“What is most worrisome for the opposition is that this landscape is likely to give Morena the ability to modify the rules of the game on a number of fronts, including the electoral authority and the judiciary,” says Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government and public policy, on what’s next for the Mexican government.

Mabel Berezin, professor of sociology at Cornell University and an expert on international populism, says Macron’s decision was a “political mistake” that could hand control of France’s government to Marine Le Pen’s right-Wing National Rally (RN) party. 

Sociologist Mabel Berezin's work explores challenges to democratic cohesion and solidarity in Europe and the United States. She highlights the prominent women leading the right in the upcoming EU elections.

Mexicans will cast their votes on Sunday to elect thousands of congressional and local officials, as well as the successor to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Gustavo Flores-Macías is a professor of government at Cornell University and an expert in Latin American politics. He discusses the significance of this vote and the upcoming challenges for Mexico’s next president.

Read about Turkish sociologist Azat Gündoğan (IES), Nicaraguan cartoonist Pedro X. Molina (LACS), and Afghan artist Elja Sharifi (Johnson Museum).

Sharifi is completing her second year as a visiting scholar at the Johnson Museum, with support from Global Cornell and IIE-APF.

In an op-ed in The Hill, Allen Carlson (EAP) describes how U.S. electoral math could undermine already delicate relations with China: "Biden and Trump will be viewing China ... via the looking glass of how to win the White House."

“There are already so many irritants and issues of mistrust within the relationship. If you have a pot which is already close to boiling, it only takes adding a degree or two to push things over the edge,” says Allen Carlson, associate professor of government.

Journalist Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, who exposed the realities of violence perpetrated by the military in his native Myanmar, has been awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to support his work toward a Ph.D. in political science at Cornell.

“One of the few things that can get around free speech and constitutional questions is national security,” says Sarah Kreps, professor of government. “If that is the argument, then the legislation and the constitutionality of it will have enormous latitude.”