World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

I was wrong–Syriza did not get the largest plurality of votes in the Greek election.  New Democracy, a conservative party that is pro-Europe, got the largest number of votes, but still not enough to get a majority in Parliament.  So we will watch how New Democracy woos PASOK, the socialist party which came in third to Syriza, to form a coalition.  These are the two parties that brought Greece to this sorry state, so it’s hard to be optimistic about the future.  Unfortunately, the neo-Nazi party got enough votes to get seats in the Parliament.

In other election news, the Egyptian military issued a new constitution on its own as soon as the election was over.  Essentially, it declared martial law and gave itself the right to write a new permanent constitution.  Nothing good can come of this move–we will have to see how violent the reaction to the coup is.

In the third election of the day, French Socialists won an absolute majority in the Parliament, giving President Hollande a very strong hand to deal with Germany.  The politics of the European Union have decidedly swung toward a less austere economic policy, and Chancellor Merkel’s own position within Germany seems to be weakening as well.  We’ll see how the G-20 meeting in Mexico starting on Monday interprets these political results.