Each day, we’re confronted with headlines about death: millions lost to disease, disasters, overwork or unhealthy lifestyles. But much of this reporting doesn’t reflect reality – and it may be doing more harm than good.
Journalism is meant to help the public make sense of health risks. But the way media outlets report death often distorts our understanding of what’s actually killing people. Dramatic causes like terrorism, pandemics and natural disasters receive disproportionate attention, while chronic illnesses such as heart disease, kidney disease and stroke – the world’s biggest killers are underreported or ignored.
This matters. Public perceptions of risk shape everything from government health spending and research priorities to individual behaviour and policy responses.
A large body of research suggests that people consistently overestimate the risk of rare or sensational causes of death and underestimate common ones. A 2014 study found that people were far more likely to think of deaths from suicide, homicide, or air crashes than from stroke, diabetes or chronic respiratory disease — even though the latter are far more common.
These misperceptions closely mirror media coverage. A comparative content analysis of UK, US and Australian newspapers found that cancer, aviation accidents and violent crime were disproportionately represented, while leading causes of death like heart disease received relatively little attention.
Pandemics tend to dominate headlines, especially when early estimates or modelling studies are reported without context. One example is the widely shared claim that overwork causes 2.8 million deaths a year. The original report from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization put the figure closer to 745,000 – a significant number, but one that became inflated as it was repeated across headlines and outlets.
This gap between coverage and reality – known as the perception gap – shapes how people think, feel and act. Research shows the public tends to panic over rare events while ignoring everyday risks. For instance, someone might worry about dying in a plane crash (an exceedingly rare event), while overlooking high blood pressure — which contributes to more than 8.5 million deaths each year.
Why the media gets death wrong
Journalists often focus on stories with novelty, controversy or emotional impact. Cancer and heart disease are common, but overwork or climate-related deaths feel more urgent or politically relevant. New research or modelling studies also tend to get picked up quickly, especially when they come with a striking number or bold claim.
Reporters frequently rely on press releases and preprints, which may present tentative findings as hard facts. Mortality statistics are also often shared without context. For example, an article might claim “high blood pressure causes 10 million deaths a year” – without explaining that this figure includes associated risks and overlaps with other conditions.
Another issue is how deaths are categorised. Especially among older adults, a single death may involve multiple conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness. Media reports rarely account for these comorbidities, which means the same death might be counted under several causes across different articles further inflating the apparent death toll.
The result isn’t usually intentional misinformation – but the impact can still be deeply misleading.
What responsible reporting looks like
To improve public understanding and avoid unnecessary alarm, media outlets should adopt three core principles:
1. Provide context
Always relate a figure to the global picture. For instance, around 295,000 people drown each year – a tragic number, but just 0.5% of global deaths. Without this kind of framing, it’s easy for even modest risks to feel overwhelming.
2. Clarify cause v correlation
There’s a critical difference between saying “X causes Y” and “X is associated with Y.” For example, ice cream sales and sunburns tend to rise together – not because one causes the other, but because both are linked to summer weather. Precision in language matters: unless a direct causal link has been firmly established, it’s more accurate to describe a risk as “associated with” a particular outcome.
3. Avoid sensationalism
In a crowded news landscape, it’s tempting to chase clicks – but public trust relies on accuracy. Exaggeration undermines credibility, especially in health journalism.
What readers can do
It’s not just journalists who shape the narrative – readers do too. When you see a health statistic:
ask whether it comes from a reputable source like the WHO, UN, or IHME
check whether the figure is put in context or presented in isolation
look for signs of double-counting, exaggeration or causal overreach
be cautious with headlines that include words like “explosion,” “soar” or “epidemic” without numbers to back them up.
Death is a serious subject but our understanding of it shouldn’t be shaped by exaggeration. With better reporting and more critical reading, we can build a clearer picture of global health and respond to real risks, not just frightening headlines.
Trevor Treharne receives funding from the Oxford-McCall MacBain Graduate Scholarship.
Carl Heneghan holds grant funding from the NIHR and previously from the WHO for a series of ongoing Living rapid reviews on the modes of transmission of SARs-CoV-2 reference WHO registration 2020/1077093. He is an advisor to Collateral Global, the Sir James Mackenzie Institute for Early Diagnosis at St Andrew’s University, and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). He is a member of the Board of Preventing Overdiagnosis. He is also the co-director of the Global Centre for Healthcare and Urbanisation and a Board member of the Speed Trust.
Flags – particularly the union flag and the St George’s Cross – continue to appear in towns and cities in England, at times in response to the housing of migrants and asylum seekers in the local area.
Groups such as Operation Raise the Colours, the Weoley Warriors, Flag Force UK, and the Wythall Flaggers have claimed responsibility for putting the flags up. In many places the flags seem to be in place for the foreseeable future. In Brighton and Hove the local council began to remove flags, only to be forced to leave some up when the contractors sent to take them down were abused.
Displays of flags on street furniture and buildings, such as pubs, are not unusual. But while they are common around the celebration of royal events and major sporting occasions, it is more exceptional to see them put up in reference to political issues. This appears more coercive as an action. There is a sense of territory being marked.
We’ve heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration.
As any anthropologist would tell you, symbols are multi-vocal. They offer a range of meanings that depend on who is using them and the context in which they are being used. If the symbols are being used to send a message, the intended recipient of that message adds another layer of meaning.
The use of flags, in what political scientist Marc Howard Ross calls the symbolic landscape, carries significant cultural value – or what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would have termed symbolic capital. They are displays of patriotism that are common in different forms, in nations around the world. They are used by nation states in rituals and public spaces, by the elite, by politicians and by companies selling their products. They’re waved at sports events and displayed as part of everyday, banal, practices. They are the stock and trade of how the nation is imagined and performed.
Anthropologists Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins’s book Flag, Nation, Symbolism in Europe and America shows that the use of flags can vary quite widely. In Denmark, the national flag adorns birthday cakes. In Canada it is the essential addition to any large cottage around the lakes of Ontario. And in the US, one of the most flag obsessed countries, it is flown at sporting events big and small.
Generally the British are seen as being more reserved in their use of the Union flag, in part because of its complex relationship with Englishness, Irishness, Scottishness and Welshness. But in Northern Ireland, flags fly from lamp-posts nearly all year around. Union flags, the Ulster Banner (the former flag for the Northern Ireland government), and Scottish Saltires often fly alongside the paramilitary flags of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
Many of these are put up in the summer and, while some are taken down in September, others remain through winter, becoming tatty as the weather turns colder and wetter, and ultimately being replaced in the spring. Flags have long been put up to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, but the commemorative season now includes the Battle of the Somme (July 1), local band parades in June and goes through to Ulster Day (September 28) and Remembrance Sunday in November.
Flags are put up predominantly by groups of men in working-class areas. The expansion of the practice seemed to date from around 2000 when a feud between the UVF and UDA flared up and each group used flags to demarcate the areas they controlled. This was predicated on the available of cheap, mass-produced nylon flags imported from Asia.
Irish Tricolours fly in Irish nationalist areas, but not with the same density or frequency. They, too, are sometimes used as signs of demarcation between different Republican groups. The Tricolour has also recently been put up on lamp-posts in Dublin by rightwing groups.
In Northern Ireland the practice has many detractors. Some feel the flag is being disrespected (particularly as the flags quickly become tatty and dirty) while others see their presence as part of a practice of coercive control by paramilitary groups. Others long for more shared public space without these symbols and some fear their presence might reduce the value of houses in the area.
There is in fact clear legislation in Northern Ireland making it unlawful for a flag to be affixed to a lamp-post. However the Department of Infrastructure, which has authority over the lamp-posts, steadfastly refuses to remove the majority of the thousands of flags. Despite the coercive control invoked and the displays of flags by organisations proscribed under terrorism laws, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) rarely intervenes.
A five-year, all-party Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (of which I was co-chair), published a report in 2021 concluding that “citizens do not have lawful authority to put up any flag on lamp posts or road signs” and calling for better coordination on the issue that should include local councils. But no new policies have developed.
Authorities find it difficult to decide how to handle flags in part because “policing” the use of the national flag looks unpatriotic. Nationalism and patriotism are so embedded within the discourses of nearly all of the major political parties that it’s impossible for politicians to tell the general public that they aren’t allowed to wrap themselves in the same symbols.
And so even if it is obvious the symbols are used as leverage in a racist or sectarian act of territory marking, those with authority are loathed to do anything about it.
Short of the legitimacy of “tradition” that is so powerful in Northern Ireland, the practice in England, Scotland, Wales or the rest of Ireland, might fade away. Or it might become embedded in a world of increased chauvinistic and xenophobic nationalism.
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Dominic Bryan receives funding from the ESRC and I have received funding from the AHRC, the Government of Northern Ireland and the Irish Government in the past.
Source: The Conversation – (in Spanish) – By Daniel Antón, Investigador Postdoctoral y Profesor. Universidad de Sevilla y Nottingham Trent University, Universidad de Sevilla
Topografiada por primera vez en 1915 por Henri Breuil, Hugo Obermaier y William Verner e investigada por diversos prehistoriadores del siglo XX, la cueva de La Pileta (Benaoján, Málaga) es uno de las muestras de arte rupestre con mayor cantidad y variedad de motivos gráficos. Fue declarada Monumento Nacional en 1924, momento en el que se abrió al público. Sus visitas guiadas son una experiencia única donde se puede conocer buena parte del arte rupestre que atesora.
Con una antigüedad de más de 30 000 años, el arte rupestre de La Pileta se distribuye en dos fases. La más antigua corresponde a distintas etapas del Paleolítico superior, y la más reciente fue realizada entre el Neolítico a la Edad del Bronce.
Desde 2017, estudios interdisciplinares y el uso de tecnologías de última generación han revelado la existencia de varios miles de motivos, muchos más de los que se conocían hasta la fecha.
Iluminando la oscuridad
Entre los hallazgos más singulares, destaca una lámpara paleolítica que se usó para transitar por la cavidad y pintar hace más de 30 000 años. Esta lámpara es uno de los dispositivos de iluminación más antiguos documentados en la península ibérica. Este objeto, junto con más de una decena de representaciones de manos positivas, refuerza la hipótesis de la ocupación de La Pileta durante el Paleolítico superior inicial y contribuyen a reevaluar la cronología del arte rupestre de la región.
Las investigaciones arqueológicas sugieren una presencia humana desde el Paleolítico medio, asociada a los neandertales, con ocupaciones del Paleolítico superior, Neolítico (fragmentos cerámicos), Calcolítico y Edad del Bronce. Esta secuencia convierte La Pileta en un enclave excepcional para estudiar la evolución cultural y simbólica del sur de Iberia.
Mapeada con un iPhone
La Pileta es un entorno kárstico de unos 2,5 km, de intrincado recorrido. Este laberinto de galerías ha lastrado durante décadas su documentación topográfica. Ante este desafío, un grupo de investigadores de la Universidad de Sevilla hemos realizado una de las primeras evaluaciones sistemáticas del uso de la tecnología LiDAR integrada en smartphones para la digitalización 3D de cavidades arqueológicas. Este método permite determinar la distancia desde un emisor láser a un objeto o superficie utilizando un haz láser pulsado.
El objetivo era comprobar si una herramienta tan accesible como un iPhone puede ofrecer resultados útiles en entornos tan exigentes a nivel geométrico como esta cueva. También, si este instrumento puede complementar o, incluso, sustituir, en ciertos contextos, a costosas y complejas técnicas como el escaneado láser terrestre (ELT).
Tecnología en las entrañas de la Prehistoria
Para esta investigación, hemos escaneado en 3D un amplio sector de La Pileta, incluidos espacios emblemáticos como la sala del Gran Pez, así conocida por la destacada figura pisciforme que conserva.
Para ellos, hemos utilizado dos técnicas distintas. Por un lado, el escáner láser Leica Geosystems BLK360, de precisión milimétrica y captura de hasta 360 000 puntos por segundo en lo que se denomina una nube de puntos (conjunto de coordenadas XYZ en el espacio). Por otra parte, un Apple iPhone 15 Pro con aplicaciones móviles de escaneado 3D, como Polycam, MetaScan y 3D Scanner App, para generar mallas trianguladas con textura.
Ambos conjuntos de datos 3D se validaron mediante una red de puntos de control topográficos establecidos con una estación total –aparato electro-óptico utilizado en topografía, cuyo funcionamiento se apoya en la tecnología electrónica–. Esto ha permitido medir la precisión geométrica de los modelos obtenidos por el teléfono móvil respecto al estándar profesional.
¿Puede un móvil estar a la altura?
El LiDAR del iPhone presenta limitaciones, como su alcance máximo de 5 metros y una menor densidad de puntos. Sin embargo, los resultados revelaron un error medio de solo 22 milímetros respecto al ELT.
En zonas con menor relieve, donde el escaneado se complica por la ausencia de referencias morfológicas, se obtuvieron desviaciones mayores. Por el contrario, el iPhone fue sustancialmente más preciso en áreas con prominencias rocosas o espeleotemas como las estalagmitas.
Aunque el smartphone no reemplaza al escáner profesional en términos de precisión, resulta de gran utilidad para complementar la documentación en sectores de escasa accesibilidad. Su maniobrabilidad permite documentar zonas donde un escáner montado en trípode no puede instalarse.
Por otra parte, el LiDAR móvil ofrece ventajas significativas en términos de texturizado gracias a su intrínseca calidad de imagen fotográfica. Asimismo, el uso de soportes personalizados con linternas LED permite controlar la iluminación de la escena y lograr modelos más realistas y divulgativos. Esto mejora la interpretación visual de los paneles de arte rupestre.
Democratización de la documentación arqueológica
Uno de los logros más importantes de nuestra investigación es facilitar una documentación geométrica rigurosa, con tecnología accesible y portátil, de lugares tan complejos como una cueva intrincada, algo impensable hace solo unos años.
Así, mientras que un sistema ELT profesional puede costar entre 20 000 y 80 000 euros, un smartphone con LiDAR ronda los 1 000 euros y sus aplicaciones 3D son gratuitas o más económicas.
Esta democratización tecnológica permite que usuarios particulares, pequeños equipos de investigación o instituciones sin grandes recursos puedan acometer labores de documentación avanzada. De igual manera, abre la puerta a nuevas formas de difusión y educación mediante modelos 3D navegables o experiencias inmersivas en realidad virtual, que son accesibles desde cualquier lugar del mundo.
Una ventana al pasado… y al futuro
El modelo virtual generado en La Pileta ya se está utilizando para ofrecer acceso virtual a espacios cerrados al público, preservar digitalmente el arte rupestre y facilitar estudios sobre morfología geológica o distribución simbólica en la cueva.
La conclusión es clara: la combinación de escáner láser terrestre y LiDAR móvil representa una estrategia óptima, versátil y democrática para la documentación integral de cuevas con valor patrimonial. La sinergia de ambos recursos aprovecha la precisión del primero y la flexibilidad del segundo, garantizando tanto la calidad científica como la viabilidad operativa en entornos hostiles y frágiles.
