Millions of Ethiopians began voting on Monday in the country’s 7th General Election, a high-stakes parliamentary and regional contest expected to consolidate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling Prosperity Party while testing public confidence in the electoral process. More than 50 million people are registered to vote across Africa’s second most populous country, where polling stations opened after months of voter registration, candidate nominations, political campaigns, public debates […]
By Nitya Chakraborty Facing the big possibility of China taking control of the new Junta government in Myanmar which took office last month, Indian policy makers are now very keen to give a big push to the India-Myanmar relations covering both economy and security aspects. Myanmar President U Min Aung Hlaing is in India visit […]
Congo’s Ebola outbreak has widened to 1,077 suspected cases and 246 deaths, intensifying pressure on health authorities as responders struggle to contain transmission in conflict-hit eastern provinces. Health officials are treating the outbreak as one of the most serious Ebola emergencies faced by the Democratic Republic of the Congo in years, with cases linked to the Bundibugyo strain, a less common form of the virus for which […]
Africa’s top continental body has launched a new humanitarian coordination platform aimed at tightening crisis response across a region facing widening displacement, hunger, conflict and climate-linked disasters. The African Humanitarian Coordination Platform was unveiled by the African Union Commission through its Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development after a continental engagement in Mahé, Seychelles, held from 18 to 19 May 2026. The meeting endorsed the […]
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Supreme Court of India on May 27, 2026 upheld the legality of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Bihar and elsewhere and emphasized that this exercise is constitutionally connected to “free and fair polls”. The judgment strongly underlined the purity and accuracy of rolls giving priority to […]
Pope Leo XIV has used the first encyclical of his papacy to call for tighter regulation, transparency and human oversight of artificial intelligence, warning that unchecked systems could intensify misinformation, deepen inequality and make war easier to wage. The document, Magnifica Humanitas, places AI at the centre of the new pontificate’s social agenda, treating the technology not as a narrow technical issue but as a test of […]
K Raveendran Cockroach Janta Party may have begun as satire, but its popularity has exposed something far more serious than a passing joke on the internet. The response it has drawn from government functionaries suggests that the ruling establishment is less disturbed by the humour itself than by the possibility that the satire has found a willing audience. That audience is not laughing merely because the idea […]
By K Raveendran Cockroach Janta Party may have begun as satire, but its popularity has exposed something far more serious than a passing joke on the internet. The response it has drawn from government functionaries suggests that the ruling establishment is less disturbed by the humour itself than by the possibility that the satire has […]
Washington announced a $1.776 billion compensation fund for people who claim they were unfairly investigated or prosecuted, opening a politically charged new phase in President Donald Trump’s campaign against what his administration calls government “weaponisation”. The Justice Department said the Anti-Weaponization Fund would be created as part of a deal resolving Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the unauthorised leak of his tax […]
Health authorities are racing to contain a new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern Ituri province after 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths were recorded, while Uganda confirmed a separate fatal case involving a man who had travelled from Congo. The outbreak has been reported mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones, with suspected cases also under investigation in Bunia, Ituri’s provincial […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai Money managers have lifted bullish copper wagers to their highest level in five months, reinforcing a powerful rally that has pushed New York futures to record territory and sharpened debate over whether the market is pricing a durable supply squeeze or a crowded speculative trade. Hedge funds and other large speculators raised their net-long position in Comex copper by 16 per cent to […]
Health authorities have moved to contain a new Ebola virus disease outbreak in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, triggering an urgent regional coordination meeting with Uganda, South Sudan and international response partners as concern grows over cross-border transmission. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the outbreak on Friday after investigations identified 246 suspected cases and 65 suspected deaths. Most infections […]
