Worldscope

France - Republic at an Impasse France ’s political center of gravity has shifted from the Elysée Palace to a constantly contested National Assembly , and the country is feeling the strain. The snap legislative election of June–July 2024 broke the spell of presidential dominance that defined the Fifth Republic , returning a fragmented lower house with three roughly equal poles: a left coalition, President Emmanuel Macron ’s centrist bloc, and the far right. On paper, the arithmetic promised stalemate. In practice, it delivered a conveyor belt of short-lived governments, lurching budget battles, and an argument about whether the institutions still fit the country they are meant to serve. The system is holding—for now—but only by leaning on caretaker arrangements and last-ditch deals that substitute improvisation for strategy. The risk is not collapse so much as drift. The numbers matter because they dictate everything else. The New Popular Front (NFP) emerged first in seats after the ...

Crossroads of Power: How China Will — or Won’t — Become the Next Global Superpower Whether China becomes the world’s next undisputed superpower—or settles into a different kind of primacy—hinges on a handful of hard constraints and a surprising set of tailwinds. Our assessment is neither triumphalist nor fatalistic. China is not fated to rule, and it is not destined to stall. It is a country with formidable industrial capacity and mounting structural liabilities, a state able to move capital at scale and a society that is aging faster than its prosperity can comfortably absorb. What happens next will be shaped by the interaction of five strategic pillars: economic durability, technological sovereignty, military reach, financial influence, and coalition-building power. In each domain China is advancing, but not on a straight line, and the path is increasingly contested. We begin with the economy because everything else—research budgets, defense procurement, diplomatic largesse—ultimatel...