En tiempos de crisis climática, presión turística y fragilidad del patrimonio subterráneo, herramientas como estas no solo son innovadoras: resultan imprescindibles.
Daniel Antón recibe fondos de la Universidad de Sevilla a través de un contrato como investigador postdoctoral que emana del VI Plan Propio de Investigación y Transferencia (referencia VIPPIT-2020-II.5).
Universidad de Sevilla aporta financiación como institución colaboradora de The Conversation ES.
Miembro de la Asociación espeleológica C.D. Plutón.
Miembro de la Asociación Española de Ciencias del Karst (SEDECK) y de PAMSUR (Grupo para el estudio de la transición Paleolítico Medio-Superior al sur de Iberia).
Este trabajo ha sido realizado con fondos de proyecto CROSSROAD-PID2023-151553NB-I00 y del grupo HUM1089-PAMSUR de la Universidad de Sevilla.
Rubén Parrilla-Giráldez recibe fondos de Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) con el proyecto Imaging an invisible archaeology (https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.07698.CEECIND/CP2883/CT0003). Es miembro de PAMSUR (HUM1089: Paleolítico Medio y Superior en el sur de Iberia).
Maria Dolores Simon Vallejo no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
They live in Africa’s largest forest, extending over the continent’s west and central regions. Large populations are found in Gabon and the Republic of Congo and smaller groups in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
But ivory poaching means their numbers have plummeted by 86% over the past three decades.
The sharp reduction of their population has a knock-on effect on the Congo Basin forest itself. This is because African forest elephants are the rainforest’s gardeners. They disperse more plant species than any otheranimal, regenerating and reshaping plant communities.
I’m a conservation scientist and part of a research team of international and Cameroonian scientists who set out to examine how forest elephants interact with West African ebony trees.
We wanted to know if the decline of elephants had negative, cascading effects on other Congo Basin forest species. We focused on ebony because it was known to be a food for elephants and its wood is prized for numerous uses.
The research team set up tree plots and experiments in forests with and without elephants (often lost due to hunting). We used hidden cameras to record which animals ate ebony fruit and how ebony seeds enclosed in dung grew into seedlings. Our lead researcher, Vincent Deblauwe, spent years in the field conducting these experiments and even built a custom camera trap to observe ebony pollinators for the first time in the canopy.
We also collected ebony seeds from within elephant dung, manually planted them, and carefully monitored germination rates and seedling survival.
Additionally, the project developed cloning propagation methods to support future replanting of ebony trees and ebony plantations.
These little four-tonne elephants support ebony reproduction in at least two ways.
Distance matters: Elephants move the ebony seeds quite far away from the parent tree. This reduces the risk of ebony trees growing close together and inbreeding. Inbreeding weakens the genetics and lowers their chances of being resilient and adaptable to future environmental change.
Dung as armour: Elephants consume ebony fruits whole and the pulp is digested from around the seeds before they poop them out intact. We found digestion did not help the ebony seeds germinate. However, being encased in dung protected the seeds from rodents that eat and kill the seeds. This greatly improved the seeds’ chances of survival and germinating.
Our research found that there are nearly 70% fewer small (younger) ebony trees in the areas where elephants have disappeared. Most adult ebony trees alive today were dispersed by elephants decades ago because ebony is a slow growing wood that can take 50 years to begin reproducing, and 60 to 200 years to fully grow.
Our conclusion is that it is not certain that ebony trees in the Congo Basin will be able to survive naturally without the help of elephants.
Both elephants and rare ebony lie at the heart of the national heritage of Cameroon. By safeguarding elephants, Cameroon can protect the long-term viability of sustainably managed ebony and other valuable timbers.
A wake-up call for Central African forests
The West African ebony tree (Diospyros crassiflora) can grow up to 25 metres tall. It is a culturally iconic and economically valuable tree prized for its deep black heartwood. Ebony has been used for centuries to make carvings, piano keys and guitars due to its special harmonics.
Our research found that no other animals in the Congo Basin are able to disperse the ebony tree’s seeds in the same way. This has left a functional gap in the forest – one that current conservation strategies too often overlook. Forest elephants have been poached out of two-thirds of the ebony trees’ natural habitat so most of the Congo Basin’s adult ebony trees are in elephant-free areas. This means they won’t be able to get any help from elephants in dispersing or concealing their seeds within dung.
It’s not only the future of ebony that’s at stake. Other large-seeded trees may also rely on elephants to move their seeds. Elephant declines could be quietly reshaping forests in ways scientists are only beginning to uncover.
The takeaway is clear: plant-animal interactions are not a luxury add-on to conservation plans; they’re foundational to keeping forests functioning.
What needs to happen next
There are already many efforts to protect elephants and the processes they drive. Sadly, these seem insufficient to date.
The most urgent conservation action is halting the killing of elephants for ivory. Reducing illegal logging of ebony trees is also important. Both of these can be accomplished by better education with local residents about the ecological and economic importance of elephants and ebony, and improved enforcement of existing poaching and logging regulations.
Another important step is monitoring less charismatic tree species that also depend on elephants. Similar plant-animal relationships and the species and services they provide might be at risk.
Our project increases international research partnerships with Cameroon’s domestic experts and attracted expertise and funding for local institutions. For example, this research project provided education and capacity-building for Cameroonian researchers and practitioners, growing national expertise in biodiversity management.
Finally, African forest elephants don’t just live in the Congo Basin’s rainforests – they shape them. Increased poaching of elephants for ivory not only threatens the ebony tree – forest elephant declines can ripple through forest structure, biodiversity, and carbon storage.
This work was part of the Congo Basin Institute at UCLA and was largely funded by Taylor Guitars, which uses ebony for their instruments. They have invested nearly a decade in ebony research and conservation.
Matthew Scott Luskin receives funding from NASA, ARC, and the National Geographic Society.
Dans les démocraties parlementaires européennes, des négociations – souvent longues – permettent la formation de coalitions gouvernementales fonctionnelles. En France, alors que le « bloc central » n’est pas majoritaire au Parlement, le nouveau premier ministre Sébastien Lecornu pourrait-il s’inspirer des pratiques éprouvées en Allemagne, en Belgique ou en Espagne, pour éviter l’échec de ses prédécesseurs ?
La nomination du troisième premier ministre proche d’Emmanuel Macron en à peine plus d’un an peut donner l’impression de poursuivre la même stratégie mise en échec par deux fois. En effet, ses orientations politiques et sa future coalition semblent, a priori, les mêmes que celles de Michel Barnier et de François Bayrou. Pourtant, un élément retient l’attention : Emmanuel Macron a chargé Sébastien Lecornu de « consulter les forces politiques représentées au Parlement en vue d’adopter un budget et [de] bâtir les accords indispensables aux décisions des prochains mois » avant de lui « proposer un gouvernement ». Cette démarche augure-t-elle une inflexion notable, tant sur le fond que sur la forme, et un mode de gouvernance se rapprochant des pratiques en vigueur dans les régimes parlementaires européens ?
La tradition parlementaire dans « les démocraties de consensus »
Après des législatives, dans les régimes dits « parlementaires » ou dans les « démocraties de consensus », les forces politiques consacrent souvent un temps important à négocier, dans l’objectif de conclure un accord, voire un contrat de gouvernement et de législature.
