of resumes and entering certain select candidates into a random lottery for final appointment. 

Expertise requirements have been cut as well, with applicants only needing five years of vaguely defined “judicial area experience.”  Individuals with minimal experience working in actual “justice” are, therefore, eligible to run and be selected, raising questions about how inexperienced judges would impact Mexico’s courts. With term limits now reduced by three years and the number of justices reduced by two, Mexico’s judicial system is unfortunately becoming increasingly vulnerable to instability.

Overall, Mexico is facing a looming threat of democratic backsliding with these sweeping changes to the judiciary. By putting judges at risk of violence, exacerbating concerns about corruption, and cutting experience requirements for a federal judge, AMLO has effectively allowed his citizens to elect institutional injustice within Mexico. The purpose of judicial systems is to promote justice in democracy, but these reforms are transforming the country into an unjust form of “democracy”. 

Read more here:

• Staff, Fisher Phillips

• Staff, France 24

• MND Staff, Mexico News Daily

Bolivia’s national motto is Unity is Strength. This motto is becoming ever more pressing as multiple crises continue to divide Bolivians and threaten the country’s stability. From 2003 to 2014, Bolivia was awash in cash as prices of natural gas spiked, and Bolivia’s export-driven economy benefited from exporting natural gas to its South American neighbors. Ultimately, Bolivia accumulated a budget surplus of $14 billion. However, in 2024, that surplus has dwindled to near nothing. That’s because the government failed to adjust its dependence once the price of natural gas started to decline and chose to continue running large budget deficits of 7.3% in 2022. This deluge of spending was funded by using the budget surplus, but now, the cash has run out. The problem is that once the government has no more money to sustain its spending, there will either be devastating budget cuts or a debt-fueled economic crisis. 

The numbers already paint an ugly picture about the state of Bolivia’s economy. GDP growth is at a dismal 1.6%, far below inflation at 4.5%. These problems have culminated in Bolivian President Luis Arce’s dismal 18% approval rating. The humorous, yet ultimately bitter upshot of this crisis is that Arce’s approval rating is barely higher than 17.2%, which is the percentage of Bolivians that live in poverty. 

All of these dire statistics point to an underlying fault in Bolivia’s economic model: It is far too dependent on boom and bust cycles of natural resource extraction to sustain its economy. One of the main drives of the current crisis is the shortage of stable foreign currency like the US dollar. In fact, the black market has prices 20% higher than the official exchange rate, with many Bolivians unable to afford basic goods. The good times in the past decade were supported by an ephemeral mirage of sustained economic growth. As a Bolivian economist writes, despite a temporary boom in prosperity, there was no fundamental reform of Bolivia’s broken economic model of extraction over all else. Even the socialist MAS party’s nationalization of natural gas only entrenched the government's dependency on exports to fuel its spending. There has been no attempt at economic liberalization or the development of other more advanced industries that would have sustained Bolivia's economy had fossil fuels faltered.

With support from the United States and other western institutions dwindling and unable to secure legislative support for economic reforms, Arce has turned to China to try and mitigate Bolivia’s economic crisis. China sees instability in South America as a way to expand its own economic power and influence there, especially by supplanting the US dollar’s dominance and increasing the usage of the yuan in international trade. While the U.S. is seen as a difficult ally, especially given the US’s tension with the socialist Bolivia government, China is perceived as a more trustworthy and fair partner. 

For example, it uses the yuan to settle international trades and reduce the impact of a stronger US dollar on its exports. Now, about 10% of Bolivia’s trade is in yuan, and China has surpassed the US as Bolivia’s main trading partner. These relations extend to financial support for the cash-strapped Bolivian government too. In the past year, China has invested $1.4 billion in Bolivia lithium mines and signed a $350 million loan agreement to finance the construction of a zinc refining plant. All of these projects are critical in China’s quest to secure its dominance over the global rare earth minerals supply chain. The US, despite recognizing the critical importance of rare earth minerals in national security, has not yet taken steps to gain stronger relations with Bolivia. 

It remains to be seen whether Bolivia’s economic crisis will spiral into a depression, and whether the US will respond to Chinese encroachment in its backyard.

Read more here:

• Alejandro Werner, Americas Quarterly

• Raul Penaranda, Americas Quarterly

• Gabriel Rodríguez García, NACLA

• Martín Mendoza-Botelho, Wilson Center

In 2016, libertarian candidate Gary Johnson famously ended his campaign by responding to a crucial question about the Syrian civil war with the now infamous phrase “What is Aleppo?”

Now, nearly 8 years later, Aleppo and the Syrian civil war remain just as relevant as when Gary Johnson was asked about it in 2016. 

This Wednesday, Syrian rebels swept through Syria’s war-torn second-largest city, Aleppo. Meeting little government resistance, the rebels now control most of the city as well as the surrounding villages. 

With the rebels' advance being halted by Syrian and Russian air strikes, this event sets up an inevitable continuation of the current war in Syria, which many thought was ending following the Assad regime’s regaining of much of the country. 

