Nigeria’s Election, One Year Since Russia Invaded Ukraine, U.S. Asylum Restrictions, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Nigeria holds presidential elections. The invasion of Ukraine reaches its one-year anniversary. And, the Biden administration faces repercussions for new asylum restrictions. It's February 23rd, 2023 and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, let's start with Nigeria. This weekend Nigerians head to the polls to choose a new president. They're an extraordinary, at least for us, eighteen candidates. And this is the first time since 1999 that there's no incumbent running and no military leader running. How big a choice are the Nigerians facing?

MCMAHON:
It's quite a big one. And first, in reference to the scale you mentioned, I think it is worth noting that if it wasn't for certain other global events overshadowing this, this could be getting a lot more attention, this presidential election. We're talking about one of the largest electoral events on the planet this year that's taking place in Nigeria. This is a country of 220 million people, which has growth trajectory that could be triple that by the end of this century. In addition to being the most populous country in Africa, has been its biggest economy. But it is also an enormous problems. It's got extremely high poverty rates, it's got massive corruption. It has the Boko Haram insurgency in the north, which continues to be extremely lethal. And all sorts of interconnected issues as well.

There is a sense that while there's been some new interest in the election, and we'll get into the candidates in a second Carla, there's also concern that we could see just a return to sort of the same old same old, old guard getting elected into office with the same patronage and same problems that the country's been dealing with in its post-1999 era, which is the democracy era of Nigeria.

We should say that it's coming at the end of two terms from Muhammadu Buhari, former military leader, who has made a point of saying how he's going to step aside peacefully, and he's made it one of his important legacies to do so. And that will be important. But he's also leaving behind a country that seems to be by many markers doing worse than when he entered office. 

And so I'll quickly run down the candidates to watch for. There is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He's a candidate from President Buhari's party, which is the All Progressive Congress. He's the former governor of Lagos State and he is called on his campaign stomp for all sorts of standard things that people have wanted to hear, in terms of putting an end to the security problems, the kidnappings, the violent crime, as well as raising wages and transforming the country into what he calls, "a nation of creators, not just consumers."

There's also Atiku Abubakar, who's the main opposition leader. He's the candidate of the People's Democratic Party, former vice president, well-known in the power circles of the country. Calling for also reducing the size of government and economic reforms. And then there's a candidate who's generating a lot of interest as an independent third-party independent candidate named Peter Obi. He's younger than the other two, who are in their seventies. He's sixty-one. He is-

ROBBINS:
Much younger.

MCMAHON:
... much younger, certainly by recent standards in Nigerian elections. And he is seen as potentially waging a very credible campaign against the other two. He's especially zeroed in on corruption. He's making sort of populous sounding campaign promises that are dealing with trying to reduce unemployment and inflation. Inflation is another one of the issues, just like many countries, Nigeria is really struggling with. He just interests people because he seems to be speaking the language of the country and not just of the political elite. He's from the ethnic Igbo group. So far has not been attracting much concern about tribalism, but has been branded a populist by some of his opponents.

ROBBINS:
So I'm sort of focused on this eighteen candidate thing, although it seems to be there's a limited number of front-runners. But when you think about it in the United States, when we had three candidates running seriously, when the Clinton, Perot election there, all these people were saying, "Well, if you don't get a majority of votes what's the legitimacy issue here?" And as we've had recently, the split popular vote, electoral vote questions, people in the United States keep questioning the legitimacy of our results when we only have two candidates. Is there going to be a question of legitimacy here when you have three or four front-runners, you have eighteen candidates there, or are Nigerians used to this?

MCMAHON:
It's a really good question. Our colleague Ebenezer Obadare has a blog post up this week that's kind of scene setting the election, saying that is one of the important issues to watch in terms of the legitimacy of the vote, and then also the violence question, because there has been unfortunately a tendency towards violence once votes are questioned in the country. And so Nigeria is not immune from it. It has not had the circumstances that say Brazil, to cite a region country that went through major elections had, where you had an incumbent casting doubt on the result as he was declining in the polls. First of all, the incumbent is not running in this case and you haven't had candidates who are raising grave doubts about the outcome. That it's not to say that there won't be doubts. There's already been some reports of violence at various polling areas in the country.

As we're speaking by the way, we should note it's the last full day of campaigning in the country. The vote takes place on Saturday. But there's something like 240 polling centers that are going to be inactive for what's called security reasons. That's from the Independent National Electoral Commission. So the activities of the commission are going to be closely watched. Like in Brazil, we'll see whether Nigeria's institutions are able to stand up to results that come in. A winning candidate has to get more than 25 percent in two thirds of the regions of the country, otherwise there is a second round of voting that would take place in a few weeks time. And let's brace ourselves for charges of fraud and whether or not the country can withstand that. That being said, there have been peaceful transfers of power in Nigeria most recently, and Buhari was an example of that. It doesn't guarantee great governance. And he's dealing with lots of problems, including a change to currency laws, which has created absolute chaos in the country.

So I get back to this issue of a public kind of crisis of confidence in elected leaders and whether or not this election will both generate a strong turnout of the polls and then faith in the system. To your question, Carla, about whether those results can be trusted and whether there's going to be a real turnover or not in the country is really something to watch. It's going to be about, by the way, reports are saying something like two or three days before we actually have clear results. So that's another thing that adds to the tension in the moment, which is unlike in some other countries where there's sort of within the day of you get a clear sense of winners and losers, it's going to be several days time. The more that takes, the more you get potentially leakage of reports or misinformation, disinformation, what have you.

ROBBINS:
As we saw here.

MCMAHON:
As we saw in the United States, as you've seen in a number of countries, a number of countries that have had a strong democratic tradition. And Nigeria again, is a young democracy, post 1999. This is barely a quarter of a century of running these results. And a country of thirty-six states, 220 million people divided between Christian and Muslim and many ethnic groups, dealing with crime, dealing with economic problems. Can it pull this off? It is also a country of incredible energy and a country that generates excitement.

Another blog post this week from one of our colleagues, Michelle Gavin, points to the fact that if they can pull it off, Nigeria can be an incredible model for some other countries that are trying to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa as democracies, Zambia and Liberia in particular are watching these results. It has been a country that has been active, although not in most recent years, but has been active in groups like African Union and ECOWAS, which are groups that have played a role in trying to stabilize Africa and trying to preserve democracy. So Nigeria matters for getting its own house in order, but also regionally as well.

ROBBINS:
So let us hope that they do even better than we did.

MCMAHON:
We will see, another big democratic test to kick off the early part of this year. But Carla, I'm going to bring us back to a very familiar subject, because the day before those Nigerian elections, we'll be marking an anniversary, which is one year since Russia's invasion, which sparked incredulity at the time, but has now been part of the feature of sort of world politics. And I wanted to see if you could maybe give us a sense of where we've come in that year Carla, before we see what's coming next.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, this is a very grim anniversary and it's important to remember first that for Ukrainians this war did not start a year ago. They've been fighting since 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and fueled the breakaway war in the Donbas. And we really have to wonder how different things might have been had the Obama administration and NATO pushed back a lot more forcefully then against Russia. As you certainly recall, Obama resisted sending so-called lethal aid to the Ukrainians at the time, arguing that the country wasn't part of NATO and not a core U.S. interest, and that the Russians would always have "escalation dominance". They cared more, they do more, they were closer. These are the arguments we heard from some quarters in the early days of this conflict, and we're starting to hear again. So that's an interesting thought exercise. One can never prove it, but I wonder how different things might have been.

And since we are in a philosophical mood right now, it's remarkable to think how different the world looks today. A year ago there were really deep questions about U.S. global leadership, after four years of a very bruising Trump presidency, and President Biden's really disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those questions have abated or at least they've been suspended, pending the outcome of the next election in the United States, and really the outcome of this war. And a year ago there were deep questions about whether NATO would hold together when tested. We shouldn't minimize the disagreements below the surface, including about how to move forward with the war, pacing, armaments and depending on the course of the spring offensive, whether to consider negotiations. But it is without a doubt a much strong alliance than any of us imagined.

And finally, the Ukraine War has shown how dangerous and divided a world we live in. And we can talk more about this. President Biden talks all the time about autocracies versus democracies. He did it again this week in Poland. But I'm not sure that framing has much resonance with Americans. And while I wouldn't recommend that he describe it this way, it is increasingly looking like we are entering a two front cold war with Russia, and an increasingly assertive China. President Putin is certainly already there. He gave the state of the nation's speech this week and we can talk about that. And just short of banging his shoe on his desk, which is something I might add, Khruschchev never did. But it most notably included the announcement that Russia was suspending participation in the New START nuclear arms control agreement, the last arms control agreement.

And this week the Chinese look like, and they've been treading very carefully, but they look like they're going to get into it in some way, maybe send arms to Russia, maybe come up with a peace plan. But it is a very different world from a year ago. And I think going forward, going to be a very, very different world. And for those of us who grew up during the Cold War Bob, this is chillingly familiar. But for the large majority of Americans who grew up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I'm not sure they fully realize the dangers and the potential sacrifices that are coming with these deep divisions.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there Carla, but-

ROBBINS:
And also cheery.

MCMAHON:
And also cheery, but as you say, at the end of the day, why does it matter to let's say middle America? You're seeing some indications from some, especially in the Republican Party, that the country is spending too much time, the president is spending too much time on holding up Ukraine and bolstering Ukraine. We should note that Republicans are increasingly raising questions, especially House Republicans, about how much the U.S. is allotting towards the support of Ukraine. This is also playing out against the backdrop of the increasingly rancorous debt ceiling debate, in which sides are dug in. And there doesn't seem to be any window yet for where cuts could happen or where any sort of compromise could happen that could promise cuts, that would allow Republicans to save face and approve the raising of the debt ceiling. It's playing out against domestic politics in the U.S. that are going to get more rancorous in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election Carla.

And then globally, as you say, there are countries that are not interested in taking sides, that want to sort of support their own purposes. Whether it's countries that deal with Russian raw materials and want to continue trading or countries that have business with China, and they don't want to get into an autocrat versus democrat debate involving the West, but instead want to sort of deal with their own interests, and want the U.S. to not be raising its voice so much.

There's going to be a big vote happening later today. So we're taping this podcast on Thursday. United Nations General Assembly is going to vote on a resolution that would call for an instant ceasefire, I believe, and for Russia to end its invasion. Those votes in the past have generated a pretty strong majority of UN members condemning the Russian moves. I think most recent one had to deal with the annexation of four Ukrainian territories. And so it's going to be another big test. The way things have been playing at the UN Security Council where Russia is a veto wielding member, have certainly shown the divisions in the UN and not just in the Ukraine sphere, but in other areas as well. So lots to deal with here. But I'm wondering if you think there's any sort of off-ramp in the offing or whether we're looking at this war to grind on for multiple years and multiple anniversaries.

ROBBINS:
So multiple questions there.

MCMAHON:
Yes.

ROBBINS:
So let me back up here. In terms of the U.S. public, I think the polling data so far shows that the American public supports this war, and supports the United States supporting the war. And I think that Putin makes such a great super villain, that Biden can continue to pitch that. And Putin continues to show his super villain capabilities here. This announcement about suspending New START, the last arms control agreement, shows that even as Russia is weakened, it's still a pretty scary and dangerous place. And I think that that can be pitched not just as saving Ukraine and saving democracy, but also weakening Russia, and welcome to the Cold War again.

So I think Americans get that, get the notion, and certainly they get the China thing. Well the question is how much does Biden want to push that, because it does become more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's from a strategic and foreign policy point of view, that is a challenge. You don't want to overdo it and it's already being the clarion call on the hill all the time about China. But I think that they're probably not in as much trouble as many people say on the domestic front, and even on the debt ceiling. We'll see how much the Republicans say we're wasting money on Ukraine. Some of the Republicans say it, and not everyone. You haven't heard that from Mitch McConnell. Lindsey Graham, you haven't heard it from him. I think there's still plenty of internationalist Republicans out there. That's the first thing.

MCMAHON:
Citing two Republican senior senators we should note.

ROBBINS:
Yes, and then on the other hand, we'll hear from the Democrats, "You want to cut Social security and Medicare." So we'll see how that fight plays out. I mean, both sides have pretty big guns to pull out on the debt ceiling issue. In terms of the, and remind me again, which other questions you asked Bob.

MCMAHON:
How long the war is going to grind on?

ROBBINS:
Oh God, we are going into a very tough spring here. There's a lot more weapons promised to Ukraine. Whether they're going to get there in time is one of the biggest questions. Biden has jollied NATO along, but he's also had to jolly himself along to make these commitments, HIMARS. The latest thing is tanks to get NATO to go along, the Germans to go along with more tanks, he had to commit tanks. And there's a lot of criticism going on that this incrementalism slows down the actual delivery.

