Banned since 2011, pork-barrel spending may well help Congress pass bills on schedule. Now, a powerful Democratic lawmaker said she’d like to resurrect the practice to make passing budgets easier.
Most Congresses since the 1970s have passed more than 500 laws, ranging from nuclear disarmament to deficit reduction. Will today’s bitter partisanship hamstring the new Congress’ productivity?
First elected in 1987, Pelosi offers decades of experience at building coalitions and she excels as a Democratic fundraiser. Still, the vote was closer than expected.
The new Congress is divided into a GOP Senate and Democratic House. History provides a glimpse of what this could mean: Democrats hold the power to investigate, if not to legislate.
While negotiating the end of the First World War at the Versailles Peace Conference, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson collapsed. Was it a neurological disorder associated with the Spanish Flu?
Brazil’s new president – often called the ‘Trump of the tropics’ for his inflammatory, right-wing rhetoric – won over poorer voters by stoking fear and resentment. Can he make them happy?
Back in 2016, the Brexit vote and US presidential election seemed like a nationalist one-two punch that could knock out the European Union. Instead, EU support actually rose, new research shows.
The initial aim of the 1937 Foreign Agents Registration Act was long forgotten: the prosecution of Nazis for interfering with American democracy. But that law is startlingly relevant to the US now.
Popular wisdom may be popular, but sometimes it’s downright wrong. Five stories from The Conversation’s 2018 politics coverage interrogate popular wisdom – and find it lacking.
To defeat Trumpism and movements like it, we can be either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Contemplative resistance that reflects on our own collective dysfunction is necessary.
The history of Britain’s vote to exit from the European Union, known as Brexit, is not a tale of populist resentment toward globalization. It is a top-down story of leaders and elite ideology.
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney