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Elections need fixing! Inside the 11 November edition of the Guardian Weekly

<span>Photograph: PetrStransky/Guardian</span>
Photograph: PetrStransky/Guardian

From Israel’s post-election gridlock to … Spain’s post-election gridlock, democratic stasis has been one of the year’s predominant themes. Last Sunday, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez fought his second election of 2019 to break the political stalemate in Madrid. The result? Another hung parliament. Has a combination of political deadlock and instability – allied with corruption, voter suppression and broken systems – exposed a fatal flaw at the heart of many democracies? Or can voters around the world find a way out? This week we investigate why democracy, for many, isn’t working.

From the moment in 2017 that Bolivia’s supreme court overturned a 2016 referendum ending the country’s two-term presidential limit, October’s presidential election was always likely to be tumultuous. Quite how, nobody could have predicted. As soon as Evo Morales was declared the victor, protests broke out across Bolivia. He stepped down last Sunday after the head of the army asked him to resign when a report questioning the validity of his victory was published. With Morales and his deputy gone, Bolivia is in the midst of a power vacuum. Who will fill it? Dan Collyns reports from La Paz.

Britain’s election campaign is well under way and we know what that means: gaffes. Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg led the way, accusing Grenfell disaster victims of lacking common sense, before his colleagues and other parties picked up the slack. All that was later overshadowed by the resignation of Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and then, on Monday, by Brexit fundamentalist Nigel Farage’s announcement that he would be pulling his Brexit party candidates from seats won by the Conservatives in 2017. We wrap up week one of the UK’s wintery election news.

We also feature a captivating report by Tom Wall about an elderly American man with dementia who was found wandering down a road in Hereford in the west of England. When no one reported Roger Curry missing, it was the beginning of a transatlantic mystery – with an unhappy ending for all involved.

In culture we interview the artist and director Steve McQueen whose new project involved photographing a class of seven and eight year olds from London schools. The result – now on display at the Tate Britain and on billboards around the city is a stunning portrait of the future of the capital.

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