EVelution Energy has moved closer to anchoring a domestic US cobalt supply chain after signing a memorandum of understanding with Democratic Republic of Congo’s state cobalt buyer and Trafigura for long-term shipments of cobalt hydroxide to its planned Arizona refinery. The agreement brings together EVelution Energy, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt and Trafigura in a framework that could channel Congolese cobalt to the United States for processing into […]
Washington’s push to regulate digital assets has entered a sharper phase after Senator Bernie Moreno accused major banks of trying to block stablecoin competition as Congress prepares for a decisive test of the CLARITY Act this week. Moreno, a Republican from Ohio and one of the Senate’s most vocal crypto advocates, said the “banking cartel” was “in full panic mode” over legislation that could reshape the relationship […]
By Nitya Chakraborty The U.S. President Donald Trump begins his three-day visit to China on May 13 for his summit with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, the outcome of which has special significance for Trump in shaping his political future in the context of the midterm elections in November this year. Among both leaders, the […]
By K Raveendran Friday’s twin constitutional dramas exposed two serious threats to Indian democracy: the refusal of a defeated ruler to leave office, and the reluctance of a constitutional referee to invite a claimant who appeared to be assembling the numbers to form a government. Mamata Banerjee’s refusal to resign after the Trinamool Congress lost […]
By T N Ashok CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s political drama entered its most decisive phase on Friday evening as actor-turned-politician C. Joseph Vijay moved within touching distance of forming the State’s next government after the Communist Party of India and the CPI(M) extended unconditional support to his fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. The support of the two […]
Rwanda has moved to strengthen its access to the Central Corridor through a standard gauge railway link intended to connect Kigali with Tanzania’s expanding rail network and, later, the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The planned Rwandan section will run for about 150 kilometres from Rusumo on the Tanzanian border to Kigali, forming the final domestic stretch of the long-discussed Isaka-Kigali railway. The project is […]
LOS ANGELES, US – Newsaktuell – 7 May 2026 – The newly released 2026 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) paints a mixed picture of global governance heading into a future of mounting shocks, finding widespread gains in public-goods provision from 2000 to 2023 even as democratic accountability edged down and state capacity showed little overall improvement.
Presentation of the 2026 Berggruen Governance Index: On 6 May in Los Angeles, the following individuals discussed the findings of the study (from left): Vinay Lai (Professor of History, UCLA), Michael Storper (Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA), Stella Ghervas (Professor of History, UCLA) and the two authors of the study, Joseph Saraceno and Prof. Helmut Anheier (both from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs). Democracy News Alliance / Jordan Strauss/AP for DNA
The BGI, presented Wednesday by an international group of governance scholars, analyses measurable benchmarks of democratic accountability across 145 countries.
On a 100-point scale, the global score for democratic accountability slipped slightly from 65 in 2000 to 64 in 2023, the most recent data used in the project. The wave of democratisation observed in the closing decades of the last century has stalled in the last 15 years. Democratic accountability fell in 54 countries while it improved in 48 countries.
Yet the BGI — a collaborative project of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Berlin’s Hertie School and the Berggruen Institute, a think tank headquartered in Los Angeles — captures remarkably widespread growth in provision of public goods.
Encompassing healthcare, education, infrastructure, environmental sustainability and conditions to foster employment and rising prosperity, public goods improved in 135 of the countries studied, while declining slightly in just four. The global average jumped from 58 to 69 points from 2000 to 2023.
The third component of what the BGI authors refer to as the “governance triangle” is state capacity, defined as the ability to tax, borrow and spend, control territory, operate scrupulous, competent bureaucracies and administer predictable rule of law. The index finds the global average ticking up from 48 to 49 points; 56 countries had increased state capacity while 57 declined.
“What does it tell us about the world ahead?” Prof. Helmut K. Anheier, a Luskin School sociologist and BGI principal investigator, asked during the public release of the 2026 BGI on the UCLA campus.
“Countries are not really improving in their governance performance in significant ways. … We’re not really having forward-looking investment in governance capacity. There is considerable inertia.”
The largest improvements across all three BGI components occurred in Gambia, which the report groups with “low-capacity developing states.” These states score low across the board, particularly in the provision of public goods. This cluster constitutes the poorest countries with the least developed economies, which face the most serious challenges.
