How did Obama manage it yet again, and with such a margin? The interpretation of the election results, which saw U.S. President Barack Obama returned for a second term in November 2012, soon homed in on one decisive factor both in the U.S. media and in the reporting in Germany: the youth vote. According to the reports, Obama had been more skilled in mobilising young people to cast their vote than his Republican challenger. This had been achieved once again through innovative campaigning. While Obama’s 2008 campaign had gone for social media in a big way and thereby won the...

Uganda has the second youngest population in the world after Niger: 78 per cent of its inhabitants are under 30 and 56 per cent under 18.¹ With an average birth rate of 6.2 children per woman and a growth rate of 3.3 per cent, the Ugandan population is one of the fastest growing in the world.² This demographic development entails challenges that need to be addressed: particularly in the labour market and in the education and health sectors. The politicians have the urgent task of developing concepts for tackling these issues because there are already processes underway that are far-reaching...

León Cristalli sounded as if he were possessed by the spirit of Ernesto “Che” Guevara: “We came to support the revolutionary process of el Comandante”,¹ shouted the militant supporter of Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as he stood before the Venezuelan embassy in Buenos Aires, together with like-minded comrades. This day in January was merely a sick call without a patient, as Hugo Chávez underwent treatment in Havana. Nevertheless, the demonstration illustrated the high esteem in which the deceased autocrat from Caracas was held by Kirchner’s most loyal followers, La Cámpora.

Today, Argentina and Venezuela have close ties –...

The incumbent president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, won the 17 February 2013 presidential election with 57.17 per cent of all votes in the first ballot with no problems, achieving an absolute majority and clearly prevailing over his seven fellow contenders. At the same, his movement Alianza PAÍS itself won a two-thirds majority in the Asamblea Nacional, Ecuador’s national parliament.

Virtually no one in and around Ecuador was in doubt that Rafael Correa would be re-elected as president. The question was simply: how great a victory would he achieve, would a second ballot be necessary, and how would the majority ratios...

Compared to other policy sectors, environmental policy in Israel has a tough job. The security situation in the region, the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, the tensions within society and the socioeconomic challenges overshadow seemingly softer policy areas. This assumption is confirmed when one looks at public expenditure. In the two-year budget for 2011/2012, the Ministry of Environmental Protection was allocated close to six billion Israeli shekels in total. This amount corresponds to just a fraction of the funds of the Ministry of Defence, which had access to nearly one hundred billion shekels over the same period. The proportion of...

According to Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lithuania has always been part of Europe. But the country is also in a position to provide new and creative impulses, as are other recently admitted EU member states whose reforms require flexibility. These two sentences, uttered by the recipient of the 2013 International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen shortly after Lithuania’s admission to the European Union one decade ago, convey a great deal: The president associates the centuries-old tradition of the Baltic nation with the quest for new horizons. Neither she nor her country lack self-confidence, a trait rooted in the past and present. She appreciates...

A year has passed since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency, but the promised opening up of the political system has not materialised. Instead, the Russian state is making vigorous attempts to extend its influence over society and restrict the scope for democracy in order to suppress criticism at home and political influence from abroad. In doing so, the Kremlin is not only harming Russian civil society and the political opposition but also increasingly isolating itself from its political partners in the west.

When Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel opened the Hanover Trade Fair in April, there were visible signs...