Teaching Comparative

Parliamentary dirty secret

2012-02-23T07:59:00.000-06:00

The loud "Hear, hear" and the opposing "Shame, shame" calls in the UK's House of Commons have become common knowledge since the first live radio broadcast in 1978. Ten years later, television brought the sometimes rowdy scene to more people (although the fixed cameras didn't often allow viewers to identify the loud rowdies).

One comparative politics textbook does note that sessions begin late in the day and that there are several members' bars in Westminster that open before sessions of Commons commence.

It took the report of a visiting Canadian parliamentarian to bring that connection into wider circulation.

[BTW, if you want to use this article with younger students, be aware that the offending MP is quoted as using a 'not safe for classroom' epithet.]

Head-butts and flying fists break out at Britain’s House of Commons

Canada’s Speaker of the House Andrew Scheer… got a taste of the… world of Britain’s parliament, as he reportedly found himself in the midst of an MP fistfight.

According to British newspapers, Mr. Scheer was part of a Canadian delegation invited to visit Strangers, one of several drinking establishments inside the House of Commons…

There, according to reports, he was one of dozens of visitors who witnessed a startling scene as Eric Joyce, a Labour MP, went on a violent rampage against Tory MPs and was arrested.

Mr. Joyce, the member for Falkirk, reportedly began dancing erratically [and] shouting…

He then head-butted Stuart Andrew, the Tory MP for Pudsey, punched a few more people, and head-butted the MP again…

It took five security officers to calm the over-excited MP, according to the Evening Standard. He was arrested on suspicion of assault and on Thursday morning was suspended from the Labour caucus. The British Speaker of the House, John Bercow, told reporters he would take the incident “very seriously.”

Heavy drinking is considered a serious problem in Britain’s Parliament. There are bars adjoining the Commons and Lords chambers which are packed before and after sittings; it is widely reported that some MPs have numerous drinks before attending sittings – even in the morning. Stories about drunken brawls and misbehaviour among parliamentarians abound…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

This blog -- all 2,500 posts -- is brought to you by The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know. It is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

And by The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools. It also is available from the publisher

On to victory

2012-02-23T06:07:00.002-06:00

According to a Reuters report in the New York Times, Putin's supporters are beginning a celebration. The tone of this report is quite different from the tone of reports by Times' reporters.

Thousands Back Putin's Presidential Bid in Moscow

Thousands of people marched in Moscow under Russian flags, balloons and banners on Thursday to back Vladimir Putin's bid to return to the presidency and counter opposition protests that have challenged his authority…

Organisers said tens of thousands were likely to take part in the march and a rally in a sports stadium which the prime minister was widely expected to address.

The former KGB officer is on course to win the election on March 4, extending his 12-year rule for another six years, although tens of thousands have shown their concern over his return to the Kremlin by protesting in the past two months…

Putin's campaign team, which protrays him as a strong leader and guarantor of stability, has failed to quell reports that many of the people at pro-Putin rallies are paid or coerced into attending by employers and trade unions…

The latest opinion poll this week showed he would win more than 50 percent of the votes on March 4, enough to avoid a second-round runoff. His rivals include Zhirinovsky, communist Gennady Zyuganov and businessman Mikhail Prokhorov…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Whose corruption is it?

2012-02-23T05:41:00.000-06:00

National and local politicians are blaming each other for the problem of corruption in Mexico.

Inmate massacre highlights Mexico jail corruption

Nine guards have confessed to helping Zetas drug gangsters escape from prison before other Zetas slaughtered 44 rival inmates, a state official said late Monday, underlining the enormous corruption inside Mexico's overcrowded, underfunded prisons…

The massacre in this northern state was one of the worst prison killings in Mexico in at least a quarter-century and exposed another weak institution that President Felipe Calderon is relying on to fight his drug war…

An increase in organized crime, extortion, drug trafficking and kidnapping has swelled Mexico's prison population almost 50 percent since 2000. But the government has built no new federal prisons since Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels when he took office in late 2006, leaving existing jails overcrowded…

Of the 47,000 federal inmates in the country, about 29,000 are held in state prisons. That has drawn complaints from Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina and other state governors, who say their jails aren't equipped to hold members of powerful and highly organized drug cartels.

The federal government counters that none of the escapes or mass killings have occurred at federal lockups, and it cites corruption on the state level, not overcrowding, as the main cause of the deaths and escapes…

Prison employees say guards are underpaid, making them more likely to take bribes. And even honest guards are vulnerable to coercion: Many live in neighborhoods where street gangs and drug cartels are active, making it easy to target their families with threats.

The same can be said for Mexico's municipal police forces, another weak flank in Calderon's attack on organized crime. Thousands of local officers - often, entire forces at a time - have been fired, detained or placed under investigation for aiding drug gangs…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Progressive taxes and income redistribution

2012-02-22T05:20:00.000-06:00

Simple minded folk like me have always blithely assumed that progressive taxation made for a more egalitarian distribution of income. I guess I am learning the dangers of simple mindedness.

Lucy Barnes, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, offers some data to demonstrate the dangers of "common sense."

The Facts about Tax Progressivity

So, what are the facts about tax progressivity? The most comprehensive scholarly work on this question to date comes from sociologists, Monica Prasad and YingYing Deng, who use data on individual incomes to calculate total tax burdens at different levels of the income distribution. [There is a link to a PDF version of the paper in the Monkey Cage blog report.] Their main takeaway finding is illustrated in the two figures below, which show the Kakwani index of taxation (a measure of the progressivity of the system that parses out the impact of income concentration on the concentration of the tax burden) for a number of advanced democracies.

These data are from the most recent year available (around 2000 in most cases). The… figure shows those taxes that are paid directly by individuals: income, wealth, property and employee social security contributions…

[There's a second chart in the blog adding the effects of consumption (sales and VATs) taxes to the progressively.]

This claim, that the American tax system is progressive compared to those of its advanced economy peer countries, is hard for many (in both the US and in Europe) to accept. The conventional wisdom is that the United States intervenes comparatively little in redistributing income from rich to poor. It is not that these stylized facts are untrue: the figure below shows the reduction in inequality accomplished by government intervention (again using data from the Luxembourg income study)—both taxes and transfers.

Here the United States takes up its more accustomed place at the bottom of the pack (and it is data like these that have been used in the recent debate to refute the claim that US taxes are progressive). How is it possible that American taxes be progressive, while achieving so little redistribution?…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Alienation and political culture

2012-02-21T05:33:00.000-06:00

Political, social, and economic alienation threaten the basic political culture in the UK and other EU countries. What happens politically if a quarter of the adult population is unemployable?

For London Youth, Down and Out Is Way of Life

For almost two years, Nicki Edwards has been looking for work — any type of work.

She is 19 years old, well-spoken and self-possessed. But like many young people in Britain, she could not afford to remain at her university, making it impossible to find a job…

Perhaps the most debilitating consequence of the euro zone’s economic downturn and its debt-driven austerity crusade has been the soaring rate of youth unemployment. Spain’s jobless rate for people ages 16 to 24 is approaching 50 percent. Greece’s is 48 percent, and Portugal’s and Italy’s, 30 percent. Here in Britain, the rate is 22.3 percent, the highest since such data began being collected in 1992. (The comparable rate for Americans is 18 percent.)

The lack of opportunity is feeding a mounting alienation and anger among young people across Europe — animus that threatens to poison the aspirations of a generation and has already served as a wellspring for a number of violent protests in European cities from Athens to London. And new economic data on Wednesday, showing much of Europe in the doldrums or recession, does little to bolster hopes for a better jobs picture anytime soon…

While youth unemployment has long been a chronic issue here, experts say the British government’s debt-reduction commitment to rein in social spending appears to be making the problem worse, experts say. Insufficient job training and apprenticeship programs, they argue, contribute to the large pool of permanently unemployed young people in Britain…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Why a monarchy in the 21st century?

2012-02-20T05:41:00.000-06:00

Andrew McFadyen, writing for Al Jazeera asks about the meaning of the British English monarchy in a democratic regime.

What does the monarchy say about Britain?

Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating 60 years on the throne. She is a figure of global stature, ruling over the United Kingdom and 15 other countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Furthermore, she is only the second monarch to reach that milestone, after Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901…

Mark Field, the Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster, which includes Buckingham Palace, told Al Jazeera that, as a Conservative and a monarchist, he was immensely proud to have her as one of his constituents.

"The incredible social changes in the last 60 years reinforce the case for a monarchy," said Field. "If you started with a blank piece of paper you would not have a hereditary ruler, but the Queen is a great force for unity in these troubled times."

There is strong evidence that most English people agree with him. According to the polling organisation Ipsos MORI, only 18 per cent of Britons want to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state…

In Scotland, the Royal Family is viewed with much greater indifference.

In 1952, even her title, Elizabeth II, was controversial - in Scotland, there had never been a first. A popular protest song asked: "How can ye hae the Second Liz when the First yin's never been?"…

"I find it hard to see a legitimate role for the hereditary principle in government or the state. I would like to see an elected head of state," Patrick Harvie, the leader of the Scottish Green Party, and Glasgow representative in the Scottish Parliament, told Al Jazeera.

Harvie explained: "I have a problem with the idea that some people have a higher status in society because of their birth, not a problem with the monarch herself, or any of her charming family."

Viewed with cold logic, the idea of hereditary power is very hard to justify.

Imagine the reaction if someone suggested that being manager of Manchester United or Chief Executive of Google should be a hereditary position.

Conservative MP Mark Field agrees that the principle of hereditary power is anti-democratic, but says he would not change it.

"Of course it is [anti-democratic], but in terms of providing a sense of enduring unity, the hereditary monarchy has worked extremely well. No democratic politician will ever have the widespread support that the Queen has."…

In the UK, Queen Elizabeth's personal popularity prevents serious questions being asked about the monarchy, but she is 85 years old and, although she appears to be in robust health, she can't go on forever.

One issue looming on the horizon is whether Prince Charles, who is next in line to the throne, can command the same respect…

After six decades on the throne, Queen Elizabeth is on her twelfth prime minister. Her supporters say that she has been a source of continuity, unity and wise advice.

For others, the fact that they are subjects and not citizens makes a powerful statement about inequality. They ask: "How can Britain be fully democratic when the highest office in the land is chosen by accident of birth?"

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Forty years on

2012-02-17T16:56:00.000-06:00

President Nixon and Mao Zedong made history 40 years ago by beginning the process of "normalizing" relations between the two countries.

(Thanks to Melody Dickison for pointing me in the direction of this article.)

Assignment: China - "The Week That Changed The World"
解析中国之旅：改变世界的一周

Richard Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 changed the course of history — reshaping the global balance of power and opening the door to the establishment of relations between the People's Republic and the United States.

It was also a milestone in the history of journalism. Since the Communist revolution of 1949, a suspicious regime in Beijing had barred virtually all U.S. reporters from China. For the Nixon trip, however, the Chinese agreed to accept nearly 100 journalists, and to allow the most dramatic events — Nixon's arrival in Beijing, Zhou Enlai's welcoming banquet, visits to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City — to be televised live.

The coverage was arguably as important as the details of the diplomacy. It profoundly transformed American and international perceptions of a long-isolated China, generated the public support Nixon needed to change U.S. policy, and laid the groundwork for Beijing's gradual move to open China to greater international media coverage…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Prosperity and poverty

2012-02-17T05:57:00.000-06:00

Jeremy Weate published the chart below and pointed me to the article at the beyondbrics blog at Financial Times.

It seems that the threats from terrorism and corruption are not the only obstacles to the Nigerian government (and maybe regime).

Poverty statistics in Nigeria

Nigeria: investment vs inequality

On Sunday, the FT reported that electricity tariffs in Nigeria were set to increase by up to 88 per cent, with most customers seeing a 50 per cent hike in their bills. A survey released on Monday, meanwhile, finds that the proportion of Nigerians living in absolute poverty rose to 60.9 per cent in 2010 – in spite of strong growth in Africa’s most populous country.

Nigeria currently sells power at one of the cheapest rates in Africa. Yet in spite of its large reserves of natural gas, the country’s electricity supply is among the world’s worst. Half of the 160m population lack have no access to electricity and its per capita consumption is just 3 per cent of that of South Africa, the continent’s only larger economy…

The FT reported that Bart Nnaji, the minister of power, said in an interview in Abuja: “We are making sure that the urban poor and rural dwellers be provided a subsidy so that they don’t see a significant increase in tariff… The rest should be able to pay for it.”

The government’s confidence could be undermined, however, after a report from Nigeria’s national bureau of statistics revealed that the proportion of Nigerians living in absolute poverty – that is, those who can afford only food, shelter and clothing – jumped to 60.9 per cent in 2010 from 54.7 per cent in 2004. Of a population of 167m, 100m live on less than a dollar a day…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

New image of Chinese leaders

2012-02-16T10:15:00.000-06:00

As an old guy who began studying China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, I'm more used to seeing images from China like this one

than images like this

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (3rd R, front) joined dozens of ordinary Americans for tea at a local house owned by his old friend Sarah Lande (3rd, L) in Muscatine, a small city in Iowa, the United States, Feb. 15, 2012. Most of the participants at the tea reception were Xi's old acquaintances back from his 1985 visit, when Xi, then a local official from China's northern province of Hebei, visited Iowa as a member of an agricultural exchange delegation, and stayed with a local family in Muscatine to better understand Iowan farm life.

or this.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Journalistic textbook

2012-02-16T05:11:00.000-06:00

Now that the three main parties in Mexico have named their presidential candidates, Daniel Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times offers us these profiles of the parties.

Left, right or center? Mexican political brand names explained

As the July presidential election nears, watchers of world news are sure to be hearing much more about the PAN, its candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota, and her main rivals, Enrique Peña Nieto of the party known as PRI, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD.

These three main parties are sometimes described in easy categories of left (PRD), right (PAN) and center (PRI), but the reality is far more complex. Here's a primer on how to understand the top political name brands in Mexico heading into the July vote…

Over time, the PRI practically invented brand-name politics. Its name, ideology and even brand colors (same as the national flag) are directly linked to the very concept of the Mexican republic. For many years, the party was the country, and the country was the party…

National Action is the party that unites Catholics and capitalists in Mexico. It is free-market, conservative on social issues and friendly to foreign interests. It casts itself as efficient and effective, but it now faces the same kinds of accusations of corruption and waste as the PRI did in its heyday…

In the aftermath of 1988, the progressives formed the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. Cardenas was its presidential candidate in 1994 and 2000, finishing third each time…

But the PRD's goal of finally capturing the 2006 presidency would not be. The PAN campaign under Calderon smeared Lopez Obrador as a "danger to Mexico" and a would-be Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's hard-line leftist president. On election night, authorities said the result was too close to call.

What followed was a wild political drama that saw a partial recount, an early Occupy-style sit-in by the dissatisfied PRD, and an official result of less than 1 percentage point difference between Calderon, the declared winner, and Lopez Obrador, who also declared himself the winner and the "legitimate president."…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Limited capacity of a state

2012-02-15T05:52:00.000-06:00

This tragedy has been in the news now and again for several years, but you probably haven't heard of it. There are so many tragedies in Nigeria. There's been little improvement in people's lives in spite of the work of Human Rights Watch. It would be difficult to find a clearer example of the limited capacity of a government than this. And, in the Nigerian context, it's an illustration of the desperation leading to things like the terrorism of Boko Haram.

Child Lead Poisoning Crisis

Thousands of children in northern Nigeria need immediate medical treatment and dozens of villages remain contaminated two years into the worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history…

The state of Zamfara

Artisanal gold mines are found throughout Zamfara State in northwestern Nigeria, and high levels of lead in the earth and the use of rudimentary mining methods have resulted in an epidemic of lead poisoning among children…

Lead Poisoning and Gold

“Zamfara’s gold brought hope for prosperity, but resulted in death and backbreaking labor for its children,” said Babatunde Olugboji, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “People living in Zamfara State should not have to trade their lives, or their children’s lives, for the chance to mine gold and make a living.”…

In late 2011, the Zamfara State government took an important step when it put together a clean-up team, Human Rights Watch said. The team is now cleaning up the largest and most contaminated village, Bagega, which is estimated to have at least 2,000 children in need of treatment. However, the scope of contamination in the region requires a sustained and comprehensive effort that will be difficult for the state government to manage without adequate funds, personnel, and expertise…

From Mine to Market: Here's how gold from the Nigerian state Zamfara reaches the worldwide market.