Dans la célèbre classification d’Arend Lijphart, ce dernier distingue les « démocraties de consensus » des « démocraties majoritaires » où le pouvoir est concentré dans une simple majorité, voire un seul parti et son chef, cas fréquent dans le modèle de Westminster (inspiré du Royaume-Uni, ndlr). Les « démocraties de consensus » sont celles où, par le mode de scrutin, par le système partisan et par la culture politique, des familles politiques aux orientations et intérêts parfois éloignés sont contraintes de se partager le pouvoir.
Les modalités de formation des gouvernements de coalition et des contrats de législature varient selon les pays et leurs propres traditions et systèmes partisans. Mais le principe central demeure le même : lorsqu’aucun parti ni aucune coalition préélectorale n’obtient de majorité suffisante pour prétendre gouverner, les forces parlementaires négocient un accord de compromis. Ce dernier comporte souvent deux aspects. D’une part, la répartition des postes ministériels, d’autre part, une base minimale de politiques publiques à mener – y compris pour obtenir un soutien sans participation ou une non-censure de la part des groupes qui n’entrent pas au gouvernement.
De telles négociations ont le défaut d’être souvent très longues – des semaines, voire des mois –, et parfois de passer par plusieurs échecs avant d’aboutir à un compromis à l’équilibre délicat. Toutefois, lorsque ce compromis est trouvé, il peut permettre une relative stabilité pendant plusieurs années, et a l’avantage de réunir des parlementaires qui représentent une majorité effective de l’électorat – tandis que les gouvernements français s’appuient sur un soutien populaire de plus en plus étroit.
L’Allemagne est prise en exemple pour sa tradition de coalitions. Celles-ci sont négociées pendant des semaines, formalisées dans des contrats prévoyant des politiques gouvernementales précises pour la durée du mandat. Après les élections fédérales du 26 septembre 2021, il a fallu attendre deux mois pour que soit signé un contrat de coalition inédite entre trois partis – sociaux-démocrates, écologistes et libéraux. En 2025, après les élections du 23 février, l’accord pour une nouvelle grande coalition entre conservateurs et socialistes n’est conclu que le 9 avril.
La période de discussion entre partis politiques représentés au Parlement peut même être encore plus longue. Le cas est fréquent en Belgique, où les divisions régionales et linguistiques s’ajoutent à la fragmentation partisane. Près de huit mois se sont ainsi écoulés entre l’élection de la Chambre des représentants, le 9 juin 2024, et la formation du nouveau gouvernement, entré en fonctions le 3 février 2025, composé de la « coalition Arizona » entre chrétiens-démocrates, socialistes, nationalistes flamands et libéraux wallons.
Les procédures sont largement routinisées. Après chaque scrutin fédéral, le roi des Belges nomme un « formateur » chargé de mener les consultations et négociations nécessaires pour trouver une majorité fonctionnelle pour gouverner. En cas de succès, le « formateur » devient alors le premier ministre. L’identification du formateur le plus susceptible de réussir sa mission est une prérogative non négligeable du souverain.
Lorsqu’un régime politique se heurte à une configuration partisane et parlementaire inédite, il arrive que l’adaptation à cette nouvelle donne prenne du temps. L’Espagne offre cet exemple. Après les élections générales d’avril 2019, aucune majorité claire ne s’est dégagée et Pedro Sanchez, président du gouvernement sortant et chef du Parti socialiste arrivé en tête, a d’abord voulu conserver un gouvernement minoritaire et uniquement socialiste. Ce n’est qu’après deux échecs lors de votes d’investiture en juillet, puis une dissolution et de nouvelles élections en novembre, que le Parti socialiste et Podemos se sont finalement mis d’accord sur un contrat de coalition pour un gouvernement formé en janvier 2020 – première coalition gouvernementale en Espagne depuis la fin de la IIe République (1931-1939).
Un élément notable de ces pratiques parlementaires est que l’identification du camp politique et du candidat en mesure de rassembler une majorité n’est pas toujours immédiatement évidente, et qu’un premier échec peut se produire avant de devoir changer d’option. Ainsi, en août 2023, toujours en Espagne, lorsque le roi a d’abord proposé la présidence du gouvernement au chef du Parti populaire (droite espagnole), arrivé en tête des élections de juillet. Ce n’est qu’après l’échec du vote d’investiture de ce dernier que Pedro Sanchez a pu à nouveau tenter sa chance. Grâce à un accord de coalition avec la gauche radicale Sumar et un accord de soutien sans participation avec les partis indépendantistes catalans et basques, il a finalement été réinvesti président du gouvernement.
Vers une lente parlementarisation du régime français ?
Au regard des pratiques dans les régimes parlementaires européens habitués aux hémicycles très fragmentés et sans majorité évidente, la France n’a pas su, jusqu’ici, gérer la législature ouverte par la dissolution de juin 2024. Le temps record (pour la France) passé entre l’élection de l’Assemblée nationale et la formation d’un gouvernement n’a pas été mis à profit.
En confiant à son nouveau chef de gouvernement, Sébastien Lecornu, la charge de mener les consultations pour « bâtir les accords indispensables », le président Macron semble avoir acté qu’il n’était pas en position de le faire lui-même. Reste que le premier ministre devra montrer, pour durer, une capacité à obtenir des accords et des compromis supérieure à celle de ses deux prédécesseurs – et pour cela, une volonté d’infléchir la politique gouvernementale.
Pour former son gouvernement, Sébastien Lecornu se tournera à l’évidence vers la reconduction du « socle commun » entre la macronie et le parti LR, lui qui est membre de la première et issu du second. Mais si la coalition gouvernementale est la même, le premier ministre peut innover en parvenant à un accord formel de non-censure avec au moins l’un des groupes d’opposition. Un tel accord devrait porter sur le budget 2026 et s’accompagner d’un engagement à laisser faire la délibération parlementaire sur chaque texte, en échange de l’absence de censure.
Sébastien Lecornu peut certes essayer de trouver son salut dans la tolérance de l’extrême droite, comme Michel Barnier l’a lui-même tenté à ses risques et périls. La détermination du Rassemblement national (RN) à obtenir une dissolution rend cet interlocuteur imprévisible. Si le premier ministre devait chercher la non-censure d’une partie de la gauche, alors il devrait pour cela leur faire des concessions substantielles. Car les socialistes estiment avoir été maltraités par François Bayrou malgré leur ouverture à la discussion, et risquent d’être moins enclins à faire un pas vers le gouvernement.
Une inflexion de la politique gouvernementale apte à trouver une majorité de compromis avec la gauche (solution par ailleurs plus conforme au front républicain des législatives de 2024) nécessiterait des avancés sur la taxation des plus riches, sur la réforme des retraites, sur les aides sans contrepartie aux entreprises ou sur la modération de l’effort budgétaire demandé aux ménages. Avec aussi l’impératif de faire accepter ces concessions aux membres du « socle commun » !
Le nouveau premier ministre a promis des « ruptures » tant sur la méthode que sur le fond et a donné des signaux en ce sens, avec la réouverture du débat sur les retraites. Des voix se font entendre, y compris parmi les LR, pour accepter l’idée d’une contribution des plus grandes fortunes à l’effort budgétaire. Si Sébastien Lecornu parvient effectivement à s’émanciper du bilan qu’Emmanuel Macron a, jusqu’ici, voulu défendre à tout prix, alors son gouvernement pourrait durer. Mais faute d’un vrai changement de fond de la politique gouvernementale, le changement de méthode risque de ne pas suffire à le préserver du sort de ses deux prédécesseurs.
Damien Lecomte ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – (in Spanish) – By Adrián González Marrón, Profesor en Epidemiología, Salud Pública y Bioestadística, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Este pasado martes, el Consejo de Ministros aprobó el Anteproyecto de Ley del tabaco, lo que supone el primer gran cambio legislativo en control del tabaco en España desde la reforma, en 2010, de la ley de 2005. A partir de ahora, para que entre en vigor, debe superar con éxito la tramitación parlamentaria.
