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India

Date: April or May, 2009

Who's running: Manmohan Singh (Indian National Congress), L.K Advani (Bharatiya Janata Party)

What's at stake: Following the terrorist attacks that rocked the financial center of Mumbai in late November, leaving more than 200 dead and 300 wounded, members of the ruling Congress Party feared voters would punish them in the upcoming elections to the Indian legislature. However, that appears increasingly unlikely. Congress notched surprise victories in three state elections in early December over the Hindu nationalist BJP.

Though the BJP tried to turn that election into a referendum on security, it appears that development issues such as access to clean water and electricity were foremost on voters' minds. India has been hit hard by the global economic slowdown - industrial production has fallen for the first time in 15 years - and it appears that these economic concerns may still trump fears of terrorism.

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Iran

Date: June 12, 2009

Who's running: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former Majlis Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, and maybe Tehran Mayor Mohammad Qalibaf and former President Mohammed Khatami

What's at stake: Critics have blamed Ahmadinejad for the worsening state of the Iranian economy, which has been further damaged by plummeting oil prices. In November, 60 of Iran's economists published a letter accusing Ahmadinejad's policies of producing skyrocketing inflation rates and high unemployment. Furthermore, the letter charged, Ahmadinejad's "tension-making interaction with the outside world," with causing foreign investments to flee the country.

Former President Mohammad Khatami has yet to declare whether he will be a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. If the Iranian public rallies to Khatami, it could potentially pave the way for a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran. Don't, however, count Ahmadinejad out yet. He still retains an important trump card: the support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

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Mexico

Date: July 5, 2009

Who's Running: The National Action Party (PAN), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

What's at stake: The term of President Felipe Calderón, the leader of PAN, has been marked by an increasingly aggressive, increasingly bloody, and increasingly controversial war against Mexico's powerful drug cartels. Drug violence claimed nearly 5,000 lives in 2008.

The legislative elections will determine whether Calderón maintains support in the Chamber of Deputies to continue his drug war. In the 2006 elections, PAN claimed 206 out of the 500 total seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while the leftist PRD won 127 seats. The PRD has been critical of Calderón's confrontational approach, and has called for a "National Agreement to Combat Organized Crime," which would include a discussion on the legalization of drugs. If the PAN emerges victorious, Calderón will have a free hand to continue his prosecution of the drug war. If the PRD gains strength, he may find himself hamstrung by a hostile legislature.

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Sudan

Date: Scheduled for July 2009; the U.N. has recommended that they be delayed to avoid the rainy season in southern Sudan

Who's running: President Omar al-Bashir of the National Congress Party (NCP) and Salva Kiir of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)

What's at stake: These presidential and legislative elections are an important milestone for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005 between the predominantly Arab government in Khartoum and the southern-based former rebels and marking the end of the second Sudanese civil war. The rival factions have been building up their arms in anticipation of the elections, hoping to expand their support through extra-democratic means. This has lead to increasingly frequent clashes, particularly in the contested Southern Kordofan region.

Meanwhile, President Bashir finds himself embattled both internationally and domestically. A prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has requested a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of genocide and war crimes in the Darfur region. Kiir, the head of the southern SPLM who has been Bashir's partner in a unity government since 2005, has announced that he will oppose him in the coming elections. Even if Bashir manages to cling to power, a strong showing by the opposition could foreshadow the secession of Southern Sudan in a vote scheduled for 2011, in accordance with the CPA.

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Germany

Date: Sept. 27, 2009

Who's running: Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union), Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party)

What's at stake: While the United States and most of Europe pass ever-larger stimulus packages to combat the global economic downturn, Chancellor Angela Merkel has remained a lonely voice in opposition. Her insistence that Germany would not get involved in "a competition to outdo one another with an endless list of new proposals," which she deemed "senseless," earned her the nickname of "Madame No" across Europe. The approaching Bundestag elections will test whether German voters approve of her low-key approach to the financial crisis.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union currently forms a grand coalition government with its main rival, the center-left Social Democratic Party, which has nominated Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as its leader. While current polls suggest that Merkel will beat Steinmeier, it does not appear that either party can increase its support enough to form a governing coalition with one of Germany's smaller parties. Thus, many expect the grand coalition, which Der Spiegel dubbed a "loveless marriage" and a recipe for political paralysis, to continue.

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Afghanistan

Date: Late 2009

Who's running: Hamid Karzai, former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, and current Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahady

What's at stake: This presidential election will not only gauge President Karzai's success at weathering charges of corruption and ineffectiveness, but the extent to which the U.S. military has succeeded in dealing with the renewed Taliban insurgency. Karzai's brother is believed to be the head of a drug trafficking group involved in the opium and heroin trade. More damaging to his reputation inside Afghanistan, Karzai's government is perceived to be largely ineffective outside of Kabul, unable to provide security of basic social welfare programs.

Smelling blood, Taliban leader Mullah Omar has rejected Karzai's requests for reconciliation and called for a boycott of the upcoming elections. If the U.S. military cannot co-opt or defeat large segments of the Taliban insurgency before the election, Afghans in the provinces may not be able to vote, or could be attacked by the Taliban at polling stations. Such a fiasco could destroy Karzai's legitimacy and cause the U.S. and its remaining allies to question their commitment to Afghanistan.