The ore is bagged and brought by motorcycle to villages like Dareta or Sunke, where villagers grind the ore and then wash the mix over a ridged board. Villagers who do the processing themselves then use mercury to extract the gold…

The gold is driven to the Benin border and turned over to dealers from the port city of Cotonou.

The dealers then sell this gold to wholesalers from Europe and the Middle East, who in turn introduce that gold to the worldwide market.

Read more about how artisanally mined gold from Nigeria reaches the world market

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Political participation

2012-02-14T05:34:00.000-06:00

Some political participation in Russia is profitable.

Polishing Putin: hacked emails suggest dirty tricks by Russian youth group: Nashi runs web of online trolls and bloggers paid to praise Vladimir Putin and denigrate enemies, group claims

A pro-Kremlin group runs a network of internet trolls, seeks to buy flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and hatches plans to discredit opposition activists and media, according to private emails allegedly hacked by a group calling itself the Russian arm of Anonymous.

The group has uploaded hundreds of emails it says are to, from and between Vasily Yakemenko, the first leader of the youth group Nashi… its spokeswoman, Kristina Potupchik, and other activists. The emails detail payments to journalists and bloggers…

Apparently sent between November 2010 and December 2011, the emails appear to confirm critics' longstanding suspicions that the group uses sinister methods, funded by the Kremlin, to attack perceived enemies and pay for favourable reports while claiming that Putin's popularity is unassailable…

Several emails sent from activists to Potupchik include price lists for pro-Putin bloggers and commenters, indicating that some are paid as much as 600,000 roubles (£12,694) for leaving hundreds of comments on negative press articles on the internet. One email, sent to Potupchik on 23 June 2011, suggests that the group planned to spend more than R10m to buy a series of articles about its annual Seliger summer camp in two popular Russian tabloids…

The leak comes as Putin faces the greatest challenge to his rule since first coming to power 12 years ago, with mass street demonstrations building momentum before a presidential vote on 4 March that is expected to return him to the presidency after a four-year interlude as prime minister.

Nashi was created precisely to stand up to any such challenge to Putin's rule. It was formed in 2005 after pro-democracy revolutions in neighbouring Ukraine and Georgia. Thousands of Nashi activists, mostly bussed into the Russian capital from neighbouring provinces, took to the streets in December as Russia's protest movement took hold after a contested parliamentary vote…

The correspondence goes some way towards explaining the apparent paranoia, showing how Nashi… spends huge sums of money to create the illusion of Putin's unfailing popularity…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Things change, but not the US Constitution (very often)

2012-02-13T05:35:00.000-06:00

The U.S. Constitution gets less respect, globally, now than in the past. If the U.S. model is no longer as popular as it once was, what are the models countries are following as the write new basic laws or modify the old ones (on average, once every 19 years)?

[Thanks to former student Kyle Potter for pointing this article out to me.]

‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World

The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia…

“Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall…

“The turn of the twenty-first century… saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.”

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation…

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

History lesson for Chinese politics

2012-02-12T12:12:00.000-06:00

Stephen R. Platt's op-ed analysis of China's history and politics might be just the thing if you're looking to add some historical analysis to your political science course.

Is China Ripe for a Revolution?

The Qing Dynasty, founded in 1644 by Manchu tribesmen who conquered China from the north, was brought down by a highly organized revolutionary movement with overseas arms and financing and a coherent governing ideology based on republican nationalism. The Communist Party today faces nothing like that.

What it does face, however, is enormous, inchoate rural unrest. The dark side of China’s economic rise has been a shocking widening of the gulf between the prosperous coast and the poverty-stricken interior, a flourishing of corruption among local officials and, by such data as we can gather, widespread anger and discontent…

[I]t is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, [was] the bloodiest civil war in history…

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt…

SCHOOLCHILDREN in China in the 1950s and ’60s were taught that the Taiping were the precursors of the Communist Party… That analogy has now fallen by the wayside, for China’s government is no longer in any sense revolutionary. So it makes sense that in recent years, the Taiping have often been depicted negatively, as perpetrators of superstition and sectarian violence and a threat to social order…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

China's next president, probably

2012-02-12T11:58:00.000-06:00

Barring any disaster or highly unlikely scandal, Xi Jinping will become China's next president, and a few years later he might be the most powerful person in the country.

Michael Wines and Edward Wong's article in the New York Times offers a bit of a profile and an insightful analysis of Politburo politics.

In Charged Moment, China’s Political Heir Tries Introducing Himself to U.S.

When China’s vice president and presumptive next president, Xi Jinping, arrives at the White House on Tuesday, American leaders will be scrutinizing him for hints of future stances on crucial issues…

Mr. Xi’s cross-country swing, from Washington to an Iowa farm town to Los Angeles, comes at a politically charged moment in American relations with China…

Mr. Xi, introducing himself to the American public, will showcase a down-home personality in contrast to that of China’s stoic current president, Hu Jintao…

[T]he delicacy of the leadership transition and the structural limits on Mr. Xi’s authority, particularly in his first five-year term in office, [will] hamper attempts by him or his colleagues to push reforms…

The big state corporations… have gained political clout alongside their wealth. They have monopolies on the most important industries — banking, oil, aviation, construction, telecommunications — and they maintain close ties to the top party officials. Two former executives of mammoth oil and machinery companies sit on the current Standing Committee of the Politburo, the nine-member body that essentially runs China by consensus.

The officials expected to take posts on the Standing Committee this October all have ties of some kind to the heads of state enterprises…

[M]ajor policy changes will have to run a gantlet of scrutiny — and potential opposition — by a new Politburo and other Communist Party powers, including Mr. Hu, who, like his predecessors, is expected to still play a signature role.

And the changes are unlikely to be swift. Many near-term economic policies have already been laid out in the party’s latest five-year plan, unveiled last year. Until Mr. Xi manages to fill important jobs with his own allies, a process that will take years, Mr. Hu’s economic blueprint will be the guide.

For some years to come, Mr. Hu is going to be “an overlord,” one economist who has advised party leaders said in an interview late last year. “If Xi has any hope, it’s in his second term” — that is, the last five years of his expected decade-long stint as president.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Gorbachev is skeptical

2012-02-10T11:46:00.000-06:00

The day before Putin published his analysis and remedies for Russia's political system, Mikhail Gorbachev expressed his doubt that Putin can succeed.

Gorbachev targets Putin

FORMER Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said Vladimir Putin has exhausted himself as Russia's leader.

Mr Gorbachev, who called on Mr Putin to step down as protests against his rule grew in December, said the powerful Prime Minister could face a sustained popular uprising against his rule similar to those seen in Arab capitals.

"He has exhausted himself," Mr Gorbachev said during a lecture at a Moscow university. "If he does not overcome himself, change the way things are - and I think it will be difficult for him to do that - then everything will end up on city squares."…

Speaking to Russia's Dozhd (Rain) TV earlier this week, Mr Gorbachev, 81, said he did not foresee a violent crackdown on Russia's protesters, noting that Mr Putin and his advisers had too much to lose…

"It's the system that must be changed," Mr Gorbachev said on Dozhd.

Mr Putin and many of his closest advisers rose up through the Soviet system and its notorious secret services…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Impressive analysis by Putin

2012-02-10T11:22:00.000-06:00

Rebecca Small, who teaches in Virginia, pointed out an article by Vladimir Putin about governance. It sounds like his personal campaign platform, and like all well-constructed platforms, it's an impressive analysis. The question is, as it is with all platforms, how much is the statement political propaganda and how much is it honest intent. As a primary source document, it makes a great teaching tool.

The quotes below come from the version on the Russian Premier's web site. A shorter version appeared in the Washington Post.

Democracy and the quality of government

Sustainable social development is impossible without a competent state, while genuine democracy is a fundamental condition for developing a state designed to serve public interests.

Real democracy cannot be created overnight and cannot be a carbon copy of some external example…

Our society has changed radically since the early 2000s. Many people have become more prosperous, are better educated and are therefore more critical. New demands on the government and the advance of the middle class above the narrow objective of guaranteeing their own prosperity are the results of our efforts. This is what we wanted to achieve.

Political competition lies at the heart of democracy — it is its driving force. When such competition reflects the real interests of social groups, it strengthens the government’s power many times over…

Today, the quality of governance in Russia lags behind the readiness of civil society to participate in it. Our civil society has become much more mature, active and responsible. We need to modernise the mechanisms of our democracy so that they correspond to this increase in social activity…

We have to adjust the mechanisms of the political system so that they capture and reflect the interests of large social groups and ensure public coordination of these interests. The system should not only ensure the legitimacy of power, but also ensure that people have confidence that they have a fair government, including in those cases when they are in a minority…

Competition among states for ideas, people and capital is the reality of the global world. In fact, they are competing for the future of their nations within this developing global world.

We need a new kind of national awareness, with a focus on establishing the best, most competitive environment for everyday life, creative activities and enterprise. This vision should underlie all the functions of the state machine. We should always operate out of the belief that Russian people, and even more so Russian capital, know how things are organised in other countries and are entitled to choose the best…

In conclusion, I would like to emphasise that we are proposing concrete solutions. Their practical implementation will make the rule by the people – or democracy – true and real, and place the efforts of the government at the service of the interests of society. Taken together, these measures will ensure the sustainable and successful development of Russia and its modern society.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Historic candidate

2012-02-10T05:30:00.000-06:00

It would be historic if a woman was nominated as a major party presidential candidate in the USA. It's even more historic in Mexico, renowned for machismo.

[Thanks to Blanca Facundo, who teaches in Puerto Rico, for pointing me at the Washington Post article.]

Ruling Party in Mexico Picks Woman as Candidate

The race to pick Mexico’s next president took a historic turn Sunday night, with the ruling party picking a woman, the first from a major party, as its candidate to hold off a strong push from the largest opposition party to reclaim the post it had held for more than seven decades.

The candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, triumphed over two others in the primary of the conservative National Action Party…

Ms. Vázquez Mota, 51, will compete with two other major party candidates selected in December. Enrique Peña Nieto, 45, the former governor of Mexico State, is the front-runner in polls and is trying to return his party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the P.R.I., to power it lost in 2000 after ruling with an autocratic hand for most of the 20th century.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 59, representing the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, lost a narrow race to Mr. Calderón in 2006 and is his party’s standard-bearer again.

Ms. Vázquez Mota exulted in her victory, winning far more than the necessary votes to avoid a runoff and basking in the potential to become the first woman president here…

Women voters have been playing a bigger role in recent presidential elections, leading many pundits to speculate Mexico is poised to follow other Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica and others, in electing a woman.

Still, her association with Mr. Calderón… and the drug war may prove a drag on her popularity, and the other contenders have their advantages…

3 Mexican presidential hopefuls vie to lead a nation weary of politics

With a decisive primary victory Sunday night, Josefina Vazquez Mota became the first woman to represent a major party in the Mexican presidential election…

Still, even with Vazquez Mota, many Mexicans see the July 1 election as a race among flawed choices: the popular former mayor of Mexico City with a messianic self-regard; a telegenic leading man who wrote a book but has been vague about which books he has read; and a perky, gal-next-door type who does a lot of smiling but has been blank on specifics…

[The article goes on to offer short profiles of the three candidates.]

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Troubles for Bo Xalai's protege?

2012-02-09T09:14:00.000-06:00

The last time I posted something about Bo Xalai, it was about his apparently imminent rise to the Politburo Standing Committee. The latest news might indicate a "Whoops" in that promotion.

Chongqing policeman Wang Lijun mystery deepens

The mystery surrounding one of China's top police chiefs has deepened after the US government confirmed he visited one of its consulates...

Wang Lijun gained national recognition after spearheading a crackdown on organised crime in Chongqing.

But he was removed from his post and is now on leave because of "stress"...

The incident could have ramifications for Mr Wang's boss, Bo Xilai, who appears poised to become one of China's top national leaders later this year.

Mr Bo has been one of China's most high-profile politicians of late, launching a campaign that praised the virtues of the country's communist past, as well as the crime crackdown...

Wang Lijun, 52, headed an attack on organised crime in Chongqing that saw hundreds of people arrested, including the former head of the city's judicial authorities.

See

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is only available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Question time in Tehran

2012-02-09T05:32:00.000-06:00

The mails majority seems to be getting involved, albeit indirectly, in the upcoming electoral campaign. The article neglects to mention the other major player, the military.

Iran's parliament summons Ahmadinejad

Iran's parliament… decided to summon President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning over a long list of accusations, including that he mismanaged the nation's economy.

The summons was the first of its kind for an Iranian president since 1979. It follows a petition by a group of lawmakers for a review of policy decisions by Ahmadinejad, who has come under increasing attacks in recent months from the same hard-liners who brought him to power.

It is also part of a power struggle on the Iranian political scene ahead of March 2 parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential vote…

The power struggle has pitted Ahmadinejad against Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in Iran. Ahmadinejad and his policies have been the target of criticism by lawmakers, clerics as well as state-run media.

Other questions that will be put to the president include those about Iran's slacking economic growth, and why his administration failed to promote the Islamic dress code that calls for women to wear the traditional veil. Lawmakers behind the initiative allege Ahmadinejad promoted Iranian nationalism instead of Islamic values…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Private companies, yes, but...

2012-02-08T05:33:00.000-06:00

With all the attention paid to the growth of private businesses in China, do not forget that state owned enterprises (SOEs) still make up nearly half of the Chinese economy. One vice premier, an economist, reminded SOEs recently to stay successful.

(The translation is not perfect, but that's often the case with these routine reports on officials' speeches.)

Chinese Vice Premier urges development of SOEs

Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang urged local governments to soundly implement policies introduced by the central government to boost state-owned enterprises (SOEs)…

He said that SOEs has overcome difficulties and achieved steady and rapid growth in 2011, making a good start for economic development of the next five years.

"China's SOEs will be envisaged with arduous conditions to continue economic growth as the global economic situation will be severe and complicated in 2012." Zhang said…

In order to complete the economic tasks in 2012, Zhang reiterated that the SOEs should strengthen strategic plans and awareness of potential dangers, encouraging SOEs to expand both domestic and international cooperation…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

London's baby boom

2012-02-07T05:52:00.000-06:00

The ongoing baby boom in London is creating challenges for government whose capacity has been declining.

The changing face of London

LONDON imports the young and exports the old, the theory goes — or went. For decades people have come to the capital to go to university or work, moving out again when their children require more space or education or when they retire. But a startling demographic change has drastically slowed the conveyor belt.

Births in the capital each year have soared by 25% since 2002…

Many parents are now staying put, thanks to a sticky mortgage market that makes it hard for buyers to get a loan and a sticky labour market that makes it hard for anyone to be sure of a job…

This expansion has coincided with the hardest squeeze on government finances in almost a century. So it is small wonder that city planners are scratching their heads over how to deliver services such as education and health care, and wondering where on earth, given London’s long-running housing crisis, so many extra people are to live…

How permanent are these new demographic trends? Will birth rates turn down again as the daughters of immigrants adopt British ways? Will foreigners find greener economic fields elsewhere? Will native Londoners? Flyers touting emigration services are beginning to appear in parts of town.

It’s a frightening time for those planning education or health care or—worst of all—housing…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

60 years on

2012-02-06T07:59:00.001-06:00

I remember the day after Elizabeth was crowned queen of the UK. The US television network NBC built a dark room in an airplane so film of the coronation could be processed during the flight from London to New York. Then the Today show showed the film to us the next morning. It was an amazing feat of television journalism. It might also have been the beginning of my study of comparative politics.

Elizabeth is beginning the celebration of 60 years on the throne.

Diamond Jubilee: Queen celebrating 60-year reign

The Queen has visited a school in Norfolk as she marks the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

The Queen visited King's Lynn Town Hall and was met by well-wishers outside

Earlier she said she was dedicating herself "anew to your service" and that she was "deeply moved" by support for the Diamond Jubilee.

The Queen was met by crowds at King's Lynn Town Hall before going to Dersingham Infant and Nursery School.

Gun salutes were held around the UK, including in London and Edinburgh.

The main celebrations for her anniversary will be in June…

During her reign, Queen Elizabeth II has seen 11 UK prime ministers come and go, with David Cameron her 12th.

Mr Cameron praised the "magnificent service" given by the Queen and called her a "source of wisdom and continuity".

"With experience, dignity and quiet authority she has guided and united our nation and the Commonwealth over six varied decades," he said…

The Queen's 60 years as monarch are set to be marked by a series of regional, national and international events during 2012, culminating in a four-day long UK Bank Holiday weekend in June…

In her message to mark the anniversary, the Queen said: "I am writing to thank you for the wonderful support and encouragement that you have given to me and Prince Philip over these years and to tell you how deeply moved we have been to receive so many kind messages about the Diamond Jubilee.

