Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Tanzania has long been recognized as stable country, generally more advanced in its democracy than many other countries in East Africa. To be sure, democracy in Tanzania was certainly imperfect and flawed. But there did exist a degree of press freedom, a robust civil society, and multiple political parties.

Over the last few years, elements of Tanzanian democracy have been curtailed. The country is now in the midst of what scholars would call a democratic backslide. This occurs when the state uses its power to weaken institutions that sustain democracy, like civil society and a free press.

A key inflection point in this process was the 2015 election of President John Magufuli. Magufuli is very much a populist -- his nickname is "The Bulldozer." He came to power on a pledge to stamp out corruption but has also shown himself to be increasingly intolerant of dissent.

Since taking office he has enacted laws to severely restrict press freedoms; many journalists have been arrested, and political opponents silenced.

But according to my guest today, Constantine Manda, the process of democratic backsliding really began under the previous administration. Still, for reasons he explains in this episode, the erosions of have accelerated in recent months.

Constantine Manda is a Tanzanian national and a PHD candidate in the department of political science at Yale University.

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I've been following with glee the US Women's National Soccer Team's run in this year's World Cup. At time of recording, the United States was set to face either Netherlands or Sweden in the finals.

It turns out that political science has something to say about whether or not international sporting events like this contributes to peace and security--or not.

Last year, I interviewed the author of a peer reviewed study that found a rather significant correlation between success in the mens world cup and an outbreak in conflict. The political scientist Andrew Bertoli created a data set of every world cup from 1958 to 2010 and found that countries that qualified for the World Cup were significantly more likely to start an international conflict than countries that did not quality.

Andrew Bertoli is a professor at IE University in Spain. When we recorded this interview, right before the 2018 Winter Olympics, he was a post-doc fellow at Dartmouth.

The study we discuss was titled Nationalism and Conflict: Lessons from International Sports appears in the December 2017 issue of the journal International Studies Quarterly.

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All eyes turn to South Korea for the start of the Winter Olympics this week.

There is always a political political component to this Olympics and indeed all major international sporting events. This year, much of the commentary will focus on how the olympics is providing a platform for cooperation between the Koreas--they are marching under a single flag and joining forces for Women's hockey. But emerging political science suggests that contrary to popular perception, international sporting events are not catalysts for peace -- in fact, just the opposite is true. A new peer reviewed academic paper by my guest today Andrew Douglas Bertoli shows that major international sporting events actually contribute to international conflict. Andrew designed a rather ingenious experiment to prove this case. He looked at every world cup from 1958 to 2010 last found that the countries that barely qualified for the world cup were significantly more likely to start an international conflict than countries that did not qualify. The reason he posits? Nationalism.

Today’s episode is produced in partnership with the CGIAR Research Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration for a series that examines what works to improve the well-being of people in Fragile and Conflict Affected Settings. CGIAR is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security.

We are calling this series “From Fragility to Stability” and in today’s episode I host a roundtable discussion with three experts about how to escape the nexus of climate change, conflict and forced displacement

Ms. Jana Birner, Associate Partnerships Officer in the Office of the Special Advisor on Climate Action for the UN Refugee Agency

Barthelemy Mwanza, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who works with the Global Refugee Youth Network

Alessandro Craparo, a Bioclimatologist with CGIAR