We know when we talked about this last week, that they need just even simple things like more ammunition. And they're going into a spring offensive. We see that the Russians are not fighting anywhere near as well as everyone feared, but at the same time they're throwing more and more bodies at it, more and more bodies, including convicts. So it may come down to a fight, to a race between, can we get the sophisticated equipment there, can we get the Ukrainians trained, versus how many more bodies the Russians are willing to throw at it? So it is going to be a very scary, scary spring. And will we hear more voices from the United States and will we hear more voices from Europe to, let's try to settle this? We certainly heard no sign at all from Putin when he gave his speech, his dueling speech with Biden, that he's willing to back away.

MCMAHON:
And in fact, he was continuing to use this language like it's an existential war at this point, and the U.S. is increasingly becoming one of the chief adversaries here. That kind of stuff is certainly, it might play well in certain quarters of Russia, but it's not going to be helpful in dialing down the temperature. And then as you said, the arms control problem, that also raises a lot of concerns. So yeah, we're looking at more grim months ahead, I'm afraid.

ROBBINS:
And then you had the China thing this week, which is really a puzzle, when you consider how focused particularly the United States is on China, and how focused American politics, to go back to that, is on China. This week we saw this diplomatic offensive from the Chinese. We talked about this last week as well from the top diplomat Wang Yi was in Europe. And he promised the leaders of France and Germany that the Chinese are back in business economically after the COVID shutdowns. And the EU is China's largest trading partner. But he undercut a lot of this, because he then went off to Moscow and was making nice there. And Tony Blinken, the secretary of state, warned that the Chinese were thinking about sending weapons to Russia to support the war in Ukraine, something the Chinese denied.

And then there are all these reports that President Xi, maybe as soon as tomorrow, Friday, is going to come out with some sort of a peace plan? That's sort of hard to imagine what that peace plan would look like. There's some reporting that suggests that he might even go as far to say, if you stop sending arms to Ukraine, we won't send arms to Russia. And that would be ... Who would take that seriously? But you could imagine that that might certainly play well in the Global South, something that you mentioned Bob. And it might play well with some people in Europe, some European countries that would like to see some sort of an off-ramp for themselves, and would like to trade more with China. But I don't think most people take it particularly seriously. But watch that space.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and potentially bundled together with an announcement of Xi visit to Moscow, which would be a nice gesture on Putin's behalf. But-

ROBBINS:
Putin seemed very eager to announce that when he was meeting with Wang this week. The Chinese seemed like, "Well, we haven't exactly scheduled it yet." So I think the Chinese are ambivalent, and maybe that's the best we can hope from them.

MCMAHON:
It's interesting to note by the way, that on our affiliated website of the Council of Councils, there's a roundup that just went out this week, with something like twenty experts from different countries, and all the different views on how the war has affected the world. And it gives you a real sense of how different the mood is across the Global South, as you mentioned Carla. And there's two Chinese contributors to that roundup who both emphasize the need to bring a peace deal to the table ASAP. So I think it's very much on the mind of Chinese officials and people in this policy sphere there. I'm just not sure how realistic any sort of Chinese peace plan might be.

ROBBINS:
I know we want to move on, but I think on the Global South thing also, it's not just on the mind of the Chinese, it's also on the mind of the Europeans. And Macron was talking about it, Sunak from Britain was talking about it at Munich, and the Americans are talking about it. They're not talking about it publicly as much, but they know that they got to worry about it. I mean, South Africans are doing military exercises with Russia. They have to say to themselves, "Why is it when something as obvious as happening here, which is the violation most fundamental of UN charter issues, which is seizing land, invading a country, something that's smaller states should find hugely threatening, and they're somehow sitting there going, 'Bad people on all sides.'?" And this should be a major, major warning. And it was very interesting to hear Macron and Sunak and Olaf Scholz talk about it. And there is a warning here for us, for all of us, that we have to be profoundly concerned about. And the Chinese certainly see it as an opportunity to leverage more influence.

MCMAHON:
And as you say, it's interesting to have China involved, but maybe if China doesn't play as big a role as we think it will.

ROBBINS:
It certainly has been their tendency in the past to hold back, and maybe that's the best we can hope for them. So Bob, this past Tuesday, the Biden administration announced a new asylum policy that would severely restrict who can come into the United States. And most notably it will deny the right to apply for asylum to many migrants who cross the southern border illegally or fail to first seek protection, this is complicated stuff, in a country they passed through on the way to the U.S. Critics are already charging that this is Trump 2.0 and not the humane immigration policies that Biden campaigned on. Are the critics right?

MCMAHON:
I think it's a little bit of an overstatement. By the same token, it has shocked and dismayed people who were strong supporters of Biden, certainly Biden's campaign rhetoric coming into office about how he was going to upend the Trump policies. Because the Trump policies, let's recall, across the board were restrictive. They sharply curtailed refugee numbers. It's a separate part of U.S. immigration policy. They came up with the remain in Mexico policy for asylum seekers, and were in also aimed at reigning in legal immigration as well. Biden has moved slowly to try to restore the refugee numbers. He did try to end some of the asylum practices right off the bat, and now this is seen as him caving a little bit. But there are some changes and certainly some differences with Trump policy. And there are a number of exceptions that are worth noting here, which also raise questions about how much they will affect the flow of asylum seekers.

There are exceptions of this ban that was announced, include those with an acute medical emergency, people facing imminent and extreme threat, such as murder or kidnapping, victims of human trafficking, children traveling alone, and certain nationals including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, who, let's just review some of the recent figures, they constitute a good number of those asylum seekers that have been recorded in recent months. And so we're looking at some carve outs on this ban that could make it sort of less draconian. By the same token, many in the international refugee community, especially in the U.S. advocacy community, have reacted very sharply and pointed to the U.S. obligations to not institute such a ban, U.S. obligations under international law, under the UN Refugee Convention and U.S. asylum law. So I think it's not Trump 2.0 as you said, but it goes against some of the things that Biden himself was calling outrageous as a campaigner in 2020, Carla.

ROBBINS:
The numbers are extraordinary though, and there's an interesting conversation to be had. I'm not sure that there's an adequate answer about why the numbers are so huge. And of course the Republicans would say it's a failure to secure the border. It's because Biden raised these expectations that he was throwing open the border. And other people would say it's COVID and the economy and interest rates and global slowdowns, and people are just desperate. I mean things are really bad in Central America. They're really bad in all the countries that you described, and really bad in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega is doing terrible things down there. Really bad in Cuba, really bad in Venezuela, certainly really bad in Haiti. So there's lots of reasons on the ground.

And of course, the administration will say that it's real policy is to try to deal with the problems inside these countries, but that's a project of generations. So the question then becomes, how do you have a humane immigration policy when you have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people showing up at the border? Does this have a possibility of "working for them", particularly when they're looking at a election in which I have no doubt that immigration will be a key Republican talking point?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think you're-

ROBBINS:
Screaming point?

MCMAHON:
I think you're talking about one of the crucial aspects here, which is, why now? And the duration of this is supposed to be something like two years. Well, two years will bring us into the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election. It is a huge issue for Republicans, border state Republicans and elsewhere. That temperature is only going to get hotter. It's going to be interesting to see whether asylum numbers actually go up or come down or remain flat or whatever. The system itself, regardless of those numbers is overstretched. There are huge numbers of asylum cases that need to be processed Carla. And I think the administration is trying to get a little bit of room to try to deal with that, and try to deal with the overall narrative of what it's doing in terms of border control, in terms of reasserting U.S. security. And it will continue to be a hammering point, but it's also, they need to be showing that they're trying to do something.

They also have continued building some of the wall that Trump was working on as well, not as vigorously and not as robustly. You're not going to see Biden there inspecting wall construction anytime soon. But there are still legacies from the Trump period that are part of Biden administration policy as well. And the world remains a really dangerous, turbulent place, especially in this hemisphere as you noted, countries on the verge of or that are failed states, let's say Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, maybe almost possibly Cuba some are even saying. The Northern Triangle countries are continuing to struggle in Central America. And so these pressures are going to continue and the administration has to show that it's trying to do something, but it's just, it's really tough. And we should also note, other countries in the world are trying to come up with their own special way of dealing with this. The UK for example, is seriously moving towards sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, where-

ROBBINS:
Which is just outrageous.

