National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is about to lose his White House job. Except he’s not – or at least, he’s not getting booted yet. It’s Chief of Staff John Kelly who is on the way out, perhaps as soon as today.

Scratch that. Kelly and President Trump apparently have reached an understanding; he’ll stay for now. It’s cabinet secretaries such as Ben Carson of HUD and Scott Pruitt at EPA who are endangered. They’ll be first to go. Just as soon as that McMaster situation gets resolved. 

As Mr. Trump heads into his second year in office, widespread and conflicting reports about upheaval among top White House and executive branch staff have created an air of turmoil and uncertainty in Washington as important decisions on tariffs, North Korea, and other big issues loom ahead.

Perhaps this is just as Trump wants it. It is a dramatic situation, as if the Oval Office were the center of a reality television competition. The multiple reports, from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others, depict alternate staffing scenarios, as if different and competing White House factions are behind the different leaks.

This combines themes from Trump’s business past: skill in marketing and media management, comfort with change (some might say comfort with chaos), and tolerance for staff that argue among themselves. Most of all, it places him at the center, as the star of the show, the man who decides who does and doesn’t get fired.

Thus Trump’s impending (or not) staff reshuffling is entirely in keeping with the way he has run his life, says Chris Edelson, an assistant professor of government at American University.

“The lesson he probably takes from his life is, what I have done has worked out. But it has been a near miss,” says Mr. Edelson, citing the multiple times Trump businesses have gone bankrupt.

Extraordinary upheaval

As of mid-Friday afternoon none of the many alleged impending White House staff moves had come to pass, following Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s dismissal Tuesday. National Security Adviser McMaster was still in place, despite his status as the person most rumored to be on the way out. Gen. McMaster’s military-style brusqueness and tendency to speak at length about issues has reportedly not endeared him to the president.

Trump may want to let the media settle down in the wake of Tillerson’s firing. In that sense, stories about possible personnel moves might be anti-predictive, actually making the change in question less likely to occur.

Indeed, the current White House has already seen record levels of staff turnover. For the first calendar year in office, turnover among “A” level White House personnel for the Trump administration has been triple the comparable figure for the Obama administration, and double that of the Reagan administration, according to figures compiled by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas.

Add in the moves made through early March of 2018, and Trump has a 43 percent turnover rate, Ms. Tenpas says. In contrast, Obama’s total turnover for the four years of his first term was 71 percent.

A focus on loyalty in hiring, and the general tumult of the first year of Trump’s administration, may have been the main reasons for the record turnover, according to Tenpas.

“It is not difficult to see why there may have been a great deal of turnover among the senior ranks,” she writes in an analysis of her data.

Pros and cons of turnover

While turmoil in the ranks isn’t good, sometimes it’s wise to get rid of people who aren’t working out. In that sense, it’s obvious that some of Trump’s firings may have made his administration more efficient.

Incoming administrations often fill key spots with top campaign aides who have proved their loyalty, says Matthew Dickinson, professor of political science at Middlebury College. But skill with campaigns doesn’t necessarily translate to skill at the difficult, political job of governance. In that sense, some of Trump’s high profile firings, such as his dismissal of strategist Steve Bannon, may have strengthened his team.

“I think Trump is learning on the fly,” says Dr. Dickinson.

But not all moves may have made the White House staff better. According to the Associated Press, Trump has recently told confidants that he needs to follow his own instincts more, and pay less heed to staff members who raise warning signs on particular policies or flat tell him “no.”

Presidents do need to maintain a diversity of opinion in their inner ranks, says Dickinson. In that sense, it would not be a good thing if Trump were just surrounding himself with an inner corps of “yes” staffers who will acquiesce in his impulsive moves.

“It is tough to hear somebody always disagreeing with you. The risk is you put yourself in an echo chamber,” Dickinson says.

Usually, presidential administrations face some turmoil in the first year as they weed out unsuitable appointees, then settle down for a period of stability. Some officials leave as mid-term elections approach, then the exodus grows as the end of a term nears. Working in the White House is exhausting under any president; appointees often want to get out and make some money from their experience while they can.