"In this special year, as I dedicate myself anew to your service, I hope we will all be reminded of the power of togetherness and the convening strength of family, friendship and good neighbourliness, examples of which I have been fortunate to see throughout my reign and which my family and I look forward to seeing in many forms as we travel throughout the United Kingdom and the wider Commonwealth."

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The intersection of globalism and jihadism

2012-02-06T05:44:00.000-06:00

Kano has long been an important city in West Africa. Still is. Now it's an important city in Nigeria and the focus of cultural conflicts.

The terror they dare not name

A YEAR ago arrivals on the outskirts to Kano had to pass a sign forbidding alcohol consumption and banning women from riding on motorbikes. Now it is gone.

Kano may be the sixth-biggest Muslim city in the world… but it is far from the most conservative. Women lift their hemlines to get on the back of achabas, motorbikes that are the main source of transport. Mini vans carry both sexes to their destination. It is possible to get a cold beer to wash away sand inhaled during a day on the edge of the Sahara.

The relaxation of sharia rules has come gradually… Ibrahim Shekarau, the former governor, liked to please radical clerics. He put up pious signs even as prostitutes plied their trade and policemen took bribes from alcohol merchants. When Rabiu Kwankwaso took over last year, he dropped the charade…

On January 20th, Kano was the target of the [radical Islamist group, Boko Haram's] most deadly attack to date. A series of co-ordinated bombings and ambushes destroyed police buildings and secret-service offices, leaving some 200 dead…

Once a rich trans-Saharan trade hub, the city can ill afford to lose more commerce. For centuries it enjoyed high levels of literacy and a degree of architectural sophistication. But its main industries, cotton and leather, have collapsed, unable to compete with low-cost imports.

“The Chinese are choking small-scale businesses,” laments Sani Yusuf, a manager at Kano’s indigo-dye pits, some of the oldest in Africa…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Occupy below zero Moscow?

2012-02-04T09:54:00.000-06:00

According to this New York Times report, people don't expect change, but they marched today anyway.

Protesters Throng Frozen Moscow in Anti-Putin March

Tens of thousands of antigovernment protesters marched on Saturday through this city, gripped by bitter Arctic cold, in a third major effort by Russians opposed to Vladimir V. Putin’s return to the presidency.

A series of similar actions in December shocked the Russian establishment with their size and giddy, infectious mood, as a famously passive part of the electorate coalesced into huge crowds that chanted “Putin, go away” and “We exist.”…

Despite that, city authorities said that Saturday’s crowd was larger than either of the December gatherings, offering an estimate of 36,000. Organizers gave an estimate of 120,000.

“It’s clear nothing will change, but at least we can demonstrate — six months ago nobody could have imagined it in Moscow,” said Marina V. Segupova, 28, who was wearing ski pants and a scarf encrusted white from her frozen breath. “We want the military and the police to come over to our side. We will show our good will, we will show that we’re kind. We’re just people who are demonstrating peacefully.”

“It’s clear that there will be no change now,” she said. “But we are a snowball, and we are rolling.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Learn about Xi

2012-02-03T08:48:00.000-06:00

Another recommendation from a former AP Comparative student, Jo Ling Kent: "Read this: a primer on the man slated to be China's next president (and current veep), Xi Jinping. He'll be in Washington and Iowa next week. By the unparalleled Jaime FlorCruz."

Who is Xi: China's next leader

Anyone interested in world affairs, Chinese diplomacy and China's future should know more about Xi Jinping…

Xi, 58, is in line to be China's next paramount leader. He is expected to succeed Hu when his second term ends in autumn this year and could rule China for 10 years…

Analysts say Xi is generally liked for his pragmatism, competence and a heritage of political reliability…

Little is actually known about Xi's political views, but analysts say he shares concerns about maintaining the rule of the communist party and social stability…

Xi's biggest challenge is how to deal with the new social media, given the divergent opinions within the Communist party…

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Party cells in private organizations

2012-02-03T06:05:00.000-06:00

I grew up in the Cold War '50s. There were frequent warnings about Soviet Communist cells within American institutions. As a kid I had the sense that fear of those secret groups of spies pervaded the country. Of course, then I went out and ran around the neighborhood looking for spies. I have no idea how many cells of Commie spies were ever found. In China today, the cells are not secret and the Party would like them to be everywhere.

Even in the state-owned danwei of the old days in the Peoples Republic, management was always observed and evaluated by Communist Party cells in the organization. How do you keep that system working in non-public institutions?

Where’s the party?

WHEREAS many urbanites devour Chinese editions of Western magazines like Cosmopolitan, GQ, and Vogue, some officials still peruse weightier titles. In December a dozen Communist Party officials gathered in the eastern city of Hangzhou to celebrate the first anniversary of an alluring journal, Party Construction in Non-State-Owned Enterprises… The journal in question, as its title suggests, is engaging with the tricky issue of how the Communist Party can maintain influence within a growing private sector…

Over the past decade a priority of the party’s secretive Organisation Department (it handles personnel issues for the 80m-strong party, yet has no listed telephone number) has been to form party cells in private businesses, or “new economic organisations” as the official literature calls them…

As party officials see it, setting up branches in the private sector is about more than just proving that a once-revolutionary party is still in touch with the masses. At a time of rapid social change and outbreaks of unrest, officials hope the new party branches will reinforce stability and keep the party abreast of potential trouble…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

New section of The Economist

2012-02-02T05:51:00.000-06:00

Three countries now rate their own weekly sections in the The Economist: the UK, the USA, and the Peoples Republic of China. An interesting analysis introduces this new section.

The paradox of prosperity

Only 20 years ago, China was a long way from being a global superpower. After the protests in Tiananmen Square led to a massacre in 1989, its economic reforms were under threat from conservatives and it faced international isolation. Then in early 1992, like an emperor undertaking a progress, the late Deng Xiaoping set out on a “southern tour” of the most reform-minded provinces. An astonishing endorsement of reform, it was a masterstroke from the man who made modern China. The economy has barely looked back since…

That mix of political control and market reform has yielded huge benefits. China’s rise over the past two decades has been more impressive than any burst of economic development ever. Annual economic growth has averaged 10% a year and 440m Chinese have lifted themselves out of poverty—the biggest reduction of poverty in history…

China’s bloody past has taught the Communist Party to fear chaos above all. But history’s other lesson is that those who cling to absolute power end up with none…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Prototype election?

2012-02-01T08:08:00.000-06:00

Protests led to promises of investigations and reforms. Is this election real change or, in Russian terms, merely a Potemkin Village?

Residents Vote in Chinese Village at Center of Protest

Less than two months after staging a bold protest against official corruption and chasing away their local leaders, thousands of people in the southern Chinese village of Wukan did something many had once thought unimaginable: they cast their first ostensibly independent votes…

The voting in Wukan for an 11-member electoral committee marked the peaceful denouement of a revolt that had drawn heavily armed security personnel, and a large contingent of foreign reporters…

The 11-day confrontation was defused in late December after senior Communist Party officials from the provincial capital reached an agreement with Wukan’s self-appointed leaders, promising free elections and an investigation into the questionable real estate deals…

The newspaper People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the party, upheld the resolution as a potential model for officials managing the tensions — and distrust — that plague villages across China…

The election on Wednesday by Wukan’s 4,000 voters was for an election committee that will be charged with overseeing another ballot on March 1 to determine the village leadership.

Although some analysts have described the Wukan election as a watershed moment that could influence other villages in rural China others were skeptical about the long-term prospects for democracy given the Communist Party’s undiluted hold on power.

Local elections for the committees that manage sanitation, social welfare and other daily matters in thousands of Chinese villages are not new in China, but they are generally viewed as flawed. Party officials often determine who ends up on the ballot or stage-manage the voting. Once elected, committee members can be easily swayed by the money that readily flows from township and county-level party offices.

Li Fan, an election expert at the World and China Institute in Beijing, thought the best one could hope for was an uncompromised election in Wukan. “It should be better given that all the media is watching,” he said. “If it is a good election, that will be unusual for China.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Ah… yeh… Putin's okay

2012-02-01T05:57:00.001-06:00

Enthusiasm in Russian politics seems reserved for the opposition to United Russia. Can Putin even get the girl singers excited this time around?

A Rally for Putin, Enthusiasm Optional

With calls for workers’ unity and denunciations of the bourgeoisie, teams of mechanics, welders and heavy-machinery operators gathered here Saturday in subzero temperatures for a Soviet-style rally in support of Vladimir V. Putin. But that does not mean all were happy about it…

But even at an event intended specifically to bolster Mr. Putin, there was a notable lack of enthusiasm — even, now and then, notes of active dissatisfaction with him. It would be hard not to take it as evidence that Mr. Putin faces distinct challenges as he seeks to convince the country that he is fit to return to the presidency for a third term…

Many at the rally said life had improved significantly under Mr. Putin. Most could now afford cars and maybe the odd trip abroad. But there was little enthusiasm for the status quo, either. Pensions are low and salaries are not as high as many want. Some of the factory workers confessed fears about keeping their jobs as inefficient plants producing obsolete goods shut down in the demand for foreign products…

One thing most held in common here, however, was antipathy to revolutionary change, and they called on their more energetic countrymen in Moscow, who have frequently been painted as radicals and Western-backed agents, to allow things to evolve gradually.

“We’ve already had our shake-ups when we didn’t have anything and were hungry,” said Lidia G. Chistopolova, a 75-year-old pensioner. “Today, more or less, things are getting better. We can go to the store and buy what we want.”

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Unreality TV

2012-01-31T06:01:00.000-06:00

What are television journalists to do if the news they identify isn't the news they can report? Or, to paraphrase (update?) Orwell, if you don't have firm control of the past, perhaps you can control reporting of the present.

Russian TV veers back to familiar ground

As thousands of protesters pushed toward Bolotnaya Square, crews from mainstream Russian television fanned out. Satellite trucks were ranged curbside, their engines running.

For six days after the Duma elections last month, TV had ignored the street protests that were starting to shake the nation. Now the reporters and cameramen were ready. But still, not a peep.

Finally, at 3 p.m. on Dec. 10, say those who know, the word came down: You can put this on the air.

The news reports that followed were neutral, and factual, and it seemed that TV, a central instrument of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s hold on power, was at last giving way under the strain. But the dalliance with straight reporting was short-lived. In January, the leash was pulled up tight again.

Putin has an election to win — he’s running for president, and the vote is in March — and after weeks of ambivalence and uncertainty, the state-controlled TV has returned to its old and familiar ways…

The men who run television got their start in Soviet TV in the late 1980s, and they understood… that they had “to open the pipe” to some extent, or else protesters — and their own journalist employees — would be dangerously provoked.

There was a fever in the body politic, said Roman Badanin, the online editor-in-chief for Forbes here, and the coverage was like an aspirin.

But Putin expects to be elected, and since mid-January there’s been little aspirin. The main news programs now don’t ignore the opposition, as they did for a decade, but hammer away at it…

In Putin’s Russia, where few things are clear-cut, Kremlin strategists don’t, as a rule, dictate stories. They have “discussions” with media managers, said Maxim Kovalsky, who in December was fired as the editor of Kommersant Vlast magazine. The prevailing mode is self-censorship…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Drug gangs as political parties

2012-01-30T07:57:00.000-06:00

If the drug cartels are political forces, perhaps as comparativists, we ought to watch them as we watch political parties.

Zetas are Mexico's 'largest drug gang', study says

The Zetas cartel has become the biggest drug gang in Mexico, overtaking its bitter rival, the Sinaloa cartel, a new report suggests.

The report by US security firm Stratfor says the Zetas now operate in more than half of all Mexican states.

Stratfor says the Zetas' brutal violence seems to have given the gang an advantage over the Sinaloa cartel, which prefers to bribe people…

According to the study, most smaller drug gangs have been subsumed by either the Zetas or the Sinaloa cartel, turning the two groups into the predominant criminal forces in Mexico.

The Zetas control much of eastern Mexico, while the Sinaloa cartel has its stronghold in the west of the country.

The authors also… say that the Zetas whose leadership is composed of ex-special operations soldiers, resort to extreme violence.

The Sinaloa cartel, although also ruthless, prefers to bribe and corrupt people, as well as providing intelligence on rivals to the authorities…

Mexico strikes Sinaloa cartel as Cabrera Sarabria shot

The Mexican security forces have arrested 11 alleged members of the country's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel…

They were arrested during a helicopter raid on a ranch in the north-western state of Durango on Friday.

During the raid, elite troops killed the regional leader of the gang, Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabia…

The Sinaloa cartel controls much of the flow of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States via air, land and sea, and is believed to have links in as many as 50 countries…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Gridlock Mexican style

2012-01-30T07:53:00.000-06:00

The political environment in Mexico appears, in this Economist analysis, to create a more dysfunctional legislature than the one in the USA.

The siesta congress

AFTER a fortnight of Christmas fiestas, Mexicans groggily returned to work two weeks ago. Or rather, most of them did. For the 500 deputies and 128 senators of the national Congress, the holidays roll on until February. Mexico’s lawmakers sit for only 195 days a year, the fewest among Latin America’s bigger countries. (Their $11,200-a-month pay, however, is the highest after Brazil’s.) When they do stir themselves to vote, it is more often to block rivals’ bills than to pass reforms.

Gridlock in the palace of San Lázaro partly explains why Felipe Calderón’s presidency, which ends in December, now looks like a six-year damp squib. Mr Calderón has identified many of Mexico’s bottlenecks. But most of his big proposals have floundered in Congress…

Co-operation has been especially rocky since 2009, when the PAN attacked the PRI in mid-term elections. The mood soured further when the PAN formed a brief electoral alliance with its ideological opposites, the PRD, to push the PRI out of some governorships. With this deal, “the president cancelled the possibility of working according to agreement and consensus,” says Heliodoro Díaz, a PRI congressman.

Such rivalries exist in any democracy. Yet “in Latin America, [Mexico’s Congress] stands out as a bad performer,” says Víctor Lapuente, a political scientist at Gothenburg University in Sweden. Unsurprisingly, there has been more conflict since one-party rule ended in 1997…

Building coalitions is harder in Mexico, where congressmen are wedded to their parties and hard to buy off. No politician, from president to mayor, may stand for consecutive re-election. This quirk means that politicians depend on party bosses, not voters, for their next job, making it essential to toe the party line…

The July 1st elections will completely renew both houses of Congress as well as the presidency. Mr Peña’s boosters say that if the PRI wins all three—it already has most state governors—the deadlock will end at last…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Party school (No, not that kind of party school)

2012-01-27T05:41:00.000-06:00

A perceptive 2-minute video report from al Jazeera on the Beijing Communist Party school for up and coming cadres. Not a lot of depth, but it does make that point that "defying stereotypes, it appears that one of the freest places in China is at the heart of the Communist Party…" How does that match your students' images of what a Communist Party school is like?

And a follow-up to the video, reporter Melissa Chan blogs about her experience at the Party school.

Inside a Chinese Communist Party school

China's ruling Communist Party's 80 million members attend special schools to learn party ideology at facilities that serve as a training ground for the next generation of Chinese leaders…

The schools offer a safe space for officials to throw out ideas, talk about sensitive issues, and try to come up with solutions to some of the country's problems.

Chinese lessons in leadership

There are 80 million members of the Communist Party and more than half of them work in the government in some way - whether directly in a ministry or in a state-owned corporation. Training them in management and administration requires what is probably the biggest human resources department in the world: the Communist Party School system, with some 2,000 satellite campuses.

The mission of these schools is not only to teach cadres the tools of governance, but also to reinforce ideology and the party line. Our visit was at one of the most important campuses: the Beijing Party School where 300 faculty members teach courses in nine different departments, ferrying through thousands of officials a year - some who turn up for short week-long modules, and others who move into the dormitories for three-month terms…

The Party School is an open forum, Professor Liu Changlong went on to explain, because it has to be. Officials can't afford to avoid problems that could directly threaten their governance. The Propaganda Department may present news to the public, selecting facts and fabrication for inclusion. But on the closed campus of the Party School, officials must consider the real issues of income inequality, protests, and what direction the country should be headed, both politically and economically.

In a separate class, cadres separated into small groups for discussions, this time about Marx's Communist Manifesto. Their task was to discuss some of the challenges facing the party today through Marx's writings…

It is a great opportunity for cadres from different ministries and departments to network, and the development of friendships from time spent on campus probably equal the utility of studying Marx. For some party officials, attendance is a prelude to promotion, depending on the ministry or department.