“They have the greatest exposure to likely future crises, whether it’s global warming, whether it’s a new pandemic, whether it’s another financial crisis, whether it’s the impact of AI,” Anheier said. “And they have the least capacity to respond to it.”
Bhutan, Georgia, Iraq and Tunisia — which make up the remaining top five countries with the largest improvements in the BGI — are classified as “capacity-constrained states.” They tend to be middle-income with struggling democracies. These countries score higher across the board than the low-capacity developing states, but their state capacity tends to lag compared to public goods and democratic accountability.
The capacity-constrained states risk falling into “a cycle that erodes the institutions they have built,” Anheier said.
“Consolidated democratic states”, a cluster of most of the world’s richest countries, which score highly in all three BGI components, have to confront domestic complacency. Further, in the United States and some others, “political dysfunction” is leaving mounting problems unaddressed and risking erosion of state capacity, Anheier said.
At the other end of the spectrum, the country with the farthest fall on the BGI since 2000 is Nicaragua. Second from last is Venezuela, followed by Hong Kong, Hungary and Turkey. The rest of the bottom 10 are Russia, Iran, Poland, El Salvador and Belarus.
Since 2023, which is the last year of data available for the study, Poland and Hungary have both seen government changes via election, despite serious democratic backsliding. Both had fallen out of the group of “consolidated democratic states” by 2023 and moved into the capacity constrained cluster.
The other eight countries at the bottom of the list are all places that once had some semblance of competitive elections, but by now have little or no remaining pretense of democracy. They are grouped by the authors among the “authoritarian and hybrid states”, which have by far the lowest democratic accountability but outperform even some struggling democracies in delivering public goods.
These regimes have tended toward faster economic growth in the period observed. But that seeming prosperity, typically fueled by extractive industries or overreliance on exports, masks “serious institutional weaknesses in these countries, including divided elites,” Anheier said.
Relatively few countries — 21 of the 145 — changed enough for better or worse to be classified in a new group by the end of the 23-year study period.
“Movement between them is rare, but this is largely what we should expect,” said Stella Ghervas, a UCLA historian on a panel of experts who discussed the BGI findings Wednesday. “Government systems are not created in a moment. They evolve over long periods of time.”
Local conditions shaping governance in each country can rarely be quickly reset through political will or even external shocks, Joseph C. Saraceno, a Luskin School data scientist and BGI co-author, said Wednesday.
“Despite all the talk of major transformations happening in global affairs, the underlying configuration of governance simply doesn’t appear to change very much,” Saraceno said. “We use the term inertia to describe this reoccurring pattern. In other words, the structures of global governance are resistant to movement as the conditions beneath them are quite sticky: political economies, demographics, resource endowments. These are deeply layered, and they push each country toward the world that it already inhabits.”
But the challenges lurking around the world may not wait for the slow and difficult processes of political change and development to catch up.
“With the few exceptions of those countries in the consolidated democratic world,” Anheier said, “the great majority of the countries in the world is ill-prepared for the future.”
This text and the accompanying material (photos and graphics) are an offer from the Democracy News Alliance, a close co-operation between Agence France-Presse (AFP, France), Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA, Italy), The Canadian Press (CP, Canada), Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa, Germany) and PA Media (PA, UK). All recipients can use this material without the need for a separate subscription agreement with one or more of the participating agencies. This includes the recipient’s right to publish the material in own products.
