history

  The President's Ghost: Why Authoritarians Fear Their Own Shadow In 1986, while Taiwan was simmering on the precipice of seismic politi...

  The Cathedral of Liberty: A One-Day Pilgrimage for the Unfree Most tourists come to London to snap photos of stone gargoyles and royal gua...

  The Mirage of Choice: Why the Ballot Box Often Breaks We like to believe that democracy is the ultimate refinement of human governance—a n...

  The Grand British Carousel: Brexit and the Art of Revolving Doors On June 23, 2016, the British public decided to leap off a perfectly fun...

  The Dustbin Knight: A Mirror for Our Political Follies In the high-stakes, gray-suited world of British politics, where every promise is v...

  The Futile Blueprint of a Lonely Visionary History is a graveyard of "might-have-beens," and Hong Rengan’s  Zizheng Xinpian  is ...

  The Theater of Minority Rule: Barnet’s Fragile Power Play In the grand, stuffy corridors of Hendon Town Hall, the local political drama pl...

  The Barcode of Discontent: Democracy as a Data Entry Job Since 2008, a man named Chanchai Issarasenarak (參猜·伊薩拉協納拉 / ชาญชัย อิสระเสนารักษ์...

  The Transient Sovereign: When Guests Write the House Rules In the cold, calculating eyes of evolution, "belonging" is a high-sta...

  The Golden Cage and the Taxman’s Axe We often look at Singapore with the yearning of a man watching a neighbor’s perfectly manicured lawn ...

  The Cage, the Crust, and the Twelve Angry Men of London The human primate is a creature of hierarchy, instinctively prone to bowing before...

  The Naked Ape in the Oval Office It is a delicious irony of history that the men who risked their necks to overthrow a King spent their fi...

  The Great Democratic Illusion: When 14 Million Votes Become "Suggestions" In the grand theater of global politics, Thailand rece...

  In the grand hierarchy of the primate troop, the alpha usually claims the choicest fruit and the best nesting spot. But in the modern Brit...

  The Planning Pillage: From Local Democracy to Central Decree There is a polite fiction in British governance that "local planning...

  The Silver Tsunami: Why Democracy is Cannibalizing the Young The British "Triple Lock" pension system is a masterclass in politi...

  The Zombie vs. The Glass House: How Two Empires Might Break If we look at the core mechanics of these two social contracts, we aren't ...

  How to Kill a Bill: A Masterclass in Democratic Sabotage If you believe that democracy is a fast-moving stream of progress, the British Pa...

  Power, Rules, and Fairness: Ten Questions About Society Who decides what is fair in a society—majority votes, moral principles, or those w...

  The Price of Perspective: Why Politicians Need a Pay Cut There is a dangerous form of cognitive dissonance that occurs when the people wri...