As we left campus, we had a surprise: we passed by an old stone grave, gated off and surrounded by old trees. It was the grave of Matteo Ricci, the 16th-century Jesuit missionary and one of the first Western scholars of Chinese language and customs. He would not have been surprised at the disciplined management style employed by China's Communist Party today...

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Exercising the muscles of the peers

2012-01-26T06:07:00.000-06:00

There are two issues to be alert for here. The most prominent is the argument about the tolerable level of public assistance. That's mostly a policy issue for Brits. The other topic, more for non-Brits to heed, is the role of Lords in shaping policy.

Lords is often overlooked as a player in policy making. It does offer a debating forum for considering policy alternatives, and, as in this case, a force to change policy.

Welfare reform: Lords bid for benefits cap concessions

Peers will press for changes to plans for a £26,000 cap on the benefits families can receive when the measure is debated in the House of Lords later.

Church of England bishops and some Liberal Democrats will push for child benefit to be excluded from the cap - so as not to penalise large families.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith says there are exemptions for some disabled people and those in work…

Former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown has said he will vote against the plans, unless there are measures to cushion the impact on those affected…

The changes would affect England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own social security legislation, but it is expected that what is approved at Westminster would be introduced there too.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Back in the USSR

2012-01-25T05:57:00.000-06:00

Putin may be in charge, but there's another group hoping to regain power and glory.

Russia’s Communist Party finds itself at a familiar crossroads

Russia’s restless electorate bestowed a big bouquet of votes on the country’s Communists last month, putting the party of Lenin in position to either rally a new generation behind its red banners or stay reliably on the sidelines, repeating the old slogans and mourning the past.

The Communist Party took 19.19 percent of the vote to come in second in the Dec. 4 parliamentary election, an unexpected windfall for the party and a surprise to the rest of the country.

Though it has offices in small towns and cities around Russia, with portraits of Stalin on the wall and hammer-and-sickle flags in the corner, ready to unfurl, its message has remained unchanged as its members have aged over the past 20 years: The glorious achievements of the Soviet Union are being systematically destroyed and only it can save Russia from moral degradation…

Communist theory has always maintained that history is on its side, however…

The December election set off a paroxysm of anger among Russians who called it rigged, refusing to believe that Putin’s party had gotten even close to half the votes…

The Communists rely on a small but cohesive core of members, who number 154,244, according to the Ministry of Justice, compared with United Russia’s 2,073,722 members. Many party members are in their 50s or 60s and dwell psychologically in the Soviet Union, said Boris Makarenko, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies. The protest voters make less than ideal fellow travelers, concentrated as they are in the big cities among the urban middle class. It will not be easy to profit from the windfall, he said…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Election high

2012-01-24T05:51:00.000-06:00

Nick Miroff and William Booth, writing in the Washington Post suggest that drug gangs could destroy Mexican democracy.

Mexico’s 2012 vote is vulnerable to narco threat

With Mexico’s presidential vote and other key elections less than six months away, both the government and its watchdogs fear that the black hand of organized crime will manipulate the process to install puppet candidates as servants of the drug cartels…

Political analysts say that the drug lords could corrupt the presidential race even without having to meddle directly in those campaigns and that their attempts to boost local candidates or suppress votes could contaminate the process at every level.

Such threats appear to put Mexican democracy at a critical juncture, as the country struggles to escape from the decades-long shadow of corrupt, one-party rule…

Despite concerns that drug gangsters will bankroll some candidates while intimidating — or assassinating — others, a package of new laws targeting election-related crimes has stalled in Mexico's National Congress since April…

Mexico's 2012 vote is even more at risk from pernicious influences than the last presidential election in 2006, Vargas said, because the country's mafias have honed their methods of corruption, opting to finance campaigns rather than buy off officials after they are in power…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

Comparative political cultures

2012-01-23T08:01:00.000-06:00

Jeremy Weate, writing in Naija Blog offers a lesson in comparative political cultures (even though his title focuses on the Nigerian constitution).

The blog entry is followed by a thoughtful comment.

Decolonising the Nigerian Constitution

In the past two weeks, the Occupy Nigeria movement has developed far beyond a demand to return the price of fuel to N65 per litre, with calls for the government to reduce its own bloated costs and investigate the obviously rampant corruption in the oil sector. Already, the government has responded, with the Minister of Petroleum’s statement this evening to invite the EFCC to investigate fuel subsidy payments and for an independent auditor to follow-up on the KPMG report. Whether or not this belated action is sufficient to counter a cynical response, deeper issues still have been raised to the surface. Nigerians are beginning to ask fundamental questions about the kind of country they would like to live in. A new sense of what Nigerian citizenship might provide is floating up into the air.

I invite you to compare and contrast for a moment the role the US Constitution plays in the lives of Americans with that of the Nigerian Constitution in Nigeria… At this stage, I’m simply asking you to dwell on the impact and effects of both constitutions on everyday life, and nothing more.

As we know all too readily from US media and discourse, Americans are raised to understand their constitution and the definition of the rights of the citizen enshrined within the all-important Amendments. Laws in the US are grounded in the constitution and must be formulated in accord with how the rights of the citizen are set in balance against the tripartite powers of the state (the executive, the legislature and the judiciary) in the context of a secular federation. Above all, thanks to the constitution, the rights of the individual run deep in American discourse. No matter the myriad and profound historical errors of the United States (originating in the twin horrors of an erasure of indigenous peoples and African slave labour), Americans are justifiably proud of the constitutional and legal instruments that guide their lives…

In Nigeria, we often experience almost the diametric opposite to the statutory privileges of the US Constitution. Many Nigerians have little idea of the contents of their constitution and are not taught the document at school. Nigerians are therefore not educated to be citizens of their own country; they are not made aware of their rights or brought to understand the role government should play in their lives since they are used to performing the roles themselves i.e. providing security, education, health etc…

Nigerians are also scarcely aware what powers the state is given, and what rights Nigerian citizens have in response…

It is therefore little surprise that the 1999 Nigerian constitution is often ignored in the current institutional arrangements of the state… The practice of creating institutions which have no grounding in the constitution effectively licenses an ‘anything goes’ approach to governance, whereby the revenues from oil can be frittered away by quasi-legal quick-fixes without any accountability checks and balances. Billions of dollars can, and have disappeared in the process, with little to show for the money…

Given the collective passion of Nigerians in the past few weeks for a new consensus, the time has never been more ripe for a complete rethinking of the Nigerian constitutional DNA, finally wiping the slate clean the legacy of British colonial rule and its post-Independence military offshoot. The place of beginning should lie in the definition of the core powers of the State (the legislature, the executive and the judiciary) vis-à-vis the rights and obligations of the citizen… The simple truth is that under the current constitutional framework, the president has far too much power in Nigerian governance… There should be many more autonomous counterbalancing powers built into the system and institutions created whose remit is to provide checks and balances on Presidential prerogative…

There are many more aspects of the 1999 Constitution which need to be amended. However, my humble suggestion is this: not to attempt to renovate a house in which people have lived uncomfortably for so long. Why not start again, modelling a new Nigerian Constitution on a paradigm template (from the US, or from South Africa for example), which empowers citizens regardless of region, gender, sexuality or creed and reduces the overwhelming power of the “Commander in Chief”, recalibrating what it means to be a Nigerian citizen, facing the 3rd millennium in a changing world…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Skeptic seems on the mark to me

2012-01-22T18:56:00.000-06:00

I haven't looked carefully at the "revolution" in textbooks promised by Apple last week, but I wasn't overwhelmed. A teacher from New Zealand is even less impressed.

iBooks Textbooks: Not Exactly Innovation in Education

Absent, so far, are any programming tools, even simple ones, that can allow any form of data-storing scripting, which is a shame, since programs such as FileMaker Pro, SuperCard, even HyperCard (of sainted memory) allow solutions to be created that allow a degree of decision-based scripting. Had Apple incorporated such elements into iBooks Author, a whole new level of interactivity and personalised learning could have been generated: “Steve, I see you’re spending a lot of time on simple harmonic motion, but you’re not doing very well on the end-of-topic quiz. Would you like some extra help with this topic?” But while the student can interact with the content, the content remains unable to interact with the student, and this seems to be an opportunity badly missed; I can only hope that scripting will feature strongly in a future version of iBooks Author.

As it stands, iBooks textbooks offers very little that hasn’t been on offer for nearly twenty years. Far from reinventing the textbook, Apple have simply taken an existing concept and applied it to a new medium, with, it appears, relatively little in the way of points of difference due to the particular nature of the iPad platform. And so, instead of static text and static images on a page, we are now presented with static text and some moving images on a page. This is a small step forward in terms of paper textbooks, but, in terms of the state of the art with regard to multimedia presentation, it is, absent scripting, possibly even a retrograde step…

Had iBooks 2 and iBooks Author been released back in 1996, when CD-ROMs were still a pretty neat idea, I would be writing a very different article. But today, when Apple are trying to claim that twenty-year-old ideas represent a “reinvention” of the textbook, I am less impressed. Schiller, see me after school. Grade: C-. Really must try harder.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Can Labour find a successor to Cameron?

2012-01-20T11:06:00.000-06:00

Some people think that the reason Labour hasn't reached a position of really challenging the coalition government is because of the leader.

Many thanks to Rebecca Small who teaches at Oakton High School in Virginia for pointing out the Washington Post article.

In Britain, opposition party leader struggles to find voice

For the opposition Labor Party, this should be a shining moment. Under Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, unemployment is up, budget cuts are biting British wallets and the government’s veto of a new European Union economic treaty has left the country increasingly isolated from its neighbors.

And yet rather than Cameron, it is Labor’s chief, Ed Miliband, who is confronting a profound crisis of popularity. Only 16 months after he defeated his brother to win the crown of opposition leader, Miliband’s approval ratings have sunk to record lows. Suddenly, not only his rivals on the other side of the aisle but also influential power brokers within his own party are openly questioning his leadership.

Miliband confronted his critics this week, outlining a new direction for the Labor Party in an effort to revitalize his tenure and hold on long enough to challenge Cameron in elections still three years away…

Yet the problem, analysts say, is not Labor’s message, but the messenger. Miliband, fairly or not, is being pelted with criticism…

Miliband has seemed a round short in the intellectual blood sport of British politics, played out weekly on the floor of Parliament where Cameron and Miliband set their wits against each other in terse, often-biting oral combat.

“I think the simplest way of saying it is that most people don’t see him as a prime minister,” said Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, one of Britain’s largest polling firms. “It’s to do with his manner, his lack of experience, the fact that people don’t see a toughness of character in him. People on some level think being prime minister is a man’s job, and in Ed Miliband, they see a boy.”…

Miliband’s situation looks worse when compared with Cameron’s success. In many ways, the prime minister has defied the odds, maintaining a relatively buoyant approval rating despite his relentless and, according to the polls, largely unpopular crusade against government spending…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Why such competition?

2012-01-19T08:49:00.000-06:00

Compared to the mayor of New York, the mayor of London is remarkably powerless. So, the question is why do the major parties make such a big deal of competition for the job? Or is it just the British media (all headquartered in London) that pays attention and publishes or broadcasts the contests?

Thanks to Rebecca Small who teaches at Oakton High School in Virginia for pointing out the Economist article.

Back into the fray

AT TIMES, it can seem as though London is stuck in 2008. The property market is still buoyant and, at the top end, still hotly contested by the global rich. Costly projects, such as the city-traversing Crossrail and the Olympic games, have not fallen victim to austerity. And, in May, voters will be asked to choose between the same two mayoral candidates who were on the ballot four years ago: Boris Johnson, the Conservative incumbent, and Ken Livingstone, his Labour predecessor.

Mr Johnson is the current favourite. An opinion poll last November gave him a lead of 48% to 40%…

There is a pervasive assumption, even in the Labour Party, that the mayoral race is a foregone conclusion. It is not. London leans left—as big, diverse cities tend to. Mr Livingstone, knowing that voters often punish governments between general elections, aims to paint his rival as just another Tory. And although the polls suggest that Londoners prefer Mr Johnson on policing, the economy and the Olympics, he trails on the vital issue of transport…

The mayoral election has implications for national politics. Victory for Mr Johnson would be another blow to Ed Miliband, whose performance as Labour Party leader is attracting criticism. Defeat for the incumbent would only be a passing nuisance for David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, but the effect on the future of his party could be profound. Mr Cameron predicts privately that he will be succeeded by either the mayor or George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer…

The challenges facing the next mayor are immense. There are new threats to the City from domestic and European regulation, as well as severe housing shortages and social problems of the kind exposed by the riots of last summer. But the prize is even greater: the chance to run Europe’s biggest city and preside over a high-profile sporting event in the summer…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Suggestions for teaching materials

2012-01-17T18:42:00.000-06:00

Here's what I would be able to offer you as suggestions for teaching materials if the so-called "anti-internet-piracy" bills are passed in their current form.

No evidence would be required. No due process allowed. Mere assertions of ownership would lead to shutdowns of web sites and larger parts of the Internet. Mere assertions of ownership would lead to seizure of web sites, computers, and Internet servers.

Teaching Comparative blog entries used to be indexed.

Iran Barbie ban

2012-01-17T08:50:00.000-06:00

Ah, the dangers of soft (or plastic) power.

Iran’s morality police crack down on sale of Barbie and Ken

Iran’s morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

A declaration of referendum

2012-01-17T05:49:00.000-06:00

According to some Scottish politicians, devolution was just the first step. Now that the Scottish National Party has a majority in the Scottish Parliament, it's making plans for a referendum on independence. Cameron's government is negotiating. There's good information here about the extent of devolution now.

Thanks to Rebecca Small who teaches at Oakton High School in Virginia for pointing out the Washington Post article.

Will Britain break up? UK government to offer Scotland powers for binding independence vote

Breaking up is supposed to be hard to do — but Britain’s government confirmed Tuesday it would happily offer Scotland the powers it needs to sever centuries-old ties to England.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s government said it would sweep away legal hurdles to allow the Scots a vote on whether their country should become independent for the first time since the 18th Century Act of Union, which united Scotland with England to create Great Britain.

But in return, Cameron — who opposes any breakup of the United Kingdom… is urging Scotland to make its intentions clear “sooner rather than later.”…

Since Scotland voted in favor of a domestic legislative body in 1997, its parliament has had autonomy over education, health and justice and can make minor alterations to income tax. For now, London retains primacy on all matters relating to Britain as a whole — including defense, energy and foreign relations…

Recent opinion polls indicate rising support for independence, after surveys showed backing for the separation hovering at about 30 percent for several decades…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Easing one set of tensions

2012-01-16T07:54:00.000-06:00

Nigeria is facing a number of serious political and economic crises. The government has moved to try to relieve one of them.

FG Offers N110, N120 Per Litre

ORGANISED Labour was last night considering the latest offer from President Goodluck Jonathan to scale down the price of petrol to between N110 and N120.

The President also directed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to immediately commence a probe of the utilization of the more than N1.3 trillion subsidy fund.

President Jonathan in meetings with a select team of labour leaders was understood to have made the offer with a proviso that full deregulation of the sector would commence in April…

Protests Suspended As FG Cuts Petrol Price to N97

President Goodluck Jonathan, in a nationwide TV address Monday morning, announced a cut in petrol price from around N141 to N97 after prolonged street demonstrations over the deregulation policy.

Also, the labour unions told the media early Monday morning that they were suspending street protests because of the political dimension it had taken but insisted that the strike would go on.

In the broadcast, Jonathan said he had to review the pump price in response to the outcry over the hardship caused by the total subsidy removal and vowed to investigate the subsidy account with a view to punishing those who fraudulently bled the country and nearly destroyed the economy.

He also promised a detailed study of the forensic audit of the account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) with a view to curbing corruption in the oil and gas sector of the economy so as to rid it of corruption…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Why comparative?

2012-01-16T05:56:00.000-06:00

American beginners in comparative politics often start by trying to study non-American political systems in the same way they studied the USA. It doesn't always work.

Henry Farrell, professor at George Washington University points to an example of why both the "Americanist" and "Comparativist" perspectives are important.

Why Is Inequality Higher in America?

[A] Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan article… suggests that we need to look to comparative politics rather than Americanist political science in order to understand the sources of American inequality.

"… the preoccupation of many Americanists with America’s distinctive governmental institutions—Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court—obscures this inequality and what it means for the US political system. It thus seems to us that Americanists’ ability to analyze American politics would be enhanced by locating these problems in a larger, comparative context."

To bolster this broad argument, they argue that the unusually large number of veto players in the US political system is a major cause of inequality.

"A question thus arises, one both simple and surprisingly understudied by scholars of American politics: From a comparative perspective, does the United States have more “majority constraining” and “inequality inducing” political structures and veto players than other democracies? When we examine our set of 23 long-standing democracies in advanced economies, we ﬁnd that slightly more than half of these countries (12.5) actually have only one electorally generated veto player… There are 7.5 countries with two veto players, two countries (Switzerland and Australia) with three veto players, and only one country, the United States of America, with four electorally generated veto players… In addition to having the highest number of veto players, there are four more constitutionally embedded features of the US political system that, taken together, make that system even more majority constraining and, we believe, inequality inducing, than any other democracy in our set… "

As a comparativist by training, I find the idea that Americanists should think about the US more in a comparative perspective highly attractive. I also think that the veto player perspective is a very helpful lens onto the ways in which the US resembles or differs from other advanced industrialized democracies… Equally, comparativists need to pay more attention to the Americanists whose way of thinking about the world is less immediately congenial than that of those with comparativist training or sympathies if we are to move to the next stage of the debate that Linz and Stepan would (rightly) like to see taking place.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Quiet to protest SOPA

2012-01-14T19:29:00.000-06:00

On January 18, Teaching Comparative will join Boing Boing, Reddit, and other sites around the Internet in opposing SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world. Teaching Comparative could never co-exist with a SOPA world.

There will be no blog entry on Wednesday.

If the proposed legislation passed in anything like its current form, I could never quote the contents of another site or even link to another website unless I was sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. In order to link to a URL on any web site, I'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. That would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages. Even for an old guy like me with lots of time, that would be impossible. I'd be unable to tell you about potentially valuable teaching material.

If I failed to take those precautions, my finances could be frozen and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, my domains confiscated.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

This is not the entertainment you want

2012-01-13T06:01:00.000-06:00

Chinese President Hu warns his country about the phony attractions of the west and the government cuts popular programming on satellite television. Is this a reversion to the Maoist xenophobia?

China campaign cuts entertainment TV by two-thirds

Satellite broadcasters in China have cut entertainment TV by two-thirds following a government campaign, state news agency Xinhua has reported.

An order by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to curb ''excessive entertainment'' came into effect on 1 January…

The news came as the president warned of the influence of Western culture.

In the piece published in a Communist Party magazine, President Hu Jintao also urged efforts to boost the country's own soft power, said Xinhua…

"Satellite channels have started to broadcast programmes that promote traditional virtues and socialist core values," SARFT said in a statement.

Talent shows and reality TV are among the biggest casualties of the cuts. The list of restricted programmes also included talk shows and emotional stories that were deemed to be of "low taste", said the Xinhua news report…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Analysis of Russia

2012-01-12T05:37:00.000-06:00

Joshua Tucker, a political scientist at New York University, points us to an article by Stephen Holmes of the NYU School of Law, that suggests that common (and journalistic) analyses of Putin's Russia are on the wrong track.

Tucker wrote, "In this piece, Holmes is directly responding to a recent book by Luke Harding, the former Guardian correspondent in Russia, but he is also addressing a more general conception that Putin’s Russia has turned into a reprise of the late Soviet period: a relatively stable soft-authoritarian regime, where some individual freedoms are permitted but in general the state… remains firmly in control."

Holmes' analysis is in the London Review of Books and is well worth the time for teacher background material.

Fragments of a Defunct State

Putin’s clumsily announced but not unexpected decision to have himself re-elected to the presidency provides a clue about the way the system works, or rather doesn’t. If you take it that a credible succession formula is one of the key components of any political system, Putin’s stage-managed self-coronation makes it clear that Russia doesn’t have one. To leave the decision about one’s successor to the unpredictable outcome of a genuinely competitive election is acceptable only when incumbents don’t expect to lose too much if they lose. In established democracies, soft landings await electorally ousted politicians. In non-democratic systems, former rulers can sidestep unwelcome surprises if the succession process is managed by a core group within a ruling party, as in the Soviet Union after Stalin and in China today. But this alternative is not available in Russia. For one thing, the increasingly unpopular Yedinaya Rossiya is not an organised governing party but a ramshackle vote-rigging machine run by Putin loyalists and opportunists whom no one, least of all Putin, would trust to choose the country’s next ruler…

Putin’s remaining supporters constantly trumpet the ‘stability’ he has brought to Russia. But no system… can be stable if it depends on the well-being and survival of one man… The most striking illustration of the negligible role they play in Russian political life is not the rubber-stamp Duma but the presidency itself. Assigned nearly unchecked powers by the 1993 Yeltsin constitution, the office lost both its authority over foreign policy and the power to dismiss the prime minister when its shell was rented out for four years to Medvedev, whose inability to hold on to the job makes it clear that the presidency itself is not a source of power…

Escaping the draft, registering a company, buying an apartment, getting into school, passing an exam, being acquitted of criminal charges, trumped up or valid, receiving medical treatment may all require the bribery of public officials. The kickback plague is endemic, inflating by as much as 50 per cent the cost to the state of everything from weapons to highway construction. That the principal players in ‘the greatest corruption story in human history’, as the economist Anders Aslund puts it, include the fabled siloviki – the ‘heavies’: the army, the intelligence agencies etc – is the strongest sign of the absence of a hierarchy. In a hierarchy, local officials would answer to their Moscow superiors: but they don’t…

the historically unprecedented nature of the Putin system comes into focus only when we remember, as Harding himself urges us to, that ‘the Soviet-era KGB was subordinate to the political will of the Communist Party.’ When the CPSU collapsed, it left behind not only the FSB and its associated agencies but a constellation of other ‘orphans’, highly developed and now essentially autonomous fragments of a defunct state. In a desperate but ultimately successful endeavour to survive in an unforgiving environment, various former subsidiaries went in search of new sponsors. Soviet psychiatric facilities, for example, that were once used to torment dissidents, now receive cash-filled envelopes from younger Russians eager to dislodge elderly in-laws from desirable apartments…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

New Teaching Tools

2012-01-11T19:37:00.001-06:00

$44.95

Each of the 110 items is an individual document.
Student materials are MS Word documents published under a Creative Commons License, which allows you to modify, distribute, and even sell the student documents.

Commentaries, teaching suggestions, and rubrics are Adobe Reader (PDF) documents and are copyrighted.

Table of Contents
Title Page
Correlation Chart
Creative Commons License

Comparative Theory
1. Comparative Theory: Empirical and Normative
2. Comparative Theory: Systems Analysis
3. Comparative Theory: Rational Choice Analysis
4. Comparative Theory: Summary

Regimes
5. UK: Regime
6. Russia: Regime
7. China: Regime
8. Nigeria: Regime
9. Mexico: Regime
10. Iran: Regime
11. EU: Regime

Legislatures
12. UK: Legislature
13. Russia: Legislature
14. China: Legislature
15. Nigeria: Legislature
16. Mexico: Legislature
17. Iran: Legislature
18. EU: Legislature

Governments
19. UK: Government
20. Russia: Government
21. China: Government
22. Nigeria: Government
23. Mexico: Government
24. Iran: Government
25. EU: Government

Civil Societies and Political Cultures
26. UK: Civil Society and Political Culture
27. Russia: Civil Society and Political Culture
28. China: Civil Society and Political Culture
29. Nigeria: Civil Society and Political Culture
30. Mexico: Civil Society and Political Culture
31. Iran: Civil Society and Political Culture
32. EU: Civil Society and Political Culture

Basic Concepts
33. Basic Concepts: The European Union
34. Basic Concepts: Democratization 1
35. Basic Concepts: Democratization 2
36. Basic Concepts: Nations
37. Basic Concepts: Political Culture
38. Basic Concepts: Transparency
39. Basic Concepts: Rights and Liberties
40. Basic Concepts: Legitimacy
41. Basic Concepts: Political Economics
42. Basic Concepts: State Capacity
43. Basic Concepts: Federal and Unitary Systems 1
44. Basic Concepts: Federal and Unitary Systems 2
45. Basic Concepts: Participation
46. Basic Concepts: Recruitment
47. Basic Concepts: Socialization
48. Basic Concepts: Economic Development1
49. Basic Concepts: Economic Development2

FRQs
50. Answering FRQs
51. FRQs on Theory
52. FRQs on Regimes
53. FRQs on Legislatures
54. FRQs on Governments
55. FRQs on Civil Society and Political Culture

Each of these student materials is accompanied by a Commentary that includes rubrics and teaching ideas.

The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Personalized issue-politics

2012-01-11T06:01:00.001-06:00

Without recognizable political parties, politics in Iran becomes personalized.

Establishment factions to face off in Iranian elections

Iran has begun gearing up for elections that will represent a showdown between two factions that just three years ago formed a united establishment against the opposition Green Movement.

In parliamentary elections March 2, supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will face off against an alliance of hard-line clerics, Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and bazaar merchants who had been instrumental in keeping Ahmadinejad in power before they turned against him.

Both groups are striving for a majority in a parliament that can either obstruct or speed up initiatives by Ahmadinejad’s government… [C]lerics and commanders are accusing Ahmadinejad’s advisers of plotting to push them from power and to reduce the role of Islam in the country…

The two sides have lately been engaged in bitter, public disputes, calling each other “tumors,” “sorcerers” and “thieves.” Some of Ahmadinejad’s advisers have been arrested by the judiciary — which is linked to his opponents — and influential religious leaders have called for the death of the president’s closest aide.

While both factions claim ownership of the 1979 Islamic revolution and its ideals, Ahmadinejad supporters say they are a new generation that wants to root out corruption caused by the old. “People power” is an important theme in their public statements…

While discontent has seemingly grown among those who protested in 2009, Iran’s Green Movement has largely remained silent throughout the Arab uprisings of the past year. The movement’s cause has been overshadowed by the fighting within the Iranian establishment, and because its leaders are in jail, under house arrest or barred from competing in the elections, the movement’s backers have no one to support in March…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Pre-Independence Nigeria

2012-01-10T05:58:00.000-06:00

A Nigerian who now lives in the US, wrote in his blog, Bombastic Element about a web site collecting film and video from the British Empire.

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online.

The film he particularly points to is Three Roads to Tomorrow, a 1958 film made by British Petroleum which illustrates the modernizations BP promoted and the hopes for Nigeria's future as an independent nation. It purports to tell the stories of 3 young men who go off to the university from each of the 3 major ethnic groups.

It's 22 minutes long and in 1950's Technicolor. There are glimpses of the modern, pre-independence Nigeria. There's little or no commentary to provide context about things like how widespread or widely available the modernity is. The three students were extraordinarily fortunate and rich Nigerians. The father of one was an emir and owned a 1955 Chevrolet and flew his son and his friends to the northern city where he ruled a small territory.

I'd like to recommend this because it does offer an interesting introduction to Nigeria. But the modernity that British Petroleum was anxious to show off is all that's in evidence. And the pacing of the story telling is much slower than what we expect in story telling or advertisements today.

Still, it might fit well with your plans for teaching about Nigeria.

Others available online at the Colonial Film site are:

Nigerian Independence Celebrations, 01/10/1960
Giant in the Sun: A study of Northern Nigeria as it prepares for self-government, 1959
Spotlight on the Colonies (a brief survey of progress made by the British Government in helping forty separate colonial territories to raise their standards and increase their wealth), 1950
Nigeria's First Women Police, 1956

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Imagine there's no public sector, but it's expensive

2012-01-09T12:26:00.000-06:00

Jeremy Wheate, writing in Naijablog offers a graphic image of living in urban Nigeria as a motive for striking against the end of fuel subsidies. In effect, he suggests that the fuel subsidy was one of the few ways that government spending directly benefited most people in a rentier state.

The Fuel Subsidy Removal Protests for Dummies

On the first day of the indefinite general strike organised by a coalition between two of the largest unions in Nigeria… some external observers have expressed surprise at the intensity of resistance…

The lived reality of citizens of the Nigerian state is that it provides little or no security, no infrastructure, no education and no employment opportunities (apart from mostly McJobs in the civil service). Everywhere in Nigeria, the basic elements of civilised existence have to be taken care of house-by-house, compound-by-compound. You must sink your own borehole for water, buy, install and fuel a generator for power, hire security guards to keep the wolves from the door, pay school fees to ensure your kids get a half-decent education because the public school system is in perpetual meltdown.

The breakdown of a standard tax and political representation based social contract between citizens and the state in Nigeria is almost entirely a result of the past few decades of the so-called ‘resource curse’. Earning billions of dollars each year from crude exports, the Nigerian government has no need to rely on tax from individuals or local companies; tax and royalty payments from the international oil companies (as well as historically, loans from international financial institutions) have been sufficient to fund the annual budget at all levels of government. For the past few decades, cheap fuel has therefore been the only form of social contract between ordinary Nigerians and the state and the principle lever to control inflation during times of rising oil prices. With most Nigerians subsisting on US$2 or less, subsidised fuel has also been a survival mechanism, making life only just bearable…

[I]f savings are urgently required from the annual government budget, most Nigerians would argue that the first place to cut costs is that of the price of running government itself. As the Governor of the Central Bank pointed out last year, the National Assembly consumes 25% of the Federal overheads budget…

As it is, most Nigerians are poor, and will simply not be able to survive with any comfort on US$2 a day and a doubling of living costs. That the government of Nigeria didn’t foresee the massive level of resistance happening today is quite bewildering. It shows a complete disconnect and disregard for Nigerians. However, where there is greatest danger, there is greatest hope. Nigerians have never been so united in years – in the newly unofficially renamed Liberation Square, Christians guarded the space as their Muslim co-protestors prayed. In return, last Sunday, Muslims guarded Churches as others prayed inside. What we are witnessing with Occupy Nigeria is a generational shift, as young, social-media enabled activists gradually take over the baton from unionist stalwarts…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Strike against structural reform

2012-01-09T05:37:00.002-06:00

In the face of judicial disapproval and executive threats, unions in Nigeria called a general strike to protest the end of fuel subsidies.

Nigerians Strike, Protest Over Fuel Subsidy Cut

Thousands of Nigerians took to the streets across Africa's top oil producing nation on Monday, launching an indefinite nationwide strike to protest against the axing of fuel subsidies.

Shops, banks and petrol stations were shut and the highways into the main commercial city of Lagos, usually clogged with rush-hour traffic, were empty.

Production of Nigeria's average two million barrels of crude oil a day carried on as normal despite the strike, sources at two international oil companies and the state firm told Reuters…

Jonathan has said he will not back down and the strikes will test his resolve. Strikes have forced previous governments into u-turns on fuel subsidy cuts…

Economists say the subsidy filled the fuel tanks of the rich and middle classes at the expense of a poor majority living on less than $2 per day, fed corruption and siphoned off billions of dollars of public funds to a cartel of fuel importers…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Would be legislators in Iran

2012-01-09T05:28:00.001-06:00

There are major obstacles for anyone who wants to be a candidate for the Iranian Majlis. This report from al Arabiya describes them.

Nearly 5,4000 would-be MPs sign up for Iran poll

A total 5,395 people, including 428 women, have registered as would-be candidates for Iran’s parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2, the interior ministry said on Saturday in a final tally.

Iran’s Guardian Council, a panel of conservative clerics and jurists, is to vet each of those registered to see if they meet the criteria to fill one of the 290 seats in parliament.

Each candidate must be an Iranian citizen aged 30 to 75 who will uphold the constitution, which notably stipulates that absolute authority is invested in the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He or she must also have a university master's degree or equivalent…

There are also some 60 reformers, but the main reformist parties -- some of which are banned -- will not be participating in the elections.

Nevertheless, some candidates from the reformist camp have registered, according to Iranian media.

The March poll will be the first since the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose declared victory triggered claims of fraud and widespread protests that were brutally put down.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Look at my words, not my actions

2012-01-06T07:08:00.000-06:00

Maybe thinking of Russian politics as a magician's performance would help. Or you could think of the promises of reform as Potemkin promises.

Political Promotions in Russia Appear to Belie President’s Promise of Reform

President Dmitri A. Medvedev has responded to the street protests in Moscow with proposals for political reform, but his recent personnel appointments seem to tell a different story: top posts went to former officers in the K.G.B. and long-serving loyalists of his political mentor, Vladimir V. Putin…

The highest position went to Sergei B. Ivanov, a former colleague of Mr. Putin’s from the Leningrad office of the K.G.B….

In another change, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin, who is known as irascible and an outspoken nationalist and who once hung a poster of Stalin in his office in Brussels, was appointed a deputy prime minister overseeing the military-industrial complex.

