42 Posts Found

One way to look at the rise of Donald Trump is as part of a decades-long backlash among the American leadership class to the idea of accountability. Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions… This is not just about Trump; his impunity is the … [ Read more ]

Author: Adam Serwer | Source: The Atlantic (February 26, 2026) | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy

Reagan Republicans fully understood the political risks of dismantling more than 50 years of public policy, yet—more effectively than any of their predecessors—they succeeded in manufacturing the popular consent needed to do precisely that. The key to this achievement was a simple but devastating insight: The most effective way to discredit liberal social policy was to starve it of resources and then point to its … [ Read more ]

Author: Heather Ann Thompson | Source: The Atlantic (January2026) | Subjects: America, History, International, Politics & Public Policy

Philosophically speaking, the right has long been defined by its emphasis on the value of stability — as odd as it may seem in the era of Trump’s radically destabilizing administration.

Conservative theorists, most notably Edmund Burke, have long maintained that political flourishing depends on the existence of stable social rules developed gradually and from the bottom up over the course of generations. Those who seek … [ Read more ]

Author: Zack Beauchamp | Source: Vox (June 11, 2025) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

From afar, America’s presidential contests often look more like playground antics than a shining example of democracy. But looks can be deceiving.

Author: Denis MacShane | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

Max Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms…

The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” … [ Read more ]

Author: Jonathan Rauch | Source: The Atlantic (February 24, 2025) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

The divide between urban and rural voters is growing everywhere: from New York City to farm towns.

Authors: Ian Chipman, Jonathan Rodden | Source: Stanford University (May 2, 2017) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era.

Author: Wade Davis | Source: Rolling Stone (August 6, 2020) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, History

Understand how the world’s most controversial conflict — between Israel and Palestine — has intensified over the last century

Subjects: History, International

The world needs international law. But does the United States?

Author: Anne-Marie Slaughter | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2003) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Law | Legal

As the influence of traditional religions wanes, Europeans feel a yearning for spiritual forces they do not control.

Author: Roger Scruton | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Winter2003) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Religion

How Yasir Arafat destroyed Palestine.

Author: David Samuels | Source: The Atlantic (September2005) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, People, Politics & Public Policy

Third World poverty may often be a contributing factor in terrorism, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause, argues Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University […] “Economic development in an area where the political and religious impulses remain unresolved could serve to improve the resource base for terrorism rather than undercut it.”

[…]‌

Terrorism is … [ Read more ]

Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2002) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Terrorism

A veteran American negotiator derives seven rules of the road from his decades of experience in Arab-Israeli peace talks.

Author: Aaron David Miller | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Spring2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy

All evidence to the contrary, we continue to believe, deep in our hearts, that the Founders’ “We the People” meant all the people, not just the propertied white men.

Authors: Brooke Allen, Jill Lepore | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2012) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, History, Politics & Public Policy

The election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it? What will it mean to be white when whiteness … [ Read more ]

Author: Hua Hsu | Source: The Atlantic (January2009) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, Race Relations

How has America changed since 2000?

Author: Timothy Lavin | Source: The Atlantic (January2009) | Subject: America

A sympathetic critic issues a wake-up call for an America mired in groupthink and blind to its own shortcomings.

Author: Kishore Mahbubani | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Spring2009) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, International

America’s enduring love affair with big spending is fetching up against some unromantic realities. But a lifelong saver assures us that there are worse fates than socking it away for a rainy day.

Author: Daniel Akst | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2009) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Consumerism, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society

A foreign policy expert warns that the troop surge in Iraq, while yielding short-term gains, may endanger Iraqis later on.

Author: Steven Simon | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Military | War | Peace

The rapid expansion of relief efforts since the end of the Cold War has produced a surprising result: a series of difficult moral questions about the humanitarian enterprise.

Author: G. Pascal Zachary | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Life & Society, Philanthropy, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology