Regardless of who wins the election, Brazil faces the significant challenges of rekindling economic growth to ensure that the social gains that were secured since the end of the high inflation in the late 1990s are not eroded by Brazil’s old nemeses: inflation and poor fiscal policies.

Overview: This paper looks at the possible paths for policy and development in Indonesia under the leadership of the seventh president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, who will take office in Jakarta on 20 October. The first part is a stocktake of the challenges that lie ahead. The stocktake assesses the state of play in five...

Or is it more a case of the declining left? Jennifer Curtin looks at the evidence from Saturday's poll The National government’s triumphant win on Saturday, and Labour’s corresponding loss, has broken at least three records, and the pundits are still counting. First, National has won sufficient seats to govern in its own right, a...

There’s a case for encouraging popular but defeated MPs to throw their hats back into the ring The Rudd government lost seventeen House of Representatives seats to the opposition in 2013, and it’s mostly those electorates, now held by the Abbott government, that Labor will have its closest eye on next time. Not surprisingly, they...

In this Lowy Institute Policy Brief, Melanesia Program Director Jenny Hayward-Jones examines the significance of Fiji’s elections on 17 September for Australian policy towards Fiji. She argues that the election will only be the first step in Fiji’s transition to democracy after eight years of Voreqe Bainimarama’s military rule. Australia should use its influence to...