Finally, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Y. Surkov… moved to a deputy prime minister’s position in the cabinet. He was replaced by Mr. Putin’s former chief of staff in the prime minister’s office, Vyacheslav Volodin, a loyalist who helped form a pro-Putin national political movement this year called the People’s Front…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Who is happy?

2012-01-05T07:21:00.000-06:00

Critics of the upcoming Iranian elections seem to come from everywhere. Does that mean that only those politicians not complaining are confident of victory? How can they be confident?

Opposition leader calls upcoming Iran election bogus

An Iranian opposition leader who has been under house arrest since February has accused the Islamic establishment of intending to hold a “rubber-stamp” parliamentary election in March, his website Sahamnews…

Candidates began registering... for the March 2 vote, which will be the first litmus test of the clerical leadership's public standing since a disputed 2009 presidential vote that precipitated months of unrest…

Candidate registration will last one week and then entrants will be screened for their political and Islamic qualifications by the hard-line Guardian Council electoral watchdog.

The Council has stopped hundreds of reformist candidates in the past from participating in elections…

Leading reformist politicians said pro-reform groups would not submit a separate list of candidates because the basic needs of a “free and fair” vote have not been fulfilled.

Authorities are concerned that a low turnout would question the establishment’s legitimacy, and so hard-line conservative rulers have urged voters to participate in the March elections.

Parliamentary Elections in Iran: Who and How will Participate

Parliamentary election campaign in Iran is traditionally launched with the start of the Election Organization's activity, formed under the Interior Ministry, and ends with the start of activity of the newly elected parliament. This process continues within a year.

Elections in Iran are held under the control of the Guardian Council…

[C]andidates must be Iranian citizens, confess Islam and believe in the Islamic Republic and show their faith in action.

They must be true to Iran's Constitution and the country's Supreme Leader. In addition, they should be authoritative leaders in their circles (those with shadowy past are not allowed), should be physically healthy (not to be blind, deaf and dumb) and have a Master's degree. A candidate must be at least 30 and no older than 75 years…

The parliamentary elections in Iran (the Iranian Islamic Consultative Council - Majlis) are held every four years. The parliamentary elections of the VIII convocation were held on March 14, 2008. At the moment, there are 290 MPs.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Moscow winter?

2012-01-04T06:42:00.000-06:00

Following the example of the Arab Spring, will there be a Moscow Winter?

Young and Connected, ‘Office Plankton’ Protesters Surprise Russia

A mystery has been unfolding [in Moscow] over the past month, and office plankton [young professionals] are in the middle of it. A critical mass of young Russians decided this month that they had the power to alter the course of political events. They organized outside the channels of mainstream politics and took the country’s leadership by surprise, as other crowds have done this year in Israel, India, Spain and the United States.

No one can say how strong this burst of citizen activism will prove to be — whether it can recreate the crowd of 50,000 that gathered Dec. 10 in Moscow, let alone serve as the foundation of a permanent political force. But an impulse was released after December’s parliamentary elections, which were widely discredited as fraudulent. It has rippled out through Russia’s emerging middle class — wired, sophisticated urbanites like Mr. Terekhov’s employees — many of whom have decided, quite suddenly, that a political system they have long tolerated is intolerable…

A signal change has occurred already: Russia’s opposition movement is the realm of the young. Planning meetings, once held in the musty domain of perestroika-era dissidents, are now convened at Moscow’s most fashionable addresses, like the rehabilitated Red October chocolate factory. In a city obsessed with style, protest has become stylish...

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Protests over higher fuel prices begin

2012-01-03T07:26:00.000-06:00

Unions and other civil society groups have begun protesting the removal of fuel subsidies by Nigeria's government. Will the government be able to resist the popular pressure to restore the subsidy? Will civil society be able to achieve its demands?

Nigerians protest at removal of fuel subsidy

Thousands of Nigerians are taking part in protests around the country following the removal of a fuel subsidy, which has doubled petrol prices and transport fares.

Trade unionists have marched in the biggest city, Lagos. They are to meet on Wednesday to decide on strike plans…

Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, but imports refined petrol.

Years of mismanagement and corruption mean it does not have the capacity to refine oil into into petrol and other fuels.

Analysts say many Nigerians regard cheap fuel as the only benefit they get from the nation's oil wealth.

Several previous governments have tried to remove the subsidy but have backed down in the face of widespread public protests and reduced it instead…

Prices have increased from 65 naira ($0.40; £0.26) per litre to at least 140 naira in filling stations and from 100 naira to at least 200 on the black market, where many Nigerians buy their fuel.

There are reports that petrol prices have tripled in some remote areas, while commuters have complained that motorcycle and minibus taxi fares have already doubled or tripled.

Many Nigerians expect the prices of other goods to rise as well.

The government has said it will spend the money saved by removing the subsidy on improving the country's erratic electricity supply, as well as health and education.

However, analysts say that many Nigerians have little faith that the money will be well spent and fear it will instead be stolen by corrupt officials…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Two paths diverged. Or did they merge?

2012-01-03T06:36:00.000-06:00

An illustration of a couple of the "parties" within the Communist Party in China.

Remember These two candidates for the Politburo Standing Committee:

Bo Xilai = a "princeling" who inherited his position; client of VP (soon to be president and party general secretary) Xi Jinping; critic of economic reforms - advocate of reducing income inequalities;
Wang Yang = working class "hero;" client of Hu Jintao; an economic reformer; compromised with Wukan village protesters.

Watch to see who gets appointed to the standing committee in 2012.

Guangdong protests could impact China’s leadership shuffle

An uprising over land seizures in a fishing hamlet in southern Guangdong province has been defused, but Chinese analysts and others are watching to see whether the unrest could have a wider impact, perhaps on the future of a provincial chief who had been seen as a rising star in the Communist Party.

Wang Yang, the provincial party chief since 2007… is considered a top candidate for one of the seven slots opening in 2012 on the all-powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee…

Bo Xilai, a rival to Wang who is the party chief in Chongqing, has been critical of the liberal approach.

For months, Wang and Bo have been engaged in a rare public debate over whose methods and models were best for China…

For his part, Bo has championed an approach that emphasizes efforts to reverse income inequality. “Some people in China have indeed become rich first, so we must seek the realization of common prosperity,” Bo was quoted as saying in July. A week later, Wang said in Guangdong that “division of the cake is not a priority right now. The priority is to make the cake bigger.”…

Also, although Wang has experimented with allowing a relatively open media and reforms, Bo has shifted to a “new left” stance, encouraging a “Red Culture” campaign that includes the singing of Communist “red songs” and operas, launching a “Red Twitter” microblogging site to promote Mao-era slogans, and ordering Chongqing’s television stations to broadcast patriotically themed programs. Wang replied by saying people’s’ everyday problems could not be solved through political campaigns...

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Another test

2012-01-02T09:02:00.000-06:00

As if the threat of terrorism wasn't enough, there's another threat to the capacity of the state in Nigeria. Economists, economic development experts, and some politicians have long argued for an end to fuel subsidies in Nigeria. President Jonathan's government has done that. Can it survive the ensuing unhappiness and protest? The political fight will also test the capacity of the unions.

New Year Shocker! Fuel Now to Sell At N141 Per Litre

A litre of petrol jumped by 116% yesterday to N141 after the Federal Government sanctioned the removal of the controversial subsidy on the price of petrol.

The removal of the subsidy was conveyed by the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, PPPRA in a statement issued on New Year day.

The hike immediately provoked strong criticisms from labour, civil society groups and opposition political parties…

No More Petrol Subsidy From Today - PPPRA

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) today announced the full withdrawal of subsidies from Petrol (Premium Motor Spirit).

According to a statement signed by the agency's executive secretary, Reginald Stanley, the removal takes effect from today, January 1, 2012.

It said in part that the agency "...wishes to inform all stakeholders of the commencement of formal removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), in accordance with the powers conferred on the agency by the law establishing it, in compliance with Section 7 of PPPRA Act, 2004.

"By this announcement, the downstream sub-sector of the petroleum industry is hereby deregulated for PMS. Service providers in the sector are now to procure products and sell same in accordance with the indicative benchmark price to be published fortnightly and posted on the PPPRA website…

UK news agency REUTERS on Thursday claimed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was behind the push by governments across West Africa to remove petrol subsidies. Ghana officially ended hers on Thursday December 29, 2011. Other countries which the report said were under similar pressure are Cameroon, Guinea and Chad…

Labour Threatens Mass Protests

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have declared a showdown with the Federal Government through mass protests and strikes until the price of petrol is reversed to N65 per litre.

The leadership of the labour movements in a joint statement issued yesterday directed their state councils to take steps to resist any price above N65 per litre of PMS, and await a date for the commencement of general strikes and mass protests across the country…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Government action against terror

2012-01-01T11:06:00.000-06:00

The Nigerian government has essentially declared war on the terrorist group Boko Haram. This is a test of the government's capacity and may be a test of civilian government.

The BBC report includes a link to a video of President Jonathan declaring the state of emergency.

Boko Haram attacks prompt Nigeria state of emergency

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in parts of the country following attacks from the Islamist group Boko Haram.

The measure is in force is areas of the Yobe and Borno states in the north-east, Plateau state in central Nigeria and Niger state in the west.

International borders in the affected areas have been temporarily closed…

Mr Jonathan vowed to "crush" Boko Haram, which killed dozens in attacks across the country on Christmas Day.

Announcing the state of emergency in a live televised address, Mr Jonathan said: "The temporary closure of our borders in the affected areas is only an interim measure designed to address the current security challenges."…

The president added that his chief of defence staff had been instructed to take other "appropriate" measures, including setting up a special counter-terrorism force…

Boko Haram, which originated in Maiduguri, wants to impose strict Sharia law across Nigeria…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

HIATUS

2011-12-22T05:29:00.001-06:00

hi·a·tus /haɪˈeɪtəs/ Pronunciation[hahy-ey-tuhs]
–noun, plural -tus·es, -tus.

a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
any gap or opening.
an indefinite period of time when most schools in the US are not in session and during which the primary contributor to this blog takes a break from posting while joining family in observance of the solstice, religious holidays, and the beginning of the new year.

[Origin: 1555–65; < L hiātus opening, gap, equiv. to hiā(re) to gape, open + -tus suffix of v. action]

Source: hiatus. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved July 15, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hiatus

Remember, if you're looking for examples posted here, the 2400+ entries here are indexed at delicious.com/CompGovPol. There are 77 categories and you can search within categories to find something appropriate to your needs.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Hotbed of unhappiness

2011-12-22T05:20:00.000-06:00

Leningrad/St. Petersburg was a center of political dissent 20+ years ago. One of the exports was a guy named Putin. It seems that St. Petersburg is not so enamored with its "favorite son" anymore.

Putin’s hometown turns against him

No city is more closely associated with Vladimir Putin’s rule than St. Petersburg. The Russian Prime Minister grew up in what was then Leningrad, and attended KGB school here. During his 12 years in power, Mr. Putin’s governments have poured billions into restoring the palaces, canals and bridges of this graceful former capital of the Russian empire.

But being showered with favouritism is no longer enough. The city that Mr. Putin says he “loves” is now a centre of the growing opposition to his rule.

According to the official – and hotly disputed – results of the country’s Dec. 4 parliamentary election, Mr. Putin’s United Russia party took 35 per cent of the vote in St. Petersburg, one the lowest levels of support in the country. It represented a rebuke for Mr. Putin, who took nearly three-quarters of the vote here when he last ran for president in 2004…

President Dmitry Medvedev is a St. Petersburg native too, as are most of Mr. Putin’s inner circle of advisers and cabinet ministers. Russians elsewhere grumble about the powerful “St. Petersburg clan” and this city’s disproportionate political and economic influence over the rest of the country.

But Sergei Shelin, one of the city’s best-known journalists, said St. Petersburgers no longer see Mr. Putin as one of their own. “Ten years ago, it mattered that Putin was from St. Petersburg. But the St. Petersburg clan and St. Petersburg, the city, are different things. People don’t see themselves as part of this clan. … If Putin actually gets the real information through all his filters, it must personally bother him that his hometown doesn’t love him any more.”

Part of the reason St. Petersburg – Russia’s most open and Westernized city – has turned on Mr. Putin is that he has proven to be anything but the reformer many had hoped he was. Before he was unexpectedly anointed Boris Yeltsin’s successor, Mr. Putin served a deputy to the liberal governor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak. Many here expected Mr. Putin would follow Mr. Sobchak’s liberal course once he got to the Kremlin.

Instead, Mr. Putin has taken Russia several strides back toward its Soviet past, with both the media and the officially registered opposition parties being brought under tight Kremlin control.

Last week, Mr. Sobchak’s daughter, Ksenia, joined the opposition protests in Moscow. “I can no longer just silently watch what is happening in my country,” the 30-year-old socialite, who has known Mr. Putin since she was a young girl, wrote on her Twitter account. “The point of no return has been passed.”

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Compliments from the IMF

2011-12-21T05:43:00.000-06:00

The International Monetary Fund is most often cited as telling poor countries what they have to do in order to qualify for fiscal help. Nigeria's President Jonathan got compliments instead. I'll be interested in hearing what the IMF head says about Nigeria a few years from now. (In over 40 years of studying Nigeria, I've gone through more "optimistic-pessimistic cycles" than I can count.)

Lagarde praises Nigeria's economic efforts

IMF head Christine Lagarde, who is visiting Africa, has praised Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's efforts to transform his country's economy…

Ms Largarde is visiting Africa for the first time as head of the IMF…

"My mission is to come and listen and appreciate and understand exactly what economy programme will be implemented in Nigeria, and the initiative and leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan," Ms Lagarde said.

"I was extremely impressed with... the energy and pace at which he wants to transform the economy, create jobs and focus on agriculture."

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Bookkeeping in Nigeria

2011-12-21T05:39:00.000-06:00

A rentier state is one which receives most of its revenue by selling products in the global market. It means that the government doesn't have to tax citizens much and often feels little responsibility to spend its income for the good of the general public.

An article in Vanguard (Lagos) offers some details on November's income and its distribution in Nigeria.

(As of December 16, US$1.00 = 161.8 Naira; 1 Naira = US$0.0062.)

FG, States, LGs Share N612 Billion

The three tiers of government, yesterday, shared a total of N612.077 billion as their allocations from the federally collected revenue for the month of November, which would be used for their December expenditure…

Detailed analysis of distribution showed that the Federal Government took a total of N194.666 billion made up of N194.132 billion from the Statutory Allocation, representing its 52.68 per cent under the existing sharing formula and another N7.534 billion , representing 15 per cent under the VAT revenue sub- head.

The states and local governments shared the balance based on their allocated revenue formula of 26.72 per cent and 20.60 per cent respectively.

The nine oil producing states got an additional N42.048 billion, representing 13 per cent of the oil revenue generated under the month of November. Similarly, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, received N4.1 billion, representing 4 per cent of revenue it generated to cover cost of collection. The Nigerian Customs Service also receive the sum of N2.763 billion, representing 7 per cent of its revenue to cover duties' collection cost.

Other blog entries about rentier states:

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The north-south divide in the UK

2011-12-20T08:23:00.000-06:00

The example raised by the Institute for Public Policy Research North is a prime example of the cleavage between the southern UK and the north (including, of course, Scotland).

Rationale or rationalization, there are reasons why so much public money is spent in the south (Conservative Party territory). But northern (Labour Party territory) interests hint that the real reasons are political.

Transport spending 'skewed towards London'

The government spends more money on transport projects for Londoners than on those for the rest of the country combined, a think tank says.

The Institute for Public Policy Research North says £2,700 is spent per person in London compared with £5 per head in the north-east of England…

The government says its investment strategy is to maximise economic benefits for the country as a whole.

Ed Cox, Director of IPPR North, said: "Skewed spending benefiting London and the south-east is nothing new but these new figures are truly shocking and will strike most people as deeply unfair."

The BBC's Transport Correspondent Richard Lister says the report claims the infrastructure strategy is "entrenching the North-South divide"…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Election returns from the UK

2011-12-20T08:20:00.000-06:00

But the "Bus-Pass Elvis Party" won 93 votes!

Miliband hails Labour win in Feltham and Heston

Labour leader Ed Miliband says his party's victory in the Feltham and Heston by-election is "a verdict on the government's failed economic plan".

Winning candidate Seema Malhotra secured victory in the west London seat with an increased majority of 6,203 over the Tories, a swing of 8.6%…

The by-election was prompted by the death last month of Labour MP Alan Keen…

Ms Malhotra grew up in Feltham, and went to school in Heston. She was an adviser to Harriet Harman during her stint as Leader of the Opposition in 2010…

The full results were:

Seema Malhotra, Labour - 12,639 (54.42%, +10.79%)
Mark Bowen, Conservative - 6,436 (27.71%, -6.32%)
Roger Crouch, Liberal Democrats - 1,364 (5.87%, -7.87%)
Andrew Charalambous, UKIP - 1,276 (5.49%, +3.45%)
David Furness, BNP - 540 (2.33%, -1.21%)
Daniel Goldsmith, Green - 426 (1.83%, +0.74%)
Roger Cooper, English Democrats - 322 (1.39%)
George Hallam, London People Before Profit - 128 (0.55%)
David Bishop, Bus-Pass Elvis Party - 93 (0.40%)

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Say again?

2011-12-19T05:45:00.000-06:00

It seemed like a typical press release from the Chinese government, but I read it anyway. When I finished I had to ask, "What was he talking about?"

Senior Chinese leader urges efforts to improve social management

Senior Chinese leader Zhou Yongkang has reiterated that more efforts should be made to promote social management in line with the socialist market-oriented economic system...

Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, addresses a seminar on social management innovation attended by leaders from nine northern provinces and autonomous regions in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 2, 2011.

While Zhou praised the efforts of local authorities to enhance social management, he said the current social management mechanism is not keeping pace with social and economic development, a failure particularly damaging to the market-oriented economy.

He urged delegates to innovate in social management by taking overall consideration and conducting systematic study of China's economic development, improving the well-being of the people and social stability.

He also reiterated the importance of improving social management by promoting practices nationwide derived from good community-level experience, adding that the community-level organs are make-or-break.

The job of improving social management should go deep in community-level organs, with increasing allocation of manpower and material resources, said Zhou.

It turns out that a later revision of the press release offered some hints about what "social management" is.

Senior Chinese leader calls for improved social management of prisoners, drug addicts, HIV carriers

Senior leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Zhou Yongkang has called for improved services and social management for prisoners, drug addicts, mental patients and HIV carriers.

Services for and management of these members of society are critical to social stability and harmony, said Zhou, who is a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

Despite notable progress, blind spots, management loopholes and potential safety hazards remain, Zhou said at a conference Monday.

Zhou advocates an approach that combines both education and assistance in an effort to ensure these people observe law and discipline, and to "live in harmony with society."

Zhou also underlined the importance of showing due respect to these groups and protecting their legitimate interests…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Communists as landlords

2011-12-16T05:51:00.000-06:00

The conjunction of brazen theft by public officials, determined villagers, and proximity to foreign reporters has made one village in China famous. There are regular reports of protests and resistance from hundreds of villages, but most of them are beyond the reach of reporters like Andrew Jacobs.

What's the ruling party to do when it is cast in the role it assigned to landlords 80 years ago?

Chinese Village Locked in Rebellion Against Authorities

A long-running dispute between farmers and local officials in southern China exploded into open rebellion this week after villagers chased away government leaders, set up roadblocks and began arming themselves with homemade weapons, residents said.

The conflict in Wukan, a coastal settlement near the country’s booming industrial heartland in Guangdong Province, escalated on Monday after residents learned that one of the representatives they had selected to negotiate with the local Communist Party had died in police custody…

Spasms of social unrest in China have become increasingly common, a reflection of the widening income gap and deepening unhappiness with official corruption and an unresponsive justice system.

But the clashes in Wukan, which first erupted in September, appear to be unusual for their longevity — and for the brazenness of the participants…

The unrest began in September, when thousands of people took to the streets to protest the seizure of agricultural land they said was illegally taken by government officials. The land was sold to developers, they said, but the farmers ended up with little or no compensation. After two days of protests, during which police vehicles were destroyed and government buildings ransacked, riot police moved in with what residents described as excessive brutality.

With order restored, local officials vowed to investigate the villager’s land-grab claims. Two village party officials were fired and the authorities made an offer that is rare in China’s top-down political system: county party officials would negotiate with a group of village representatives chosen by popular consensus.

A butcher named Xue Jinbo was among the 13 people chosen…

Last Friday, the authorities responded by sending in a group of plain-clothes policemen who grabbed five of the representatives, including Mr. Xue.

Two days later, he was dead…

Although government censors blocked news of the latest unrest, the state-run Xinhua news agency weighed in on the “rumors” about Mr. Xue’s death, saying he had died of cardiac arrest a day after confessing to his role in the riots of in September…

The top party official in Shanwei, Zheng Yanxiong, said Mr. Xue’s death would nonetheless be investigated, but he warned residents against using their suspicions to fuel unrest.

“The government will strive to settle all related problems and hopes the village will not be instigated into staging further riots,” Mr. Zheng said.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Real candidate or not?

2011-12-15T08:05:00.000-06:00

Once again, the question has been raised about Prokhorov's political activity. Is he more than a candidate that will help United Russia?

Prokhorov’s entry into Russian race could complicate Putin’s plans

In a move that may further shake the Putin government’s firm political grip, tycoon and NBA franchise owner Mikhail Prokhorov announced he will run for the presidency.

Though other opposition leaders quickly alleged that Monday’s surprise decision is a Kremlin ploy to split the vote, the mining magnate and owner of the New Jersey Nets could be a galvanizing figure to the thousands of Russians protesting alleged election fraud and widespread corruption…

The last time Mr. Prokhorov tried his hand at Russian politics, he lasted just four months before he was forced out, seemingly a victim of his own growing popularity. The 46-year-old tycoon was outspoken in his disgust at the time, blaming a “puppet master” inside the Kremlin for his ouster as the head of a pro-business party in September.

Now, depending on whom you believe, he is either challenging the puppet masters directly, or willfully joining the show…

Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and a key leader of the street protests, told the Interfax news agency that he believes Mr. Prokhorov’s candidacy is a Kremlin project aimed at defusing public anger over the parliamentary elections by creating the impression that the coming presidential vote will be a competitive one.

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, a long-time critic of Mr. Putin, was more direct. “Prokhorov is a puppet,” he said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. “The Kremlin is desperate to create a distraction and this is another effort to create the illusion of choice to mollify the Russian middle class, to get them out of the streets.”…

Challenging the Kremlin comes with enormous risks, even for the ultra-rich. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest man until he became outspoken in his criticism of Mr. Putin. He has been in prison since 2003, convicted on tax evasion and embezzlement charges that were widely seen as politically motivated.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Thanks, but no thanks

2011-12-14T06:04:00.000-06:00

Why would the beneficiaries of Russia's economy protest its politics? That doesn't happen in other countries, does it?

Boosted by Putin, Russia’s Middle Class Turns on Him

Here is the rub for Vladimir V. Putin: The people who stood outside the Kremlin on Saturday, chanting epithets directed at him, are the ones who have prospered greatly during his 12 years in power.

They were well traveled and well mannered; they wore hipster glasses. They were wonky (some held aloft graphs showing statistical deviations that they said proved election fraud). In short, they were young urban professionals, a group that benefited handsomely from Moscow’s skyrocketing real estate market and the trickle-down effect of the nation’s oil wealth…

It is a paradox, but one that has been documented by social scientists: the residents of Moscow and other large cities tend to express greater frustration with Prime Minister Putin as his government has helped make them wealthier. One explanation is the high level of public corruption here, which threatens new personal wealth. A second is a phenomenon seen in Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, that economic growth can inadvertently undermine autocratic rule by creating an urban professional class that clamors for new political rights…

It must be frustrating for Mr. Putin that those now protesting have enjoyed growing wealth while he has been the country’s predominant figure, first as president and now as prime minister. From 2000, the year he assumed the presidency, until 2008, wages, adjusted for inflation, grew at an average of nearly 15 percent a year. But while salaries are still rising, they are increasing much more slowly today — at an average of 1.3 percent per year since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, according to data compiled by Citibank.

And as they become wealthier, residents of cities are prone to venting their frustration with the political system…

If there was a single catalyst to the recent events, it was probably Mr. Putin’s unilateral announcement in September that he would run again for the presidency, in effect swapping places with Mr. Medvedev. Some Russians now snidely refer to this as “rokirovka” — the Russian word for castling in chess, the move in which a rook and the king are moved at the same time, to shelter the king…

In addition to the New York Times report, Dr. Thomas Remington, Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science at Emory University, wrote in The Monkey Cage blog about the Russian middle class.

If you assign this to students, be sure to point out the irony and sarcasm in parts of Remington's commentary.

Russia: Middle Class Rising

Press reports in both Russia and the US of the large-scale protests against election fraud in Moscow and other large cities are characterizing this movement as the political mobilization of the Russian “middle class.”…

Kremlin [insider] Vladislav Surkov understands this point well. Earlier this year he attempted to breathe life into the crumbling Right Cause party by recruiting oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov to head it. But Prokhorov’s refusal to limit his electoral ambitions to the small share of the vote Surkov was willing to concede to him wrecked the project. A few days ago, after the fiasco of the Duma election—the poor official results for United Russia, the widespread and well-documented use of ballot-stuffing, manipulation of absentee voting certificates, and after-hours revisions of local vote tallies—Surkov again pointed out that Russia needs a political party for the “disgruntled urban communities” that believe in quaint ideas of political rights and fair elections…

But are we seeing the rise of the middle class?… Big cities contain clusters of educated, internet-savvy, self-aware, and politically engaged citizens. As if testing the classic Verba-Schlozman-Brady model of political participation, they have the grievances to motivate their involvement in civic protest (“because they want to”), they have the ability to communicate (“because they can”), and they summon one another to turn out for rallies and collective acts of protest (“because someone asked them”).

There is a proto-middle class in Russia, but it is divided straight down the middle between those in the private sector and those in the budget [public] sector. The recent election protests are not the revolt of the middle class, but a result of the gradual establishment of a real civil society with growing self-confidence and an awareness of its rights that is taking on board the opportunities for mobilization granted by the new communications technologies.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

An uphill struggle

2011-12-13T05:38:00.000-06:00

To get an idea of what reforms the coalition government says it's trying to carry out, here's The Economist on welfare reform in the UK.

The unemployed are suffering, but things aren't easy for the government that is trying to find an affordable solution.

Nice work if you can find it

The government has set about a thorough reform of benefits. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, wants to replace six housing and work benefits with a single universal credit…

But the Work Programme, launched in June, is the big idea for getting more people off handouts. It has commissioned 18 main providers to deliver 40 contracts across Britain at a cost of up to £5 billion. Seven-year contracts to remove the uncertainty of changeable government schemes are coupled with incentives to get people into long-term jobs and keep them there.

EOS, [one of the contractors]… has attempted to replicate workplaces. Local firms can set up shop in its employment centres to try out employees. From a gallery above the shop floor, prospective bosses can look down on those going about their tasks and select the most diligent workers. Trade skills like plumbing and basic construction are taught, while in classrooms, jobseekers—known as “clients”—learn how to use the internet and personal networks to sniff out local jobs…

Besides delightful things like a gym, a café and free computer facilities lurks the threat of benefits forfeited. EOS quickly sends out reminders to those referred by jobcentres who fail to turn up. After that, they are notified that welfare payments can be withdrawn. No figures are yet available for how often this has happened, though Chris Grayling, the minister responsible for the measures, insists that the threat is “already changing behaviour”…

Some believe that the payment-by-results system itself is failing. Ian Mulheirn of the Social Market Foundation, a pro-reform think-tank, says the scheme is in danger of financial collapse because many contractors are missing their targets: “The only question is when ministers will face up to it.” He estimates that even the most efficient schemes can move only 10% more people to jobs who would not have found work by themselves…

As the jobless figures continue to rise, some unfashionable ideas are returning. Graeme Cook, an analyst with the Institute for Public Policy Research, a centre-left think-tank, believes that the coalition should provide state-sponsored jobs to ensure that young and long-term jobseekers don’t stay in the cold for too long. Although the coalition formally resists this New Labour-era idea, the chancellor recently agreed to provide some wage subsidies for companies employing people who have struggled to find work—and to channel £300m into apprenticeship schemes…

The coalition’s impatience with what David Cameron, the prime minister, calls “sick-note culture” is laudable. So is its determination to make state handouts a last resort rather than a way of life—a goal that eluded the previous government, which nonetheless threw a lot more money at the problem. Opinion polls show strong support for an overhaul of welfare. But over-hyping the impact of a single programme when the stubborn central problem is slow economic growth does not seem wise…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Look over here

2011-12-12T08:33:00.000-06:00

Mikhail Prokhorov has been flirting with politics for quite awhile. Some of the flirting has been done with the cooperation of Putin and Medvedev. Now, he seems to be taking on the leadership directly. Or has he been recruited as Potemkin Village candidate?

Billionaire to Oppose Putin in Russian Presidential Election

Amid a crescendo of complaints from Russians fed up with the country’s tightly controlled political system, two prominent figures — a billionaire industrialist and the recently ousted finance minister — sought to fill a void in the opposition leadership on Monday.

Mikhail D. Prokhorov announced his plan to contest the Russian presidency on Monday in Moscow.

The billionaire, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, who owns shares in a major gold mining company and an array of other ventures in Russia as well as the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise in the United States, said he will run for president, challenging Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

“I made a decision, probably the most serious decision in my life: I am going to the presidential election,” Mr. Prohkorov said at a news conference. He has barely appeared in public since mid-September, when he was dramatically removed as the head of a pro-business party, Just Cause, after clashing with Kremlin political strategists.

“You may remember, the Kremlin removed me and my allies from Just Cause, and we were not allowed to do what we wanted,” he said. “It is not in my nature to stop halfway. So for the last two and a half months we sat and worked, very calmly and quietly, and we created all the infrastructure to collect two million signatures,” which are needed to get on the ballot…

For Mr. Prokhorov, whose business interests include a stake in the Atlantic Yards development in downtown Brooklyn, his leap into presidential politics could be risky. He is the first wealthy businessman to pursue a political goal in Russia against the governing authorities since the 2003 arrest of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former chairman of the Yukos Oil Company, who was jailed after he began financing an opposition party. He remains in prison.

The Kremlin is clearly considering blessing a liberal party, after the backlash that has emerged in recent days.

In an interview that was posted Tuesday on the Web site of Ekho Moskvy radio station, Kremlin strategist Vladislav Y. Surkov said he supported the creation of “a mass liberal party or, more precisely, a party for the annoyed urban communities,” and that in order for Russia’s political system to survive, it needed to open up to “new players.”

Previous blog posts about Mr. Prokhorov
From September 2011 Theater or conspiracy
From August 2011 Creating opposition
and More on leadership politics in Russia
From May 2011 Directed democracy
From April 2009 Reduced competition

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

No, look over there

2011-12-12T05:56:00.000-06:00

It seems to be a political axiom: if things aren't going well domestically, get people to focus on international issues.

Putin's doing it. Can you find examples of other politicians doing it?

Putin Contends Clinton Incited Unrest Over Vote

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday of inciting unrest in Russia, as he grappled with the prospect of large-scale political protest for the first time in his more than decade-long rule.

In a rare personal accusation, Mr. Putin said Mrs. Clinton had sent “a signal” to “some actors in our country” after Sunday’s parliamentary elections, which were condemned as fraudulent by both international and Russian observers…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

More expert analysis on Russia

2011-12-09T12:30:00.000-06:00

Dr. Joshua Tucker quotes Dr. Graeme Robertson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Robertson is "an expert on protest in Russia."

The Beginning of the End of the Putin Regime as We have Known It

Most people, myself included… were surprised by the results of the Russian Duma elections last Sunday. But the protests that have followed, in Moscow, St. Petersburg and across the country, should be less surprising. Far from being spontaneous or unexpected, this week’s protests are the result of years of campaigning and organizing by the anti-system opposition…

[T]he Russian state’s counter-mobilization capacity is extremely strong. Nashi, Mestnie, Moldaya Gvardia and other pro-government youth groups have been organizing large events in key locations in Moscow. On Tuesday, some 17 000 young people participated in a pro-government meeting in front of giant pictures of outgoing President, Dmitrii Medvedev (an unlikely subject for a personality cult if ever there was one!)…

The final key element in this story is the Russian political elite, which to date remains strongly behind the Putin/Medvedev project…

In this regard, the current situation in Russia is completely different from events in Serbia, Ukraine or Georgia. There is no credible political alternative to the current administration and defections from the ruling party are highly unlikely…

So it is unlikely (not impossible – but don’t bet on it) that this week’s protests will prevent the new Duma taking its seats, or Vladimir Putin returning to the presidency. Nevertheless, the events of this week are significant. The opposition that was born in the pensioners’ protests in 2005 has come of age, and protest in the streets is signaling the beginning of the end of the Putin regime as we have known it.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Academic thoughts on the Russian election results

2011-12-09T05:58:00.000-06:00

Joshua Tucker, political science professor at New York University, offers some thoughts on the recent Russian elections and quotes Vladimir Gelman of the European University of Saint Petersburg on why "voters are not fools."

