David Daley is a senior fellow at FairVote, where his work focuses on electoral reform, voting rights, and the structural dynamics of American democracy. He is the author of the national bestseller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, a widely cited examination of partisan gerrymandering that helped catalyse renewed public debate on redistricting reform. His…
This episode hosts David Daley to examine the accelerating role of gerrymandering in shaping American democracy and what it reveals about the pressures facing modern electoral systems. The conversation explores his argument that democratic strain is driven not only by electoral cycles or individual political choices, but by the deliberate drawing of electoral maps that…
Gerrymandering has long been a fixture of American political life, but recent developments suggest it is entering a more volatile and potentially destabilising phase. What was once largely confined to the decennial redistricting process following the census is now evolving into a continuous, fluid arena of partisan competition. This shift has been reinforced by the…
Djavad Salehi‐Isfahani received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech, where he is currently Professor of Economics. He is the Managing Editor of the Middle East Development Journal and a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum (ERF) in Cairo. His research has focused…
This episode with Professor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani examines how prolonged sanctions, inflation, and structural economic stagnation have reshaped Iran’s political economy. We explore how comprehensive sanctions since 2011 constrained oil revenues and fiscal capacity, why inflation and currency depreciation have reinforced one another over time, and how these pressures have affected poverty, middle-class security, and youth prospects. The…
Iran has faced more than a decade of sustained economic pressure. Inflation has remained above 40 percent. The rial has experienced repeated episodes of sharp depreciation. Oil exports, once the central pillar of state revenue, have been significantly constrained by sanctions. From the outside, it looks like a system in permanent crisis. Yet despite these…
Ola Rifai is Deputy Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies (CSS) at the University of St Andrews, where her research focuses on the international politics of the Middle East. Her work examines identity politics, nationalism, sectarianism, and ethnic conflict, with particular attention to Syria and the broader contemporary region. Her scholarship engages with the…
Syria is often examined primarily through the angle of geopolitics, armed conflict, and regional power competition. Yet one of the most consequential, and comparatively underexplored, dimensions of the Syrian crisis concern identity: how Syrian identity was historically constructed, how it fragmented under the pressures of war, and whether it can be meaningfully reconstituted in a…
In this episode of the International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Ola Rifai about the evolution of Syrian identity and how competing narratives of nationalism, sectarianism, and statehood have shaped Syria’s political trajectory and risk before and after 2011. Find out more about how identity was managed under the Assad regime, how sectarianisation unfolded…
Professor Simon Grima is the Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy, a professor, and Head of the Department of Insurance and Risk Management at the University of Malta. He is also a professor in the University of Latvia’s Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, and a visiting professor at UNICATT Milan and…
