2015 has been a dramatic year in elections around the world: old leaders were toppled, upstarts and novices seized the helm, and embattled governments somehow managed to cling on. Here, the experts who covered them take stock of what’s happened—and look at what’s in store for 2016.

To read much of the media coverage of the shootings at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa, you might think that Canada has just lost its innocence—that sleepy Ottawa has finally been dragged into the real world of 21st century security and that Canada had never been the target of terrorism before.