News and opinion

Despite some missing votes in the total count, the outcome of the regional election in Sardinia has now been accepted by all competing parties: the right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, has been defeated by a coalition comprising the centre-left Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement.

New blog series with a focus on territorial politics and constitutional debates in the run-up to the next UK general election

It’s hard not to question where and when challenges might arise that could trigger the next political crisis in Northern Ireland when the process of stop-start politics has become a perverse norm of governance here. Has anything changed this time around, and what does it mean for the future of power-sharing?

The causes and consequences of Russia’s war on Ukraine have been discussed extensively during the past two years and will likely keep international analysts busy for some time to come. There is a justified concern for the future of the liberal world order and the rules established in 1945.

Most of the world’s federations have been governed by non-democratic regimes for long periods of time and have experienced several transitions between authoritarianism and democracy and vice versa. What impact has regime change had on their federal system, in particular on the distribution of powers between the federal government and the constituent units, which we can refer to as de/centralisation?

Humza Yousaf has claimed that a Scottish bond issue would ‘demonstrate the credibility to international markets that we will need when we become an independent country’. This is questionable for several reasons.

Read the first of Iain Hardie’s two-part analysis on the Scottish Bond Issue.

The assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader, by alleged agents of the Indian state outside a Surrey Gurdwara in British Columbia in June 2023 has caused a major diplomatic incident between India and Canada.