Researchers at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published the second annual edition of the Index of African Governance this week.  The index ranks the 48 sub-Saharan states based on their governments’ ability to produce particular “political goods.”  The researchers organized these political goods into five categories:  Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption; [...]

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The series of maps the British Telegraph published today is easily the coolest thing I’ve seen all week.  The maps were created by Worldmapper, a website that distorts the traditional land-mass map to illustrate different sets of data.  The series, which the Telegraph calls “The Atlas of the Real World,” includes maps depicting relative migration [...]

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Heading into tonight’s debate, which will focus on foreign policy, Ruy Teixeira at the Center for American Progress posted a whirlwind of public opinion polling data on foreign policy issues.  The results are pretty surprising.  Some highlights:  83% of Americans think that “improving America’s standing in the world” is “very important”—more than the 80% and [...]

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While President Bush spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Sarah Palin conducted back-to-back meetings with three foreign policy leaders across town.  The McCain campaign announced on Sunday that Palin would be meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but on [...]

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What a good week for women in politics.  First, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (she’s on the right below) defeated Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz to succeed Ehud Olmert as the head of Kadima, Israel’s ruling party, on Wednesday.  Then, preliminary election results on Thursday indicated that Rwanda would become the first country with a female majority [...]

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Okay, so John McCain has had a couple of foreign policy gaffes on the campaign trail, most notably his inability to remember the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and the fact that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country (and hasn’t been in over 15 years).
Sure, those aren’t the kind of mistakes you want your [...]

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My boss wrote a LOL Bush series this summer.  Check them all out here.

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The conflict between Russia and Georgia has been brewing in South Ossetia for a long time.  Though technically on Georgian soil, the region is a patchwork of Georgian and South Ossetian villages, and it is governed with near autonomy by a faction of South Ossetian separatists.  The stated goal of the South [...]

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Three big events have happened, are happening, or will happen this week in Southeast Asia:
1) Representatives of the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile met with Chinese government officials in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on Sunday to reopen dialogue for the first time since the Tibetan riots in March. Though nothing formal was resolved, [...]

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Time’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People just came out, so check it out if you have time. Pay special attention to who wrote each entry, as that’s often the best part. Of course, Deval Patrick wrote Barack Obama’s, and Joe Lieberman wrote John McCain’s. Hillary Clinton wrote an entry for Michelle Bachelet, the current President of Chile, and begins her second paragraph, “This was a woman who had overcome so much….”

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