The Trump White House hasn’t yet reached that initial stable point. That may be putting things mildly – the backbiting and infighting has reached the point where news reports talk of rock bottom morale. The Washington Post report on McMaster’s possible transfer went so far as to say the mood in the White House now “verges on mania.”

That context puts all the leaks about personnel moves in an odd context, say some observers. “It’s almost like they’re a cry for help,” says Chris Edelson of American University.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman during a bilateral meeting, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh.

If strategic relationships crave stability and dependability, the connection between the United States and its longtime Middle East ally Saudi Arabia has faced more than the usual challenges in the past year – perhaps especially in the last two weeks.

But with Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, coming next week to assess ties with the Trump administration and the country beyond, he no longer needs to conduct a desperate search for a new White House point man to replace the president’s demoted son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Instead, the de facto Saudi ruler is set to arrive in Washington Monday with a sense of confidence. In current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, the kingdom has an administration ally on its overriding issue of Iran who has security clearance, the ear of the president, and is designated to fill the post as the United States’ top diplomat.

In short, the crown prince, whose own rise to power defied royal family conventions, may be poised to appreciate how the recent White House turmoil giveth, even as it taketh away.

As he embarks next week on a several-day, multi-city tour of the United States, Mohammed bin Salman is meeting Tuesday with President Trump and other White House officials before meeting business and political leaders across the country. 

Saudi insiders and US analysts say the visit is a chance for Saudi Arabia to reassess the investment it has made in the Trump administration and especially to seize the opportunity to push for policy change and action from what it regards as the most pro-Saudi White House in decades. If there’s any urgency, analysts say, it stems from a concern that the administration could someday be immobilized by potential scandal or its own internal turmoil and turnover.

Nevertheless, observers say the Trump White House has operated in a way the crown prince could relate to: a dynastic family mixing business with politics, millionaires granting positions of power to relatives, and an atmosphere where personal ties – and at times vendettas – matter more than facts and traditional qualifications.

Evan Vucci/AP

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at the Royal Court Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 20, 2017. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman connected quickly with Mr. Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, another young man who suddenly came into a position of power.

Moving beyond Kushner?

US experts and Saudi insiders say the prince quickly cemented a personal relationship with the Trump White House to advance Saudi interests, connecting with Mr. Kushner, another young man in his 30s who suddenly came into a position of power.

One year on, the results have been mixed.

Although ties are immensely better than with the Obama administration, there has been tough talk but no action – diplomatic, political, or military – from the Trump administration against Iran, Saudi Arabia’s sectarian and strategic rival. Mr. Trump has issued strongly worded tweets and has denounced Qatar for supporting “terrorism,” but the US has not backed Riyadh’s blockade of its Gulf neighbor.

The Saudis have watched with concern an administration lurching from crisis to controversy on a near daily basis. Even more alarming for Riyadh are reports that Trump has cooled on Kushner, who has lost his security clearance and is facing increasing legal scrutiny.

“I think Saudi Arabia has unstated, but nonetheless very real concerns about the chaos that is going on in the Trump administration and in particular what it might mean for their best friend Jared Kushner,” says Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution expert and author of “Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR.”

“One part of this trip is trying to get a handle on where the Trump administration is going and what is its future.”

Iran, Iran, Iran

But if the Saudis may be losing a key ally in Kushner, they gained a key partner this week for their number one diplomatic and political priority.

As a congressman in 2014 and 2015, secretary of State nominee Pompeo repeatedly advocated military strikes on Iran. As CIA director he has met with Saudi leadership, and has reportedly built up a rapport with Saudi leaders, particularly the crown prince, US experts and Saudi insiders say.

“Nominee Mike Pompeo has a very deep appreciation of the pivotal role Saudi Arabia has played in terms of countering violent extremist groups, and has spoken about the destructive and destabilizing role Iran has played in the region,” says Fahad Nazer, a political consultant to the Saudi Embassy in Washington who does not speak on their behalf.

“I think there is a lot of agreement on some very important policy issues, and there will be a very good relationship between him and the Saudi leadership.”

While Trump has cited scrapping the Iranian nuclear deal as a priority and a point of conflict with outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, other observers say the treaty itself is not necessarily a priority for Riyadh, which will push for further action.

Instead, Saudi Arabia will likely push the US to combat Iranian-backed militias – confirmed and alleged – in Iraq, Yemen and Syria; disrupt the flow of Iranian militants and arms in the Arab world; and ramp up pressure to isolate Tehran economically and politically to counter its alleged agenda of regional hegemony and interference.

Saudi and US experts say Riyadh also will urge the US to support its economic blockade of Qatar and isolate the Gulf nation diplomatically, another issue on which Mr. Tillerson was at odds with Trump and the Saudis.

Nuclear aspirations

The crown prince has his eyes set on another prize in Washington: a nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabia is finally pushing forward its decade-old nuclear energy program, with plans to construct as many as 16 reactors to produce 15 percent of the kingdom’s energy needs by 2040 – an $80 billion project that has attracted the interest of US, French and Russian energy firms.

Previous negotiations with the Obama administration for a nuclear cooperation deal collapsed in 2015. Riyadh refused to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing – key technologies for developing a nuclear weapon and a concession made by the UAE that paved the way for its own deal with the US in 2009.

Fears persist in Washington that although the project is for peaceful energy, Riyadh may use uranium enrichment as a backdoor to a nuclear weapon and ignite a nuclear arms race with Iran.

These fears came to the forefront with reports of a warning issued by the crown prince, who also serves as Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, that the kingdom would develop a nuclear bomb if it believed Iran had done so.

 “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” the prince told CBS in an interview, an excerpt of which was released Thursday.

With the Trump administration looking to revive the US nuclear industry, observers say Mohammed bin Salman is likely to push for a nuclear cooperation deal – one without a provision barring uranium enrichment – by personally dangling the prospect of billions of dollars of potential contracts for US firms.

Image makeover?

In an effort to change the kingdom’s image and reach out to potential allies beyond the Trump White House, the prince is also using his cross-country tour to tout recent social and legal reforms to brand himself as a progressive reformer.

He is likely to highlight a series of reforms that have shaken the kingdom’s conservative core: allowing women the right to drive and serve in the military, lifting a ban on movie theaters and music concerts, and curbing the powers of the religious police.

He will also play up his role as an ally on the war on extremism, emphasizing Riyadh’s intelligence sharing with the US, its commitment to crack down on extremist speeches and sermons, and Saudi Arabia’s renewed commitment to “moderate Islam.”

On a visit that includes talks with Apple and Amazon executives and a stop-over in Silicon Valley, the crown prince will also sell his economic reform strategy. His so-called Vision 2030 calls to open Saudi Arabia up to investment, move on from oil, and open the conservative kingdom up to tourism, cultural events, and the arts.

But the prince’s sales pitch likely will face some resistance over recent high-profile Saudi initiatives.

Senators from both parties are preparing a joint resolution barring US involvement in and support for the Saudi war in Yemen, in which more than 10,000 civilians have been killed. The US reportedly has provided the Saudis with intelligence, fuel, logistics, and millions of dollars’ worth of munitions.

And recent coverage in the US press has included reports this week alleging the Saudis’ use of torture, and earlier the detention of more than 100 high-profile Saudi princes and businessmen on corruption charges who were forced to hand over assets to the Saudi government.

After nearly two turbulent decades in power, Vladimir Putin on Sunday will be overwhelmingly handed another six-year term by Russian voters, one that may prove his most challenging yet and which – under Russia's current constitution – should be his last.

Few Russian leaders have lasted as long or more radically changed the face of this gargantuan and unwieldy country than Mr. Putin. He has defied regular predictions of his political demise, and re-invented himself more than once. As he steps into what will be effectively his fifth term in office, he will need to do so again.

Today's Russia, with all of its strengths and flaws, is very much the product of Putin's priorities. It has proven far more resilient than critics at home and abroad ever expected, while forecasts of doom have become a greatly devalued currency. It will now fall to Putin himself to confront the serious problems that his own choices have instigated.

These include deep alienation from the West, which grows worse by the day, with the accompanying deprivation of Western finance and technology that Russian business had earlier relied on; economic stagnation that has so far resisted all Putin's pledges of reform; and a top-heavy and corrupt bureaucracy. And, perhaps most crucial of all, Putin must create a plan to prepare Russia for life without him.

“Putin has been successful in consolidating political power, and keeping Russians united behind him,” says Nikolai Petrov, an expert at Moscow's Higher School of Economics. “But it has been at the expense of putting off a lot of needed changes in the Russian economy and the political and legal systems. The time has come to pay the price.”

Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin/Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to take part in his presidential campaign rally at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Mar. 3.

Putin's popularity

The election that will ordain Putin is a relatively new innovation in the history of Russia, where dynasties, revolutions and politburos traditionally ensconced the leader. Still, there is no suspense about the outcome because it is not an exercise in free and fair political competition.

But neither is it meaningless. A bevy of competitors, representing real opposition viewpoints, have had the opportunity to express themselves more-or-less freely during the campaign, although Putin never deigned to debate them directly. Still, the process has been rigorously stage-managed by the Kremlin, with state media creating a sense of inevitability around him, and potentially disruptive rivals like Alexei Navalny excluded from the ballot in advance.

The main factor that ensures Putin's easy re-election, however, is his undeniable popularity among Russians.

It may be little appreciated in the West, and only reluctantly conceded by Putin's domestic opponents, but the former KGB colonel inherited a country on the verge of collapse 18 years ago. He reunited it under strong central power, oversaw a decade of strong economic growth that spread a semblance of prosperity throughout much of the society, weaned Russia from dependence on Western financial institutions and advice, rebuilt the military, and gave Russians a sense of being citizens of a great power once more.

“Putin has proven himself to be the right person for Russia, over and over again,” says Sergei Markov, director of the independent Institute of Political Studies and a former Kremlin adviser. “Of course he made a lot of mistakes, and he has a lot of problems facing his next term. But people in the West don't understand how Russians view him. He isn't comparable to his contemporaries, like Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, or Donald Trump. We can already see that he is a giant of Russian history, something like our FDR or Charles de Gaulle.”

The last pre-election poll, carried out by the state-funded VTsIOM public opinion agency last week, found that 74 percent of Russians intend to vote on Sunday, and of them 69 percent say they will cast their ballots for Putin. Coming in a distant second is Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin with 7 percent, ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 5 percent, liberal Ksenia Sobchak with 2 percent, and five others running at 1 percent or less.

Russia's geopolitical woes

The most acute feature of Putin's current six-year term was the disastrous collapse of relations with the United States and the West in general. The worst phase began, ironically, amid Putin's biggest attempt to win Western acceptance and respect by staging the ultra-expensive 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. The overthrow of Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in a Kiev uprising prompted Putin to order the annexation of Russian-populated Crimea, and to sponsor a still-ongoing pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

That led to escalating Western sanctions against Moscow, and a seemingly endless train of diplomatic crises, including sanctions and embassy expulsions over Russia's alleged interference in US elections, Olympic doping scandals, and the current intensifying spat around the nerve gas poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain. On Thursday, the US levied new sanctions against several Russian individuals and entities in connection with election meddling.

Through all this the Russian public has stood by Putin; indeed, his approval ratings have remained over 80 percent. Russians seem to appreciate his defiance of Western pressure, and there is no sign of them abandoning him.

Yet, there is no doubt that Russia is boxed-in by his choices. Confrontation with the West was the downfall of the former USSR, and many Russian experts fret that that ongoing sanctions may gradually bury Russia's hopes of modernizing its economy by absorbing cutting-edge Western technologies and integrating with world markets. The Kremlin has made much of plans for a “pivot to Asia” as an alternative to Western engagement, and that may yet change the face of global geopolitics, but it remains a largely hypothetical work-in-progress.

“Relations with the West took a turn that Putin didn't expect, and he has probably underestimated its long-term consequences,” says Mr. Petrov. “He didn't anticipate the outcry over the annexation of Crimea. He may have hoped that the election of Donald Trump would set things right, but that definitely didn't happen. Putin is a person who likes to keep all his options open, but these changes look irreversible. That is going to haunt his next term.”

Potential flashpoints at home

Some experts say Putin sidelined economic reform after 2014 in order to deal with the international crisis. He has succeeded in fending off the double-whammy of Western sanctions and falling oil prices, and the Russian economy actually bounced back from recession, growing about 2 percent last year.

“The problem is that the growth we are experiencing is the result of state intervention, not organic private sector growth,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert with the Moscow Carnegie Center. “The state is everywhere in the economy. That limits the prospects for future growth and reinforces authoritarianism in the political sphere. State capitalism cannot exist without political control. Economic monopoly requires political monopoly.

“Putin's approach in his next term will be to create a more technocratic elite; appoint people who are younger, more efficient in his eyes. He will try to do it without fundamentally reforming the system, and that means the economic stagnation will continue,” he predicts.

The last six years have seen relatively few upsurges of social discontent, though there have been some warning signals. But Kremlin plans to implement pension and tax reforms, to increase state revenue, suggest that could change.

“After the election we will be heading into a period of intense social reforms, and the likelihood of popular push-back will increase,” says Petrov. “Police forces around the country are being re-trained and re-equipped, so it seems that authorities are expecting this.”

Post-Putin Russia

But the biggest uncertainty revolves around Putin's plans for handling succession, a critical question that he has so far failed to address. Both on the grounds of his advancing age – he will be 72 in 2024 – and the Russian Constitution's limitation of a president to two consecutive terms, some hard decisions will have to be made.

“Putin is going to be a lame duck for the next six years and that means that elites will be scheming and struggling [over the succession] for all that time,” says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, Russia's leading expert on the country's shifting elites.

“It takes a generational form, with older groups wanting Putin to stay in some way, because everything they have depends on him. Younger people want reforms, a change of the guard, upward mobility for themselves. Putin is still able to be the arbiter of this, but as the question of succession becomes more acute, the struggle will intensify,” Ms. Kryshtanovskaya says.

“This has happened many times before in Russian history,” she adds. “The long reign of a czar ends, and is followed by turmoil, a war of all against all. We need to avoid this nightmare, and I hope that Putin understands that.”

Indian cinema is not all light and airy Bollywood.

When the Indian filmmaker Sanjay Bhansali announced the nationwide release early this year of his film “Padmaavat” – a historical drama based on the legend of a 14th century Rajput queen who along with 16,000 women of the Rajput caste chose to die by self-immolation rather than bow down to the Muslim sultan of Delhi – it enraged India’s Rajput community and other conservative political forces.

Violent protests ensued, and the groups demanded that “Padmaavat” be kept off cinema screens, attacking the plot as revisionist – and appalled at rumors of a love scene between the queen and the sultan. As the governments of four conservative states enacted bans of the film in the interest of public safety, some rights activists and proponents of freedom of expression warned that the rage was nothing less than an attack on India’s democracy.

Moreover, they said, the ban was further evidence of a wave of antidemocratic populism that in 2014 had carried Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power – echoing a global trend that has worried democracy advocates in recent years.

Enter the Indian Supreme Court. In late January the country’s highest judicial body ruled that freedom of expression trumped all other concerns, and ordered states to permit and provide security for the screenings. The movie was released across India without serious incident – and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms prevailed.

The “Padmaavat” drama was no revolution or watershed national election, but it provided a small measure of the perseverance and buoyancy of India’s democracy. At a time when even many of the world’s established democracies are showing deep strains, leading some experts to warn of democracy’s retreat in the face of rising authoritarianism, does India stand out?

There are troubling trends, to be sure, from rising Hindunationalism to mounting corruption. But India’s democracy – hands down the world’s largest, based on a voting population nearing one billion – may challenge the simmering global thought that perhaps democracy no longer works to govern diverse, complex societies facing 21st-century challenges.

“India’s democracy is alive and kicking,” says Ornit Shani, a specialist in Indian democracy who teaches at the University of Haifa in Israel. “It’s facing challenges of its own, but it kicks.”

Sivaram V/Reuters

A cinemagoer takes a selfie in front of a poster of Bollywood movie 'Padmaavat' outside a movie theatre in Kochi, India on Jan. 25.

A 'more encouraging story'

Part of what gives India’s democracy its glow is how the system has managed to withstand the pressures of the conservative populist juggernaut that arrived with Mr. Modi. As other democracies as different as Poland and the Philippines have shocked the world with their retreats from such basic norms as an independent judiciary and due process, India – thanks in part to a raucous and empowered civil society – has in some measure resisted the global trend.

India’s courts are woefully backlogged, and rising communalism clashes – sometimes violently – with equally rising demands for individual rights. Some press freedom advocates complain that cowed media toe a government line, as well. Yet while acknowledging those trends, some democracy experts underscore how mobilized rights advocates are moving the country forward.

“India is showing some signs of polarization and illiberal populism, but the more encouraging story in India is one of strong activism and society pushing back – often successfully – against the forces that would restrict rights like freedom of expression,” says Thomas Carothers, an expert on democracy around the world at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

That is not to say India’s democracy doesn’t have its “problems,” he adds, but rather that it has appeared to resist global pressures on governance better than some. “Part of the reason [India] has been a bright spot is that it has been a fairly stable and functioning democracy, even as others have fully retreated from democratic rule,” he says.

Earlier this year the Washington-based watchdog Freedom House concluded that “liberal democracy is under severe threat, even peril, all over the globe,” as its president Michael Abramowitz said in a January briefing announcing the group’s annual “Freedom in the World” report. The report found that India’s democracy, meanwhile, had remained stable over the previous year, even as Venezuela sank to “military dictatorship” and the United States experienced democratic “retreat.”

Two-sided picture

In India, however, longtime observers say the situation is more complex than the 65 years of mostly free and fair electoral politics that the world tends to cite in assessing Indian democracy.

“India presents a unique paradox of a robust democracy, particularly on the electoral level, but one maintaining many limitations on rights and individual freedoms,” says Yamini Aiyar, the president and chief executive of New Delhi’s Center for Policy Research. Intermarriage between castes is legal, for example – but community restrictions on it often go unchallenged.

Many forms of political action in India – protesting a supposedly offensive movie, for example – remain “very much an act of community,” particularly religious and ethnic communities, she adds. But where its democracy comes up short “is in translating that political representation into a better life for individuals.”

Ms. Aiyar smirks a bit when told of the Freedom House report card. The flying colors issued to India may reflect a more macro international appreciation of the stability of the world’s largest and more diverse democracy, she says, rather than a micro assessment of India’s enduring democratic challenges.

Take the high number of criminals in office, for example – which some political experts cite as a serious threat to India’s democracy. Whereas voters in many countries tend to shun criminals, in India the masses seem to turn to them as individuals who have demonstrated they know how to get results, says Milan Vaishnav, an expert in India’s political systems at Carnegie.

“It’s not just coincidence that at the time of their election about a third of members of Parliament and state legislators faced ongoing criminal prosecutions – with about 1 in 5 charged with really serious crimes ranging from extortion and committing grievous bodily injury to murder,” Dr. Vaishnav says. “With deepening frustration about government’s ability to deliver, you end up with people opting for someone who has proven he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get things done.”

The danger Vaishnav sees is that India’s democracy ends up something of a two-sided Janus – on the one hand, working remarkably well in terms of elections and giving the diverse elements of a complex and populous society a voice; but on the other “feeding growing disappointment about what the system delivers in between elections.”

New voices rising

But while the challenges continue, Aiyar also ticks off a list of “signs of the vitality of our democracy.”

One is what she calls “new social formations” that she says are building a voice and a measure of political power, despite facing regular threat. One example: India’s LGBT community, which managed early this year to get Supreme Court review of anti-gay laws that states and Parliament have often resisted changing.

Another is the batch of new, mostly young leaders who are rising in politics and hoping to change the conversation, something like the rush of women candidates in the US in the wake of President Trump’s election. Aiyar cites the election of numerous young first-timers in December state elections in Gujarat, Modi’s home state.

She also cites an “uprising” among India’s Dalits, the people at the bottom of India’s Hindu caste system. Working on their own and with the help of national solidarity organizations, the Dalits are pushing back more than ever against continuing widespread discrimination – and against government failure to enforce existing anti-discrimination laws. Dalit women, for example, have long been exploited by police who see them as easy targets for bribes and petty theft (such as of their gold rings and nose piercings).

“In a political landscape typified by cronyism, “ Aiyar says, “that there is space for new voices to rise up and become players is an encouraging story.”

And on paper, at least, those voices have always been recognized. Dr. Shani insists that many of the signs of strength in India’s democracy have at their foundation an electoral system that since independence has operated under the assumption that every adult – women, illiterates, the poor, marginalized groups – has a right “to vote and thus to be heard.”

“The British thought it simply couldn’t be done, that universal suffrage was impractical in India and doomed to failure,” says Shani, who has just published “How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise,” which chronicles the Herculean task of how a newly independent India created a list of its 173 million voters.

“But when you consider the basis of India’s electoral system – that all adults are really individuals, each with a voice – you see the roots of some of the positive aspects of India’s democracy today,” she says.

India’s first national elections were in 1952 (The same year the US held a presidential election with an electorate of about just 90 million, Shani likes to point out – and with a system still operating with something less than universal suffrage). Sixty-five years later, India’s hulking democracy may be straining, and failing to deliver in ways that more than a billion Indians expect.

But it is also offering fresh evidence of why it is “still kicking.”

“India’s DNA of multiple ethnicities and multiple religious communities, not to mention the variety of linguistic groups, makes for such a complex society,” says Aiyar. Despite the shortcomings and disappointments, she adds, “The idea is still pretty strong that managing the multiple pressures of the diversity of India is only possible in a democratic system.”

*This story was updated to reflect the correct number of voters in 1952.

In America, St. Patrick's Day, which arrives on Saturday, means peak exposure to a particular class of assertion that Irish people charitably refer to as "blarney."

You might hear, for instance, that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland (they were never there in the first place), that the color historically associated with him is green (it's actually blue), that he evangelized with a four-leaf clover (three leaves, to represent the Trinity), or that an Irish monk “discovered” America 500 years before Columbus (utter bollocks).

These misconceptions are relatively harmless, as misconceptions go, but there's another one, strangling some online comment threads about racism like an invasive vine, that some historians have been working tirelessly to stamp out. It’s the claim that Irish people were slaves in the Americas, particularly the British West Indies, and that they were treated just as badly as – or worse than – their African counterparts.

“I conservatively estimate that tens of millions of people have been exposed to ‘Irish slaves’ disinformation in one form or another on social media,” says Liam Hogan, a research librarian in Limerick, Ireland, who has led efforts to debunk this myth. “These people, some of whom are Irish-American, are essentially digging up our ancestors’ bones and sharpening them into rhetorical weapons to use against people of color.”

Fueled by an influential 2001 book by Irish journalist Sean O’Callaghan titled “To Hell or Barbados,” the myth began propagating online in far-right circles in the past decade, eventually making its way into mainstream publications such as Scientific American, which corrected their article, and Daily Kos, which didn’t.

Today, you’ll find the claim popping up in comment threads on issues ranging from reparations to police brutality, where it is nearly always deployed as a way to criticize African-Americans and other nonwhites for being too vocal in their demands for social justice. “We were slaves too,” the typical comment goes, “and you don’t hear us complaining.”

A crucial distinction

The myth draws on a false equivalency between two distinct systems of forced labor in the British colonial period: indentured servitude and chattel slavery. Indentured servants in the British colonies were legal persons bound to service by a time-limited, non-hereditary labor contract, often signed in exchange for passage to the New World. Slaves, by contrast, were considered property, a subhuman legal status that was passed from mother to child, in perpetuity.

In Barbados, which was first settled by the English in 1627, the largest group of indentured servants were Irish, although others came from England, Scotland, Wales, and other European countries. Some American Indians were also indentured, while others were enslaved. Early on, many indentured servants volunteered to migrate, but during the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell’s subsequent conquest of Ireland, many others, including children, were rounded up and shipped to the Americas, mainly to work on the sugar plantations.

The life of an indentured servant was undoubtedly harsh. “Servants could be beaten and whipped for not working fast enough. Servants could complain to the courts about mistreatment. Some did and won; they more frequently ran away from their master for relief rather than risk incurring their wrath after a failed attempt to secure justice,” says Mr. Hogan. “Masters were very rarely punished for abusing their servants, and courts could be very slow to intervene and protect a servant.”

“Mistreatment was rampant,” says Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist at The City College of New York who specializes in the racial history of Barbados. “There was certainly discrimination against Irish Catholics in Barbados.”

Yet as difficult as conditions were for white indentured servants, they retained their legal status as human beings, and their bondage was temporary. “To be a slave in these colonies was a life sentence. There was no end. No escape,” says Hogan. “Their children were perpetual slaves. Their children’s children were perpetual slaves. A slave's entire bloodline was condemned to slavery, for all time. The colonial slave codes did not treat them as fellow humans, but as livestock.”

“The most common punishment for a servant who ran away was an extension of their indenture,” he says. “But a slave, suffering perpetual bondage, could be subjected to an array of grotesque physical punishments.”

“The legal distinction is incredibly important,” says Dr. Reilly, “because it leads to social distinctions that still weigh heavily on how we experience our racial landscape in the 21st century.”

These distinctions have stood in the way of Irish-Americans and African-Americans developing a sense of shared suffering. “Throughout the 20th century, there was this big divide between Irish Americans and African-Americans that was only exacerbated by these particularly racist skewed understandings of history where one form of oppression outweighed another,” says Reilly. “I don't necessarily see that as being a productive way to view these histories.”

A shift seems to be under way, however, as more and more voices have stepped up to correct the record. For instance, a 2016 open letter signed by 98 scholars and writers asked publications that have spread the myth of Irish slaves to correct their articles. And each year, more and more news outlets are running stories that seek to debunk the myth. 

“What I think has been a really positive outcome of this has been the mainstream media being willing to speak about these issues that have otherwise been just ignored,” says Reilly. “There’s this a growing awareness that it's correcting a misuse of history.”

Reuters

South Africa's Jacob Zuma gestures after announcing his resignation as president on Feb. 14 in Pretoria.

The list keeps getting longer, and for good reason.

On March 16, Jacob Zuma of South Africa became the latest current or former leader of a democracy to be charged with corruption. He now joins many other leaders – in nations from South Korea to Brazil, Israel to Argentina – who have recently faced prosecution because of rising calls to end a culture of impunity in high places.

With many countries embracing autocracy, every victory against a corrupt elected official can help ensure transparency and accountability in democratic states.

Mr. Zuma, who was forced to step down as president last month by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), faces charges related to a government arms deal in the late 1990s, before he was elected. For years he was able to fend off the charges, which only helped send a message that anyone in government can be a law unto themselves rather than to constitutional principles, such as equality before the law.

His political downfall came in large part from a robust combination of players committed to honest government in South Africa, such as civic activists, investigative journalists, and key prosecutors and judges. They all helped expose Zuma’s alleged self-enrichment. Ordinary citizens also began to see a connection between ANC corruption and their own economic woes.

The public upwelling against the ANC has forced the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, to make a bold promise: “This is the year in which we will turn the tide of corruption in our public institutions.”

With the ANC’s popularity in decline, Mr. Ramaphosa knows he must unite the nation through a vigorous anti-graft campaign, starting within his own party. If he can shore up enough political capital, he might be able to achieve difficult reforms, such as equitable land distribution.

The other side of the argument, however, is that the “rainbow nation” of the late Nelson Mandela has a recent history of balancing harsh justice with necessary mercy for ex-rulers. South Africa is famous for its attempt to use a “truth and reconciliation commission” to offer leniency for those who confess their apartheid-era wrongdoing. Ramaphosa could be tempted to pardon Zuma – if he is convicted – to prevent potential violence among Zuma’s ethnic base of Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal province.

But first the trial must proceed, and only then can South Africans send a yet another message to their leaders about the best standards of justice for the nation. Their values, not just their leaders, are at stake.