En quince años, el panorama ha cambiado muchísimo. Han aparecido nuevas formas de consumo de tabaco y nicotina a través de nuevos dispositivos y productos: cigarrillos electrónicos, tabaco calentado o bolsas de nicotina, entre otros. Y también, por ejemplo, nuevas formas de promoción, por redes sociales y otros medios. De ahí que desde hace años se viniera reclamando una reforma para no quedarnos atrás con respecto a otros países de nuestro entorno en la lucha contra el tabaco (y la nicotina).
Probablemente, el hecho de que hubiera tanto espacio de mejora en la legislación se ha traducido en un anteproyecto de ley que ha dejado algo frías a sociedades científicas y ciudadanas, porque no consigue cubrir todas las carencias que veníamos arrastrando en control del tabaco en España.
Vaso medio lleno
Si vemos el vaso medio lleno es, en primer lugar, porque resulta muy positivo que las nuevas formas de consumo se igualen al tabaco convencional. En este sentido, hay evidencia que apunta a que el uso de estos nuevos productos pueden servir de “puerta de entrada” al tabaco convencional para los jóvenes. Además, aunque no hay pruebas a largo plazo de sus efectos, sí se ha observado que el uso de estos dispositivos está asociado a la exposición a sustancias nocivas, como metales o cancerígenos.
Más espacios libres de humo
Por otro lado, la ampliación de espacios libres de humo y aerosoles –lo que afecta también a cigarrillos electrónicos y otros productos, pero deja fuera las bolsas de nicotina– a terrazas, exteriores de centros sanitarios o educativos, conciertos o parques infantiles es muy positiva por dos motivos. En primer lugar, porque permite reducir la exposición pasiva: entre 2016 y 2021, cerca de 5 000 personas murieron en España por estar expuestas al humo ambiental del tabaco. Y en segundo lugar, para conseguir la desnormalización del consumo. Esto llevaría a fumadores actuales y a no fumadores, sobre todo jóvenes, a interpretar que el consumo de productos del tabaco es una práctica alejada de la norma social.
A nivel de salud pública, considero que hubiera sido interesante ampliar a otros espacios la prohibición de fumar o usar productos que generen aerosoles. Por ejemplo, a coches donde hay menores, un grupo muy vulnerable a la exposición pasiva, tanto al humo ambiental del tabaco, como al humo residual, que son los residuos que quedan en superficies después del consumo. Es una medida que ya se ha tomado en diferentes países de Europa.
Suena muy bien además la prohibición del uso de cigarrillos electrónicos de un solo uso, fundamentalmente por cuestiones medioambientales, así como del consumo de tabaco y otros productos en menores (con régimen sancionador), extendiendo la prohibición actual más allá de la propia venta. Y, por supuesto, también la prohibición prácticamente total de la publicidad, promoción y patrocinio de productos del tabaco.
Habrá que monitorizar, sin embargo, el cumplimiento de estas medidas, lo cual puede ser bastante complejo en casos como la promoción por parte de influencers –que pueden estar en cualquier lugar del planeta– de esos nuevos productos del tabaco y nicotina. En este sentido, el anteproyecto prevé la creación de un observatorio, que tendrá entre sus funciones monitorizar el cumplimiento de la ley.
Lo que se echa en falta
Por otro lado, algunas ausencias son especialmente dolorosas para la comunidad científica por la abundante evidencia que hay sobre su efecto positivo. Quizás, la medida desestimada más importante sea la adopción del empaquetado neutro o genérico (es decir, eliminar la marca y otros elementos publicitarios de las cajetillas), iniciativa que se ha demostrado muy eficaz en la reducción del consumo en otros países. Es posible que esta medida acabe apareciendo durante la tramitación, aunque las perspectivas no son muy halagüeñas.
Del mismo modo, y aunque probablemente tenga difícil encaje en esta normativa, sigue siendo incomprensible que no se suba de manera urgente el precio del tabaco. Al menos parece evidente desde el punto de vista de salud pública, pero quizás habría que preguntar a otros ministerios. Hoy en día, España es todavía el estanco de Europa, cuando esa subida de los precios es considerada la medida más eficaz para reducir el consumo.
En definitiva, las disposiciones propuestas –la mayoría dirigidas al control de nuevos productos y ampliación de espacios libres de humo– son muy positivas y están en línea con el objetivo de conseguir generaciones libres de humo y reforzar la estrategia de “fin del juego del tabaco”. Sin embargo, desde mi punto de vista de investigador en control del tabaco, echo en falta en este anteproyecto más actuaciones que desincentiven el consumo en fumadores actuales.
Adrián González Marrón participó en la Joint Action on Tobacco Control 2, proyecto financiado por el Programa de Salud de la Unión Europea (2014-2020) en virtud del acuerdo de subvención n.º 101035968.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Carolina Machado Oliveira, Filmmaker, Senior Lecturer in Factual, Bournemouth University
Deep in the Amazon, sound designer Eric Terena has been capturing the sounds of the rainforest while sitting silently beneath the dense, towering treetops with his recording equipment. He has noticed some huge changes.
“What the environment once spoke, what biodiversity once sang, has shifted to sounds from industrial projects that have arrived in our territories,” said Terena, co-founder of Mídia Indígena, a Brazilian media and communications network which promotes and preserves Indigenous cultures.
His words describe more than a change in sound – they show how nature is gradually being replaced by machines. Ancestral songs have been drowned out by industrial noise. Terena shares these changes using digital tools to bring local stories to global audiences, turning lived experience into climate knowledge.
In our research with Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, we examine how film and other media technologies, from smartphones to social platforms, are being used to document environmental change, defend land rights and influence climate debates. Together with Indigenous leaders and the Intercultural Faculty in Mato Grosso, Brazil, we explore how “educommunication” – which combines media education with active community participation – can build the technical skills and political capacity that young communicators need to tell their stories to different audiences, from local villagers to global leaders.
As Cop30, the UN climate summit, comes to Brazil this November, our research shows how these digital tools are enabling Indigenous voices to help reshape global understanding of the climate crisis – ensuring their perspectives are present not only in cultural storytelling, but in international environmental decision-making.
A pivotal shift
This shift didn’t happen overnight. It began with a few voices that grew into a movement. Terena co-founded Mídia Indígena in 2017 at the Free Land Camp, a yearly Indigenous rights gathering in Brasília. Alongside him, a group of young Guajajara leaders (Indigenous peoples from Maranhão, Brazil) launched the platform, training 128 young Indigenous people how to report, record and share their stories. Mídia Indígena has grown quickly – its videos now receive more than 10 million views each year.
Erisvan Guajajara shares his experience of creating and growing the Mídia Indígena network.
At the heart of this work is a powerful idea: “Nothing about us, without us.” Indigenous people can now tell their own stories without relying on outsiders to speak for them. They decide what to film, how to tell a story, and who sees it.
The impact of this shift became clear during the Yanomami humanitarian crisis in early 2023. The Yanomami, one of the largest Indigenous groups in the Amazon, live across northern Brazil and southern Venezuela in territories deeply affected by illegal gold mining. That year, reports emerged of severe malnutrition, child deaths and mercury poisoning caused by mining operations contaminating rivers and destroying forest ecosystems.
Because Mídia Indígena’s reporters were already present in the territory, they were the first to document and publish evidence of the crisis. Their coverage not only exposed the immediate health emergency but also linked it to broader issues of environmental destruction and climate change. National and international outlets eventually followed with their own reports – but only after Indigenous journalists had already broken the story.
This was more than journalism; it was lived truth, rooted in a deep knowledge of the land. Mídia Indígena’s reporting had an authenticity that no outsider could match.
And they are not alone. Young communicators from Xingu+, a network from the Xingu River basin and surrounding Indigenous territories in Brazil, created a powerful video called Fire is burning the eyes of Xingu, showing illegal fires destroying parts of the Amazon. Their video caught the attention of the US Agency for International Development and the EU, emphasising how local stories can prompt global awareness.
Films by the Ijã Mytyli Manoki and Myki Cinema Collective, founded in 2020 by two neighbouring Indigenous peoples of Mato Grosso, show how traditional knowledge and rituals are being praised in Europe, even if they’re less known in Brazil. As filmmaker Renan Kisedjê said in the short film Our Grandparents Hunted Here, “we are digital warriors”. Where once bows and arrows defended the land, today cameras and smartphones continue the fight for land, rights and justice.
The short film Our Grandparents Hunted Here (www.peoplesplanetproject.org).
Challenging outdated ideas
Collectives such as Mídia Guarani are another part of this digital resistance. Their videos challenge outdated ideas about Indigenous life and show how deeply these communities are connected to both nature and technology.
But this storytelling is not only about identity – it’s about survival. These creators shine a light on urgent threat such as Brazil’s “devastation bill”, which seeks to weaken environmental safeguards by expanding environmental self-licensing and eroding protections for traditional territories. Such measures open the door to unchecked pollution and land grabs.
By reporting on dangers like this, Indigenous communicators seek to hold governments and corporations to account. Their stories do more than inform – they generate public pressure and demand change.
This shift matters internationally too. The UK has pledged £11.6 billion in climate finance between 2021 and 2026, including £3 billion for nature restoration and £1.5 billion for forests. Yet the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, an organisation that scrutinises UK aid spending, warns that changes in accounting may have “moved the goalposts”, inflating apparent spending without ensuring impact on the ground.
Increasingly, however, Indigenous communities are speaking directly to funding donors and shaping allocations. This shift matters because they collectively manage vast areas of land critical to conservation. While many governments invest in expensive climate technologies, these communities have long protected ecosystems through practices proven over generations.
For the first time in the history of UN climate summits, large numbers of South American Indigenous people will attend Cop30 in November – both in person and online. For a long time, they’ve been building networks to fill the gap left by mainstream media. Now, these once silenced voices are loud, clear and deeply informed.
In late August, a hundred Indigenous reporters gathered in Belém for the 1st National Meeting of Indigenous Communication. Under the motto “Indigenous communication is resistance, territory and future”, they strengthened their networks and prepared collectively for COP30.
As the world’s most experienced environmental defenders gain more power in climate talks, their stories, and the way they tell them, will help shape the decisions that affect us all.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Republican political activist Charlie Kirk was killed as he spoke at a Utah Valley University event on September 10. Just three months earlier, Minnesotan House Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed by a masked gunman.
According to a thinktank, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, violence against those in US political life in the four years to 2024 was nearly triple the number of incidents in the previous 25 years combined.
Historically the killings of significant political figures has sometimes been the precursor to dramatic repression or further violence. The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led precipitously to the beginning of the first world war. The murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish refugee was used as a pretext for the slaying of Jews in Berlin and the justification for unleashing a wave of violence and destruction across Nazi Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht.
There are, of course, alternative lessons from historic moments. When British MP Jo Cox was slain on the streets of Birstall, near Leeds, in 2016, politicians from across the divide condemned it. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative prime minister David Cameron visited the town where Cox was murdered together: a symbol of political unity against violence.
Violent speech
Political violence is defined by the United Nations as that which is intended to achieve political goals or intimidate opponents through the use of physical force or threats to influence a political outcome or silence dissent. Katie Pruszynski, who researches political violence at the University of Sheffield, finds that the use of polarising and extreme language in debate has stoked up something she calls “hyperpartisanship”, where opponents have become “enemies” and those with different worldviews have become “traitors”. This tension stokes distrust and radicalisation, she warns. So then, this fits within the framework of the US president’s immediate reaction. In a video published on X, Trump vowed to root out “the radical left” whose rhetoric is “directly responsible” for Kirk’s killing.
Melissa Butcher, a professor emeritus at Royal Holloway, University of London, researches political polarisation, and its causes. She also spent time listening to Kirk’s speeches at the conservative rally AmericaFest in 2021.
As part of her work on the political and ideological divides in the US, Butcher has listened to conversations in all sorts of locations, from social clubs to shooting ranges and offices. Those discussions suggest a widespread feeling that community is breaking down. She has talked to Americans who believe that the promise of an affluent future is disappearing in the face of environmental collapse and successive financial crises.
News breaks of the killing of US political activist Charlie Kirk.
Her research suggests that some Americans now see the world as scary and unsafe. And these emotions can provoke rage as well as despair. But more hopefully, she found, that many people want hope, safety and to live in a caring community.
To outsiders the significant role of religion in US politics can come as a shock. Quotes from the Bible regularly make an appearance in speeches and questions about church attendance are thrown at candidates. Gordon Lynch, a professor of religion at the University of Edinburgh, has studied Kirk’s leadership in the white Christian nationalist movement within the US.
For Christian nationalists, the idea of the separation of church and state acknowledges not having an official state church. But the complete separation of Christianity from public institutions is anathema and secular institutions such as public schools and universities are often regarded as hostile ground, says Lynch.
Lynch notes the role of Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, in calling on students to name and shame professors who they judged to have problematic or socialist views, and creating a watchlist. But he also feels that a different part of Kirk’s legacy could be acknowledging the activist’s commitment to debate with, and listen to, those whose views he disagreed with. And this could be extremely valuable in the current climate, if stressed by Republican leaders.
Meanwhile, another crisis which needs the US president’s attention is unravelling on the other side of the Atlantic, on the Polish border with Russia. Putin’s drones ventured into Polish airspace and were shot down by Nato fighter jets. Many see this as Russian president, Vladimir Putin, testing the mettle of the Nato allies to find out the level of their response.
Poland immediately invoked article 4 of the Nato treaty. The alliance’s members met to discuss the threat and the UN security council are due to meet on September 12 about the incident. Stern words have been issued and troops dispatched to Nato’s eastern border. But Stefan Wolff from the University of Birmingham, believes that Putin will not be worried by the west’s response. As Wolff observes, the Russian leader will be buoyed by his military’s recent advances on the battlefield. He’ll also be basking in the warmth of recent talks with Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. So Nato’s response is hardly likely to have him rattled.
Russia’s future plans to add more territory (not just areas that it currently controls within Ukraine) were laid out in detail by the University of Aberystwyth’s Jenny Mathers, who researches the war in Ukraine, this week. At a briefing given by Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, that has now come to light, a map was shown in the background suggesting Russia’s intention to claim the areas around Odesa and Mykolaiv along the coast of the Black Sea. These would give Moscow important economic and strategic control of sea routes but also potential to create a land corridor to Transnistria, a pro-Russia breakaway region within Moldova that seeks independence.
The upcoming Moldovan election on September 28 must be recognised as another struggle to maintain European security in the face of Russian aggression, says Amy Eagleston, a political scientist at Leiden University. Eagleston points to Russian cyber interference in a past Moldovan election as evidence for worries about what could happen this time. She stresses Moldova’s strategic position as a support for Ukraine, under its current government. Things could change fast, she warns.