MCMAHON:
... through an arrangement with the Rwandan government, as a way of trying to end what they see as the lethal crossings of the channel. So people are dying trying to cross the channel, just to get on UK soil, and they're willing to deal with a long period of time in limbo of processing before their cases are even heard, and deal with the threat. Well, the UK government doesn't want to deal with that, just as southern rim European countries don't want to deal with those trying to cross the Mediterranean in the same way. You've had EU countries outsourcing many refugee cases and migrant cases to Turkey for a while. Turkey, as we noted in talking about the earthquake, Turkey is home to millions of refugees or would be refugees. And so it's just a difficult case anywhere you look. And the U.S. has been a standard-bearer in this area for so many years, but now it's having to take calculations right now that are going to make this really tough. But I will be interested to see what this does to asylum seeking numbers.

So Carla, it's worth noting some numbers just to cap this, which is overall last year there were 2 million people apprehended for border crossing. Some of those I believe were multiple repeats, but still a large number. And I believe almost a historically large number. In December, there were recordings of something like 8,600 illegal crossings per day. Again, some of those are repeat crossings of the same individual, but per day. And those numbers were being projected as up to 13,000 per day if no other steps were taken. And then in terms of cases already in the backlog, it's in the hundreds of thousands for asylum cases in the U.S., straining a system that was already strained when the Biden administration took office. So they're dealing with a problem of scale that is vexing the country. And on top of it all, Congress has not shown any indication to deal with comprehensive immigration reform that could help deal with this as well.

Well Carla, we've talked our way into the audience figure of the week part of the podcast, in which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. Carla, our audience this week selected the figure four, as in, "four day workweek trial in UK shows success." That's tantalizing. Why is it newsworthy?

ROBBINS:
So I feel like we should key is Dolly Parton singing Nine to Five right now. Can we just roll that tape? Okay. So an advocacy group called Four Day Week Global, working with researchers at Boston College and University of Cambridge and others, organized this pilot study of a four day work week, with sixty-one companies and about 3,000 employees in the UK. And results of the study were published this week and they sounded fantastic. Employees said they had better sleep, reduced stress, and things were far better at home. And companies' revenue reportedly stayed broadly the same during the six month trial. And of the sixty-one companies that participated, Fifty said they would continue with the four day work week pilot, and eighteen said the shift would be permanent, and only three companies said that they're going to walk away from it.

And one other thing that I read that I thought was intriguing, when asked how much more they would have to be paid by their next employer to go back to working five days a week, nearly a third said about 25 to 50 percent of an increase in pay. And fifteen said there was no amount of money to persuade them to go back to a five day work week. So actually when you think about, it's not all that's surprising. It's Thursday, I'm ready to quit. But not to be a buzzkill, it needs to be noted that this was not a representative sample of either companies or workers. Two-thirds of the companies had twenty-five or fewer employees, 90 percent of the participating employees were white and 68 percent had at least an undergraduate degree. This is the academic in me talking right now. And one final point, people might say it's impossible to change this, but before the Great Depression, six day work weeks were very common and the forty-hour work week only became federal law in 1938.

MCMAHON:
That is a really important reminder actually. As we've discussed on the podcast previously, the French have been trying to deal with a shorter work week. And French advocates have been out in front trying to create some better work-life balance. And the French don't need to ... Sorry, I'll just stop my French snide things.

ROBBINS:
Oh, go right ahead.

MCMAHON:
But I would love to see another country try this out as well Carla, and maybe a small Scandinavian country or something can give it a ride for a few months or a year, and we can see how it works as well. But it does show, I think something that might be taking shape. And again, we had this gigantic labor experiment under the COVID lockdown, where you had remote work and in certain sectors, the U.S. and other countries, work remained really productive.

In some areas we're finding that work is not getting back into the office. Tech is one of them, although there has been a bit of a backlash recently about companies trying to get people to come in, not just two days, but five days a week. That's still going to play out. But I think the shorter work week is something that the study in the UK really was quite gripping for a lot of people, because it's having a moment and I think it could get some traction. And if a country does decide to experiment with it, it's going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle on the shorter work week.

ROBBINS:
Well, you know what, all this quiet quitting and all of that, it's just this may be one of the solutions. So ...

MCMAHON:
Well, that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Djibouti holds parliamentary elections and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits India.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, thank you Ester, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra, whom I can see in my line of sight right now. And special thanks to Sinet Adous and Rebecca Rottenberg for their expert research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.