For the next few months, a siege in Aleppo is likely inevitable, with Syrian government forces pledging to retake the city. With the rebels in control of key military sites, a repeat scenario of 2016 is nearly guaranteed, with rebels hanging on to the city for nearly two years until they were forced to surrender that year. 

A new extension of the civil war in Aleppo would be devastating to the city's 2 million inhabitants. During the first siege, 31,000 people died due to cluster munitions, chemical weapons, and airstrikes that were utilized throughout the city by Russian and Syrian government forces. Broadly, the war as a whole has already cost 300,000 lives, and the resumption of the war following the offensive in Aleppo means the scenarios that created these figures will continue. 

But beyond Aleppo, the new rebel offensive has broader implications for the war as a whole. The events of the past week prove that a political effort to bring peace to Syria is now an impossible prospect. The current rebels leading the offensive in Aleppo are known as the Al Nusra Front, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate. This is on top of the existing Free Syrian Army and Syrian Democratic Forces who have been fighting the Assad regime since the start of this war. 

Within the new rebel coalition, the “Military Operation Command,” there are numerous different militia groups with a wide range of motivations. Islamist groups such as the Al-Nusra Front have entirely different motivations than the SDF or the FSA. Thus, negotiating a peace deal with them would be far more difficult than with the SDF and FSA since their ambitions go beyond merely removing Assad or allowing for democratic compromise. 

On top of the nature of these groups, the sheer number of insurgent groups ensures that a broad peace deal is impossible, since not every combatant party can be brought to the negotiating table. Infighting between Islamist and moderate rebels also creates a situation where even a peace deal with the government won't stop the violence. 

Unfortunately for Syria, the timing of this escalation nearly guarantees expanded foreign intervention. The offensive in Aleppo likely occurred now because Assad’s main allies are tied up in conflicts of their own, Russia in Ukraine and Iran's conflict with Israel respectively. However, with Russia already launching airstrikes against the rebels and with Iran sending their top diplomat to Damascus, the current situation serves as a litmus test for the Russia-Iran-Syria axis that the alliance has seemingly passed. 

With the intervention of Iranian militias such as Hezbollah, who played an integral role in fighting rebels on behalf of the Iran-Assad axis earlier in the war, Israel is likely to play a larger role in Syria, keeping with their history of launching airstrikes against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq throughout the 2010s. With the current conflict between Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and with Israel proving itself to be an interventionist actor from their incursion into Lebanon, Syria could shape up to be the next proxy battleground of the current Iran-Israel conflict that has torn apart the Middle East since 2020. 

Syria’s civil war has dominated their country’s internal politics for over a decade. Going forward, the rest of the 2020s pledges to be the rule, not the exception. 

Read More Here:

• Lauren Kent, CNN

• Bethan McKernan, Guardian 

• Louis Nelson, Politico

• Sebastian Usher, BBC

The French government can be compared to a chaotic WWE match, minus the chair-throwing antics. Despite its nonsensical nature, it appeared that the government might finally stabilize after the recent election. However, after December 2nd, the situation changed dramatically, and now the French government is on the verge of collapse. What is causing this turmoil, and what does the future hold for this struggling administration?

The current French government was primarily established with the aim of thwarting the potential ascendance of Marine Le Pen and her far-right party, the National Rally. Following the elections in July, Macron's party, Renaissance, achieved victory by forging a coalition with a diverse array of center-right and leftist political parties. This strategic alliance not only strengthened their position but also enabled a more unified front against extremist movements.

As part of the coalition agreement, Macron made a significant decision to appoint Michel Barnier, the leader of the Republican Party, as Prime Minister. Barnier's extensive experience in European politics served as a stabilizing factor for the new administration, allowing it to address the complex challenges facing the country.

A crucial figure within this newly formed government is Antoine Armand, a member of the Renaissance Party, who has been entrusted with the role of Finance Minister. His appointment carries immense importance, as he is responsible for managing France's budget and economic policy. The budget he oversees is especially critical; it not only impacts public spending and social welfare but also influences various sectors of the economy. Unfortunately, it would be this very budget that ultimately contributed to the unraveling of the fledgling government, showcasing the delicate balance of governance and the challenges of coalition politics in contemporary France.

The collapse of the government was precipitated by Barnier's use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution—sometimes known in France as the “nuclear option”—to push his government’s sweeping social security budget bill through Parliament without a vote. This article has been used in the past, most recently in 2023, to push Macron’s deeply unpopular retirement age law into place.

This no-confidence vote has several major implications. Because the government no longer has any power, no new budget can be passed, and no cuts can be made until a clear majority is established. France's future financial stability is now in freefall.

The new French government, which has only lasted a few months, seems headed for certain collapse. It appears that through its own ineptitude, this tragic result will affect the French people. With the government collapsing, the question remains: What is the future of the French government?

• Paul Millar, France24

• Staff, CBS News

• Jacquline Howard, BBC