Another strike that shook the world this week was Israel’s unprecedented airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha where Hamas officials were discussing a peace deal. This was the first time that Israel had directly attacked a Gulf state.
Scott Lucas, an international politics professor at University College Dublin and an expert on the Israel/Gaza crisis, argues that this showed the current Israeli government was not willing to engage in any kind of peace negotiation. It was, he said, clearly ready to level parts of Gaza City, kill Hamas’s leadership and completely break up the organisation. Lucas believes there will be no more talk of a ceasefire with Hamas, only capitulation.
In a week when international law was being tested to its outer limits, James Sweeney, a professor of law at Lancaster University, spoke up for its long-term relevance and his belief that it would outlast political careers.
History shows that leaders who once seemed untouchable have eventually faced justice in one form or another, said Sweeney, pointing to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis and how former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet died awaiting trial for human rights abuses to house arrest. Pinochet may well have believed that would never happen to him. It did.
Something for today’s leaders to contemplate carefully.
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Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction on Sept. 11, 2025, puts the former Brazilian president in a rogues’ gallery of failed coup plotters to be held to account for their attempted power grab.
Brazil’s Supreme Court found Bolsonaro guilty of being part of an armed criminal organization and other counts relating to a coup plot to overturn the ex-president’s 2022 election defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Prosecutors had earlier argued that Bolsonaro and others discussed a scheme to assassinate Lula and incited a riot on Jan. 8, 2023, in hopes that Brazil’s military would intervene and return Bolsonaro to power.
Four of the five justices on the panel voted to convict. Justice Cármen Lúcia, who was among the majority, said that the right-winger acted “with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions.” sentenced to 27 years and three months behind bars, but is expected to appeal the verdict.
Not all coup plotters are held accountable for their actions. And even for those, like Bolsonaro, who are – it doesn’t necessarily mark the end of their political ambitions.
Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro clash with police outside the Planalto Palace in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images
Coup and punishments
Plotting a coup is risky business. Some of those who attempt to seize or usurp power unconstitutionally are killed during their takeover bid, particularly when security forces loyal to the incumbent leader foil the attack. Christian Malanga, an exiled former army captain who led a violent attempt to seize power in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one such example. He was killed in the ensuing shootout in May 2024.
But most leaders of failed coups survive.
And although they typically face punishment, the severity of consequences varies greatly; it often depends on whether the attempt is a self-coup, which is a power grab by an incumbent leader, or an attempt to oust a sitting government.
Some coup plotters and their co-conspirators are charged in a court and, if convicted, sent to prison. Malanga’s American co-conspirators were ultimately sentenced to life in prison in April 2025.
A similar fate has now befallen Bolsonaro. His conviction means that unless successful on appeal, Bolsonaro could end his days in confinement.
Still, it could have been worse – failed coupmakers are often punished outside of independent courts, where the penalty is often more severe. Coup plotters have been summarily executed or sentenced to death by a military tribunal or a “people’s court.” The longtime Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko executed over a dozen junior officers and civilians after his government uncovered an alleged coup plot in 1978.
One recent estimate suggests 40% of coup conspirators suffer relatively light punishment. Many coup backers are simply demotedor purged from the government without facing trial or execution. An especially popular move is to send coup plotters into exile to discourage their supporters from mobilizing against the regime. Former Haitian president Dumarsais Estimé was forced into exile after his self-coup attempt failed in May 1950; he died in the U.S. a few years later.
Punishment doesn’t always end threat
The problem facing governments is that failed putschists pose a lingering political threat. Ousted leaders often plot “counter-coups” to return to power. For example, former president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, after being ousted in the 1986 People Power movement, masterminded coup plots from exile, though he never returned to power.
Some succeed, such as David Dacko, who returned from exile to grab power in the Central African Republic in 1979, but only with the help of French forces.
Even when convicted or exiled, coup plotters may be later freed. Some members of Brazil’s Congress had already, prior to the verdict, introduced a bill that could grant Bolsonaro amnesty.
A few former failed coup leaders manage to come to power later. Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings led a failed coup in May 1979 but went on to seize power in subsequent coups in June 1979 and 1981; Hugo Chavez was convicted and jailed for leading a failed coup in 1992 but ended up being elected president in Venezuela in 1998.
Though Bukele temporarily backed down, he faced no legal or political backlash. His party won a legislative supermajority in 2021, and he won reelection in 2024. Bukele’s ruling party recently lifted presidential term limits, allowing him to potentially rule for life.
The good news about punishing unsuccessful coup plotters is that because they’ve failed, they do not have to be coaxed out of power. Thus, holding them accountable for their actions should deter future plotters from attempting the same thing. In contrast, for a leader who has done unsavory things while still in office – such as killing domestic dissidents or committing war crimes – the threat of punishment once they leave power can backfire by giving them a reason to fight to stay in power.
In the long term, failed coup leaders who escape punishment are more likely to make a political comeback.
When defeated at the polls, both Donald Trump and Bolsonaro tried to overturn the official results. Both attempted to altervotetotals after they had lost andblock an election winner from being inaugurated.
In contrast, a conviction for Bolsonaro means it is now unlikely he will follow the same path to political resurrection. Even if he’s eventually pardoned, a guilty verdict makes him ineligible to compete again for Brazil’s presidency.
Joe Wright received funding for research on coups from the National Science Foundation and the Minerva Research Initiative.
John Joseph Chin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Kevin M. Schultz is Chair of the Department of History at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he specialises in 20th- and 21st-century American history. In Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals), he explores how the word liberal – and particularly its variant white liberal – became a term of derision across the American political spectrum.
Why, he asks, are so many Americans unwilling to identify as liberals, white or otherwise, even while supporting government programs that fall squarely within the American liberal tradition?
Review: Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History – Kevin M. Schultz (University of Chicago Press)
Why Everyone Hates White Liberals is written by an American academic for an American audience. It tries to assess the current political situation in the United States in the light of history. It asks how American liberals should respond to a situation where they are often viewed with disdain.
The book’s relevance is less obvious for those of us who live outside the US, but it promises to shed light on America’s political volatility and culture warring, which eventually affect us all in one way or another.
This thing called liberalism
Unfortunately, liberalism defies definition. Its roots can be traced to early European modernity, and especially to debates over religious toleration in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its more immediate background was the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, culminating in great revolutions in America and France.
From the beginning of the 19th century, liberalism evolved into something distinct, with its own name, founding figures and institutions. It responded to a changed world marked by population growth, revolutionary turmoil, an expanding sphere of public discussion in Europe and North America, and the beginnings of industrialisation and corporate capitalism.
Schultz skates over this quickly, but he correctly refers to Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant as originating figures in 19th-century France, and to Spain and Sweden as pioneers in the rise of liberal political parties.
It’s worth adding that, as liberalism took its early forms, it had input from numerous groups. These included religious non-conformists, free-market economists inspired by Adam Smith, utilitarian philosophers, and European thinkers (such as de Staël and Constant) who admired the French Revolution in its early years before the Reign of Terror.
Given its mix of influences, liberalism never became a unified ideology or political theory. It was more a tradition or tendency in politics. It took many directions, frequently questioned itself, discarded old ideas and embraced new ones, and changed emphases in response to emerging circumstances.
Comprehensive histories of liberalism give the impression of a chameleon-like quality. At different times, liberals have accommodated economic policies from unfettered free-market capitalism to a degree of socialism. Confronted with such a rich – or even contradictory – tradition, we might feel at a loss in giving liberalism any recognisable content.
