27/10/2015. Guillermo Hirschfeld es coordinador de Programas para Iberoamérica de FAES. On November 22 the Argentines will be electing the president who will lead the country's destiny for the next four years in a thrilling runoff. The Argentine people will have to choose between the continuity of the Kirchner model embodied by the candidacy of Daniel Scioli, or the change alternative led by Mauricio Macri.

26/10/2015. Ignacio Alberni. In the 42 elections for the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament (the Senate is not elected), held on Monday, October 19, the Liberal Party obtained an absolute majority of seats (184 of 338) with 39.5% of the vote. In the previous term, the liberals – of centre-left wing – were the third force (with 34 seats and 20% of votes), having obtained at the time the worst result ever reaped by the party that has governed Canada the longest since the creation of the Federation in 1867.

23/10/2015. Vente Venezuela. El próximo 6 de diciembre Venezuela vivirá un nuevo proceso electoral. Se tratará de renovar la Asamblea Nacional para el periodo 2016-2021. En línea con lo que ya hemos vivido, se anticipan varios elementos que deben preocuparnos una vez más: una campaña en extremo desequilibrada, en la cual se vuelcan todos los recursos y el poder del Estado a favor del régimen y un control oficialista del acto de votación y sus resultados. Lo anterior desemboca en unas elecciones que no cumplen con los mínimos requerimientos técnicos, legales o políticos para ser consideradas justas, libres y transparentes.

20/10/2015. Rafael L. Bardají. Director de Política Internacional, FAES. In October 2011, the US president, who had always considered the intervention in Iraq as a ‘bad war’ solemnly announced that ‘After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over. The tide of war is receding.’ Soon after, in December, he said, ‘All the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding, and the building, and the training and the partnering, all of it has led to this moment of success. (...) We leave behind a sovereign, a stable, a self-reliant Iraq.’ And so he got ready to pull out all the troops from Iraq and declare the end of the war.

16/10/2015. Fundación FAES. Recent weeks have witnessed a public debate on the political and social impact that the so-called ‘Majestic Pact’, signed in 1996, had in the strengthening of Catalan independentism. The document delivers some data regarding the electoral evolution in Catalonia and the attitudes of the Catalans and of the rest of Spaniards, as they figure in the databases of the Spanish centre for sociological research (CIS). The evidence shows that there was no significant strengthening of nationalist parties or attitudes in the 1996-2003 period. On the contrary. Such a strengthening begins to be recorded after that period. 

14/10/2015. John Bruton. Residents of Northern Ireland will have a vote sometime next year on one of the most important issues to affect these islands, and indeed all the nations of  Europe, namely whether the United Kingdom is to remain a member of the European Union, or leave.

06/10/2015. Juan Carlos Jiménez Redondo. The victory of the centre-right coalition in Portugal breaks some ideological clichés, very widespread in recent times. For example, the idea that any government that implements tough austerity measures will receive such a strong electoral punishment that it will prevent it from continuing in power. The Portuguese case demonstrates that although the commitment to austerity creates a definite erosion, it can be compatible with a comfortable majority in the polls. The problem is not the austerity policies themselves, but rather the ability of the governments that adopt them to empathize with citizens. To be able to convince them both of their immediate need and their position as an indispensable instrument for a strong and stable recovery. The great success of Pedro Passos Coelho has been to turn the problem of financial conditioning into an opportunity for the structural transformation of the Portuguese economy.