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By K Raveendran Mamata Banerjee’s refusal to resign after a decisive electoral defeat is a political act dressed up as constitutional ambiguity. It may create noise, spectacle and temporary uncertainty, but it does not create a sustainable claim to office. A chief minister holds power only so long as she commands the confidence of the […]
Botswana’s beef industry is under mounting pressure as foot-and-mouth disease disrupts exports, closes key slaughter facilities and threatens rural incomes in a country where cattle remain central to household wealth, food security and national trade. Acting Minister of Lands and Agriculture Dr Edwin Dikoloti has warned that the outbreak is placing significant strain on the economy and livelihoods, with the most immediate commercial blow coming from lost […]
OpenAI plans to open its Trusted Access for Cyber programme to government cyber defenders across federal, state and local levels, marking a broader push to place advanced artificial intelligence tools in the hands of public agencies responsible for protecting critical systems. The expansion is aimed at agencies handling national security, emergency response, public health systems, benefits delivery, municipal infrastructure and other services that face rising digital threats. […]
Malaysia’s political pressure over alleged “corporate mafia” links inside the country’s anti-graft machinery has intensified after Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo urged the national police chief to clarify the status of investigations into claims that businessmen colluded with enforcement officials to force corporate executives out of targeted companies.
Gobind, who is also national chairman of the Democratic Action Party and MP for Damansara, called on Inspector-General of Police Khalid Ismail to state whether individuals and companies cited in the allegations had been questioned, and to outline the next steps in the investigation. His intervention has kept public scrutiny on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission at a sensitive moment, with the agency preparing for a leadership change and facing questions over institutional independence.
The allegations centre on claims that a network of businessmen worked with MACC officials to pressure company executives, including through raids and investigations, in order to influence ownership and control of businesses. MACC and outgoing chief commissioner Azam Baki have denied wrongdoing, describing the claims as unfounded. Police have said they have so far found no evidence of MACC involvement, while investigations ordered by the government remain under public watch.
Gobind said transparency was essential because the allegations were specific and involved named individuals, companies and officials. He said the probe must extend to every person, entity and officer implicated in the complaints, adding that the matter touched directly on market integrity and trust in national institutions. He also said the Securities Commission should explain whether it had examined any possible market manipulation, particularly if force or pressure was allegedly used to transfer shares in companies.
The issue has drawn wider political attention because DAP is a key component of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government. Party leaders have argued that a denial by MACC is not enough to settle the controversy and have backed calls for a Royal Commission of Inquiry with powers to compel evidence and testimony. That position has placed pressure on the administration, which came to power promising institutional reform and stronger action against corruption.
Azam’s tenure has been marked by both high-profile enforcement action and repeated scrutiny. He has led MACC since March 2020 and continued beyond the usual retirement age through contract extensions in 2023, 2024 and 2025. His current term ends on May 12. The government has appointed former High Court judge Abdul Halim Aman as the next MACC chief commissioner from May 13, after the King assented to the appointment on the advice of the prime minister.
The appointment came ahead of a planned Kuala Lumpur rally demanding Azam’s removal and broader reforms at MACC. Activist groups behind the campaign have called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into controversies surrounding the agency’s leadership, a parliamentary mechanism to vet future chief commissioners, fixed tenure for the top post and stronger safeguards to ensure MACC is accountable to Parliament rather than the executive.
The controversy has revived long-running concerns about the structure of Malaysia’s anti-corruption framework. MACC is a central enforcement body in the country’s governance system, but critics have argued that its leadership appointment process leaves room for political pressure. Supporters of reform say the agency’s credibility depends not only on pursuing graft cases but also on being seen to operate independently when allegations touch its own officers or senior leadership.
Anwar’s government has made anti-corruption enforcement a major plank of its reform agenda. Since taking office in 2022, his administration has overseen investigations involving former senior officials, political figures, military procurement and state-linked financial matters. The approach has won praise from some governance advocates, but it has also faced claims of selective enforcement from opponents and unease among allies when politically sensitive cases remain unresolved or unpublished.
The “corporate mafia” allegations carry additional weight because they involve not only possible misconduct by public officers but also the risk of abuse in the corporate sector. If executives were pressured to sell shares or surrender control of businesses through investigations or enforcement threats, the case would raise questions about investor protection, corporate governance and the ability of regulators to shield markets from coercive conduct.
By T N Ashok The verdict from India’s sprawling five-state assembly elections of 2026 has redrawn the country’s political map with a force few had anticipated. What began as a routine electoral cycle across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry has culminated in something far more consequential: a consolidation of power for the […]