Still, we can find some common themes. At a certain level of abstraction, liberalism favours toleration, individual freedom, acceptance of social pluralism, and cautious optimism about the possibilities for intellectual and social progress. With these core ideas go more specific political principles, including free speech, secular government, and the rule of law. To this we can add values such as individuality, creativity and suspicion of hierarchies of birth.
With that in mind, it’s usually clear enough what is being alleged if someone is accused, in a political context, of being “illiberal”. The accusation suggests intolerance, especially of opposed viewpoints or unusual ways of life, and hostility to individual freedom.
People who advertise themselves as liberals can sometimes be revealed as illiberal in this broad sense. If that sounds paradoxical, the paradox is easily resolved as long as we’re clear about what concepts are in play.
American liberals
After a sketchy introduction to liberalism, Schultz zooms in on the 1930s in the US, when the depression-era presidential rivals Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt each claimed to be a true liberal. As Schultz observes, few Americans before this had thought of themselves as liberals.
Roosevelt succeeded in redefining the words liberal and liberalism for the purposes of American electoral politics. In Roosevelt’s usage, they meant openness to new kinds of government intervention to address social problems. Thereafter, American liberalism can trace its history from the 1930s New Deal. It came to mean, in large part, policies of wealth redistribution and economic intervention.
Roosevelt’s success as a national leader lent prestige to his redefined conception of liberalism. For several decades, it attracted allegiance across social and political divides.
For Schultz, therefore, American liberalism in the New Deal tradition means “generosity of spirit and expansion of individual freedom” or using the power of the state “to ensure individual freedom for the maximum number of people”.
These definitions fall within the general tradition of liberalism, but they have a more specific suggestion of government interventions for the common good.
That might seem attractive as a political vision – so what went wrong?
Liberalism unravels
As Schultz tells the story, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, some figures on America’s left were losing patience with what they saw as a stultifying, bureaucratic, politically timid liberal establishment.
Schultz pinpoints 1964 as a key year when American liberalism began to lose its prestige. As he describes in detail, there was a marked change in political tone between 1963 and 1964, when Black radicals started to criticise white liberal allies, whom they had come to regard as spineless and hypocritical. From this point, white liberal crystallised as a term of abuse on the political Left.
Schultz appears sympathetic to the Black civil rights leaders of the time, whose impatience with the pace of change was understandable. But he also reminds us of the considerable effort, self-sacrifice and achievements of white liberals during the 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in dramatic initiatives such as the landmark Civil Rights Act.
Part of the problem was a mismatch, not only of priorities, but perceptions of what was realistically achievable. As radical left-wing movements emerged during the 1960s, their leaders distanced themselves from liberals and liberalism.
American liberals endured much worse from the conservative side of politics. During the “long” 1960s – the decade and a half from the late 1950s to the early 1970s – there was a right-wing backlash. Key conservative figures, such as William F. Buckley, ceded the term liberal to their opponents, which Herbert Hoover had refused to do in the 1930s. Then they attacked it and everything that it stood for within their understanding.
Political conservatives associated liberals with radical politics, atheism, communism, and what Schultz refers to as “cultural effeteness”. Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew weaponised this narrative in the the 1972 presidential election and inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the Democratic Party’s candidate, George McGovern.
Schultz sees the term liberal as having been abandoned during the 1970s, in the sense that almost nobody in politics or public debate wanted to identify with it. Instead, it was used to label others. More recently, liberalism has been blamed for the harshest outcomes of what is known as neoliberalism, although the latter has little to do with traditional liberal ideas such as individual freedom, social toleration, or the rule of law.
The term neoliberal has a history dating back to at least the 1930s, but has been applied to regimes and administrations not otherwise regarded as liberal. As Schultz reminds us, it was first applied pejoratively to the economic policies of the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Schultz emphasises an “owning the libs” strategy that has recently prevailed on the American right. Anybody with even slightly left-wing, liberal or progressive tendencies is now painted by conservatives as an unhinged radical deserving of mockery and political, if not personal, destruction. The “libs” have thus become an imaginary enemy against which disparate groups on the right can unify and rally.
Ironically, historic liberal reforms in areas such as health care and social security remain widely popular with the American electorate, but the actual words liberal and liberalism seem to have become toxic.
Some deeper issues
In explaining the challenges to American liberalism during the long 1960s, Schultz adds to our understanding. Yet Why Everyone Hates White Liberals is seriously incomplete: it glosses over important issues and entire decades.
I can only go so far in exploring what it omits, but for a start, Schultz ignores important developments in the late 1970s and the 1980s. This was a time marked by fraught debates over censorship, pornography, abortion and numerous other hot-button issues. These debates severely tested what liberalism stood for in the US.
As the legal scholar Owen M. Fiss has argued, the debates of that era revealed “liberalism divided”. On the left side of politics, identity-based demands, (mild) socialist influences, and activist approaches to legal interpretation increasingly clashed with the liberal instinct to restrain government power and support individual freedom. This rupture within American liberalism, or perhaps within America’s broader political left, has never healed.
At one point, Schultz drops a clue to some of the deeper issues. Following the historian David L. Chappell, he identifies a fundamental disconnect between white liberal reformers in the 1960s and the Black activists who came to despise them. Despite some common goals, they had different temperaments and worldviews, grounded in different experiences and cultural histories.
The white liberals’ optimism about human nature and the possibilities for incremental progress clashed with the Black activists’ prophetic sensibility, their more pessimistic view of human nature, and their demands for national repentance and total transformation of American society.
This points to a larger problem that only became more difficult in the decades that followed. It’s one thing to defend the rights and freedoms of one or another oppressed group, viewing the issues from a traditional liberal perspective. It’s a different thing to defend a group’s rights and freedoms by adopting whatever ideology or rationalisation the group itself (or its leaders) might develop.
Moreover, as oppressed groups recognise each other’s struggles and form pragmatic political coalitions, they tend to see analogies between each other’s causes and attempt an ideological synthesis. As they do so, they are likely to seek insights from whatever sources they can find. Importantly, they needn’t confine themselves to ideas and thinkers from the liberal political tradition.
A demonstration by members of the Black Panther Party on the steps of the Washington State Capitol building in Olympia, Washington, February 28, 1969. CIR Online, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Thus, liberals can find themselves supporting demographic groups whose representatives are, in turn, nourished by various kinds of religious fervour – or else by Marxism, feminism, postmodernism and other -isms that are not especially concerned with liberalism’s traditional ideas, such as freedom and toleration. Goals might be shared at a high conceptual level, but with starkly different perceptions of legitimate methods and acceptable costs.
In this setting, liberals face a conundrum. How far should they maintain traditional liberal ideals, and how far should they move towards non-liberal, and potentially illiberal, ideologies if these seem more promising for the purposes of social change?
When rapid and comprehensive change seems imperative, might this justify illiberal methods, such as attempts to control what people say and think? In the past, revolutionaries have often believed so, but the conflict with traditional liberalism is obvious.
Yet Schultz appears dismissive of any idea that American liberals sometimes veer in illiberal directions, or that this might undermine their credentials if they still claim to be part of the broader liberal tradition springing from the Enlightenment.
Useful, but frustrating
Why Everyone Hates White Liberals offers a useful, if limited, defence of America’s (white) liberals and their achievements, particularly in the face of unfair criticism and derision since the 1960s.
As far it goes, the book’s history is accurate. But it is incomplete, and hand-in-hand with this there’s a frustrating analytical shallowness.
For Schultz, the actual words liberal and liberalism are irredeemable in the US. For all I know, this might be correct (though it might also be slightly hyperbolic). Be that as it may, Schultz backs off examining how the problems for American liberals go deeper than slogans and words. These problems deserve a bolder reckoning.
Russell Blackford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