Tucker describes the Russian system as a "competitive authoritarian regime." To my understanding, he means pretty much the same thing that Fareed Zakaria described in Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1997) as an "illiberal democracy." Zakaria's label has been used frequently in comparative politics and in AP materials.

Voters are Not Fools: A Response to the 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections

By now, we all know the score in terms of Russian elections. An election is called, the state employs its “administrative resources” to ensure huge advantages for the ruling party or candidate, a little bit of fraud is added in when necessary… and, voila! The ruling regime returns to power with a crushing victory… and absolute control of the parliament and the presidential apparatus…

However something interesting happened over the weekend. The competitive authoritarian regime par excellence, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, went to the polls in a parliamentary election and lost votes from the previous election. And seats. Quite a lot of them actually. Yes, the ruling United Russia party will still have a majority in parliament, but it will be a much smaller majority than its previous majority…

What exactly does this mean??? Things like this are not supposed to happen. We are pleased to welcome with a first response to the election Vladimir Gelman of the European University of Saint Petersburg: "The famous American political scientist V.O.Key in his 1966 book, “The Responsible Electorate”, posted a well-known maxim: “Voters are not fools”. Since then, it has been oft-cited in descriptions and explanations of voting behavior in electoral democracies. December 4, 2011, proved this wisdom for the case of voting behavior under electoral authoritarian regimes. It is especially true in Russia, where voters experienced more than a decade of relatively open electoral competition and have not forgot it as yet despite numerous efforts put forth by the Kremlin. Even though the party of power, United Russia (also known by its nickname as “the party of swindlers and thieves”), was able to get a majority of seats in the State Duma (238 out of 450 seats), still its officially reported electoral results were below 50%, and in some big cities even well below 30-35%. Yet, it was far from what political scientists call as “stunning” elections when authoritarian regimes collapsed because of unexpected opening of ballot boxes (similarly to what happens in the Soviet 1989 elections to the Congress of People’s Deputies). However, even under conditions as uneven as the playing field of Russia’s electoral authoritarianism act of voting might become a weapon of the weak citizens against the strong state, if citizens employ efficient strategies of their political resistance…"

[Gelman's whole article (in Russian)]

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Democracy in a war zone

2011-12-08T06:11:00.002-06:00

It's been implied all along, but Mexico's president has said out loud that narco-gangs threaten the country's democratic regime.

Mexico's Calderon says drug gangs threatening democracy

Organised crime poses an "open threat" to democracy in Mexico, President Felipe Calderon has warned.

Mr Calderon said attempts by drug gangs to manipulate elections was a "new and worrying fact".

Speaking as his sixth and final year in office began, Mr Calderon also defended his decision to use troops to tackle the cartels.

Mr Calderon's speech comes as political campaigns are intensifying ahead of next July's presidential poll…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The fiction of elections

2011-12-07T05:35:00.000-06:00

Sharon LaFraniere, writing in the New York Times, describes more examples of the success of the Chinese Communist Party in keeping independent candidates out of office.

Alarmed by Independent Candidates, Chinese Authorities Crack Down

Periodic elections to neighborhood People’s Congresses are as close to participatory democracy as this nation comes. Of the many grass-roots candidates running here this year, Qiao Mu, an energetic 41-year-old journalism professor in the capital, seemed one of the better bets.

Qiao Mu, a professor who ran for office in Beijing, holding a T-Shirt that says, “I won't be able to speak for you if there's no vote.”

He was well known and liked on the campus of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, his election district. He ran an innovative campaign, making full use of social networks and other Internet tools. He amassed a cadre of enthusiastic student campaigners, and he aimed for practical improvements in campus life: a faster Internet connection and permission for students to study in the spare classrooms instead of the crowded cafeteria.

He lost anyway. A university vice president — a largely unknown personage whose campaign amounted to some posters — collected three times as many votes.

Mr. Qiao said authorities did all they could to stymie him, keeping his name off the ballot, threatening his student volunteers, even forcibly collecting the red bookmarks he had printed with the slogan: “I am the master of my ballot.”

“The harassment started from the very beginning,” he said in an interview in his university office, still cluttered with campaign paraphernalia he never got to distribute. “It is a shame, because I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “All we did was follow China’s Constitution and election law.”

His experience demonstrates an underlying political doctrine of today’s China: while Chinese leaders speak in favor of political reform, local authorities routinely deny voters the chance to freely choose a political representative.

Such official machinations have become more obvious and more intense this year — a telling indicator of the government’s paranoia over a greatly increased pool of independent candidates, even given the near powerlessness of the congresses…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

A Sarah Palin moment in Mexico?

2011-12-06T08:26:00.000-06:00

Does a president need to be an intellectual? Need he be literate? Does he need to mindful of what he reads?

Mexican poll contender Pena Nieto falters at book event

Mexico's leading presidential contender Enrique Pena Nieto gave new ammunition to his critics this weekend.

Asked to name three books that had had an impact on him, he floundered before saying that, as an adolescent, he had been influenced by the Bible.

Political opponents have often accused Mr Pena Nieto - a handsome and telegenic politician married to a television actress - of being "hollow"…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Warn the protesters

2011-12-06T08:03:00.000-06:00

Putin and his henchmen may think that arresting protest leaders will help them improve their poll results for the presidential election. What do you think?

Jailing Opposition Leaders, Russia Moves to Quell Election Protests

On the morning after thousands of people protested parliamentary elections that international observers said were marred by irregularities, two prominent opposition figures who appeared at the demonstration remained under arrest…

One of the men, Ilya Yashin, a leader of the Solidarity movement, was found guilty by a judge of organizing an unauthorized rally and disobeying police orders, and was given a sentence of 15 days in prison… The other man, the anticorruption blogger Alexei Navalny, was expected to face similar charges…

Meanwhile, in a show of strength intended to counter the opposition voices, more than 10,000 supporters of the government, including members of a the pro-Kremlin youth movement, Nashi, attended a celebratory rally in the capital on Tuesday. The group gathered near Red Square before a stage with portraits of Mr. Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev. Supporters of United Russia have said the results in Sunday’s election represented a “clean victory.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Implications for political culture

2011-12-06T05:55:00.000-06:00

Andrew J. Orzel who teaches in Alexandria, VA, posted a link to this Pew Research Center poll on the College Board discussion list. The poll results might be a way of opening discussion about comparative government and politics. There are many bits of data and implications for politics and policies. It would be preferable to have greater diversity in the countries considered, but this task is huge already.

There is a good section on the polling methodology and it's possible to download a PDF version of the full report.

The American-Western European Values Gap

As has long been the case, American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Britain, France, Germany and Spain. Americans are also considerably more religious than Western Europeans…

These differences between Americans and Western Europeans echo findings from previous surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center. However, the current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations…

These are among the findings from a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, conducted in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain from March 21 to April 14 as part of the broader 23-nation poll in spring 2011…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Preliminary results from Russia

2011-12-05T19:21:00.000-06:00

The BBC reported these results Monday evening.

Russia election: Hundreds rally against Putin in Moscow

Several thousand people have taken to the streets of Moscow shouting "Down with Putin" as international observers in Russia's parliamentary elections speak of flagrant violations…

United Russia won the election, but with a sharp drop in its support, ahead of Mr Putin's bid to return to the presidency next March.

Electoral officials said the party had just under 50%, down from 64% in 2007…

Electoral Commission head Vladimir Churov said United Russia should have a slim majority, with 238 seats out of 450.

This would mean the party losing its current two-thirds majority which had allowed it to change the constitution unchallenged.

Mr Churov said the Communist Party was in second place with 19.2% of the vote, giving it 92 seats.

A Just Russia was in third place with 13.2% and 64 seats, and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) had 11.7% and 56, he added…

United Russia's slim Duma majority
The Duma has 450 seats. Parties not making the Duma's 5% threshold: Yabloko, 3.3%, Patriots of Russia 0.97%, Right Cause 0.59%
Source: Electoral Commission. Results are based on 96% of the vote. Turnout was 60%.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Growth for votes

2011-12-05T05:56:00.000-06:00

The Chinese rulers must be looking at this Russian example and worrying even more about maintaining economic growth.

This article from last week predicted the dismal results for United Russia in yesterday's election.

In Quiet Part of Russia, Putin’s Party Loses Steam

It was a grim-faced crowd that gathered last week at the Palace of Culture in this village, making its way past decrepit housing blocks, broken streetlights and a statue of Lenin.

The governor had driven in from the regional capital, and detachments of pretty girls in blue smocks were handing out flags for United Russia, the party that serves as an extension of the Kremlin’s power.

Workers for United Russia, the country's main political party, helped prepare Arsenyevo for a visit by Gov. Vladimir S. Gruzdev, a rising political star.

But the villagers were not in a holiday mood. They wanted to complain…

United Russia can no longer count on voters in places like Tula, an industrial region about 120 miles south of Moscow where many residents say that their quality of life has stopped rising… With competition all but eliminated, Russia’s political system depends heavily on its leaders’ popularity to provide legitimacy. As winter settles in, that no longer feels assured…

An array of pay raises and public projects have been announced in recent weeks. Vladimir S. Gruzdev, a rising political star who was installed as governor in August, holds marathon town hall meetings reminiscent of reality television, dressing down local apparatchiks like a populist Donald Trump. Arsenyevo has only 4,900 residents, but they got three and a half hours with Mr. Gruzdev this month. They then scattered into the dark, some impressed, some skeptical…

In an interview afterward, Mr. Gruzdev said these were routine outings by a new governor, and unrelated to the elections. He acknowledged, however, that his popularity was helping the party…

In any case, he says, the authorities have little to fear from the parliamentary elections.

The real hazard will come months from now, when all the posters have been taken down and an already bitter electorate faces stark economic realities, Alexei V. Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow said. The campaign season has uncovered “something happening in our society, a very important process,” he argued, as Russians — people accustomed to 7 percent growth rates — reassess Mr. Putin and United Russia through an increasingly critical lens.

“People have the expectation that at least things won’t be worse,” he said. “And it will probably be worse.”

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Initial returns from Russia

2011-12-04T21:20:00.000-06:00

It appears that United Russia might lose its two-thirds majority in the Duma. What limits will that put on the presumed new presidency of Vladimir Putin?

Putin's United Russia party suffers poll setback

Early returns from Russia's parliamentary polls point to a sharp drop in support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.

With 75% of ballots counted, the Central Election Commission said United Russia had 50% of the vote, down from 64% in 2007…

If the result is confirmed, United Russia could lose its current two-thirds majority which allowed it to change the constitution unchallenged…

The election commission said the Communist Party was in second place with 19.3% of the vote.

A Just Russia was in third place with 13% and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) had 11.8%, the election commission said…

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Moscow, says if confirmed, the result will be a significant embarrassment to Mr Putin, three months before he is scheduled to run again for the Russian presidency…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Corruption is so 20th century

2011-12-03T08:20:00.000-06:00

When in power, the PRI had a reputation for corruption. Out of power, the party leaders have struggled to shed that stigma. That probably explains why the new party head resigned under pressure pretty quickly.

Loan scandal topples head of Mexico's PRI party

Humberto Moreira, president of Mexico's former ruling party, quit his post Friday amid a swelling financial scandal that threatened to throw off the party's bid to retake power in next year's elections.

Moreira has been hammered for months by charges that in his previous job as governor of the northern state of Coahuila, he left it saddled with $3 billion in debts, at least partly due to loans allegedly sought using falsified documents…

Humberto Moreira announced his resignation before a televised gathering of the PRI's political council, saying he would not allow a "war in the media" to hurt his party.

The debt controversy was becoming a drag on the PRI even as early polls show it poised to retake power in Mexico 12 years after being unseated. The scandal threatened to remind voters of the sort of graft that characterized the PRI's 70-year reign just when it is seeking to promote a fresh, cleaned-up image…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Technocrats and democracy

2011-12-02T05:46:00.000-06:00

The new governments in Greece and Italy have been described by journalists as led by technocrats.

The concept of technocrat is not well described in most textbooks. Often, the concept only comes up in discussions about the rivalries between the political dinosaurios who ran the old version of the PRI and the technocrats who want to take power in the party.

So, what's a technocrat? If having technocrats in charge in Greece and Italy is a good idea now, are there disadvantages? Are there similar disadvantages for Mexico as the new PRI is poised to return to power? And why does no one talk about the technocrats who run most of the modern parts of Iran's economy (like the nuclear industry and the military)? Are there technocrats in other countries? Who are they? How do they affect governance and politics?

The Economist published an article about Greece and Italy, but it sheds light indirectly on the countries your students are studying. It might be worth their attention.

Technocrats, Minds like machines: Government by experts sounds tempting, especially in a crisis. It can work. But brief stints have the best chances

EVEN before Plato conceived the philosopher-king, people yearned for clever, dispassionate and principled government. When the usual run of rulers proves cowardly, indecisive or discredited, turning to the wisdom and expertise of a technocrat, as both Italy and Greece have done in recent days, is particularly tempting.

Part of the attraction of the term “technocrat”, however, is that the label is so stretchy. Does it mean just any expert in government, or one from outside politics? How many technocrats, and in which positions, justify a government’s “technocratic” label? Does such an administration operate within the political system, or supplant it? For how long? Can a technocrat evolve into a politician and vice versa? The answers are imprecise and shift over time…

When political power is not publicly contested at all, electability is irrelevant and expertise can give the ambitious an edge. In China all but one of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee are engineers. This marks a shift… And it may be temporary. Li Keqiang, likely to take over from Wen Jiabao as prime minister in 2013, has degrees in law and economics….

It is not only one-party states that like technocracy. Military officers justifying a coup may use technocratic parlance when they highlight their independence of lobbies and their focus on the national interest…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

British politics, a case study

2011-12-01T07:44:00.002-06:00

Here's an example of how British politics works. Your students could follow the words and actions of the major players for the next several weeks or months.

Britons Strike Over Extended Austerity Measures

Hundreds of thousands of public employees walked off their jobs in schools, hospitals, airports, courtrooms, libraries, museums and government offices on Wednesday, as British workers became the latest in Europe to demonstrate mass fury at government austerity measures.

The one-day strike was the biggest here since the 1970s… This time, the immediate issue was Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to require public employees to work for more years and pay more toward their pensions each month.

But the strikers’ anger goes far deep.. Many strikers said that the policy of decreasing welfare benefits and tax credits while also making huge cuts across the board in all government departments had left them struggling at a time of rapidly rising prices…

The strike came just after more bad news from the government. The chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced Tuesday that because of a swiftly worsening economic outlook that had thrown off his deficit-reduction timetable, public employees’ wages would be frozen for two more years, on top of an existing two-year freeze. He also said that new budget cuts meant that the public sector would lose hundreds of thousands more jobs than he had previously said, and warned that if Europe slid into recession again, Britain would probably follow…

There were angry scenes in Parliament on Wednesday, as the prime minister clashed with Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour opposition, over the causes and effects of the strike. Mr. Miliband, whose party receives large financial contributions from the unions, did not explicitly endorse the walkout. But, in a reference to Mr. Osborne, Mr. Miliband said that he sympathized with the grievances of workers who earn in a year “what the chancellor pays for his annual skiing holiday.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Teaching Comparative (a thought)

2011-12-01T05:56:00.002-06:00

Teaching comparative government and politics is a complex process. Once in a while I have in insight into that process. Here's one of them.

I often had to remind my students that comparative politics was a political science course and not a history course. Nearly all of my students were veterans of history courses where they had learned well how to do historical analysis.

Some of them wanted to continue to do that kind of analysis in this political science course. They were usually disappointed in the results. I had to remind them that in comparative government and politics, analysis involved less history and more politics.

Thus, when answering a question like, "How did the UK end up with a coalition government in 2010?" the analysis should not begin with an explanation of what happened at Runnymede in 1215. At most, a political science analysis might begin with Margaret Thatcher's "revolution." More likely, an explanation should begin with economic woes, the war in Iraq, and public disillusionment with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. However, a credible answer might begin with the performance of Nick Clegg in the first-ever televised candidates' debate during the most recent election.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Words from the future president

2011-12-01T05:46:00.000-06:00

The Chinese news agency Xinhua begins to introduce China's next president by highlighting a recent speech where he said all the right things.

Xi Jinping stresses training of "new brooms"

Senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Xi Jinping on Wednesday stressed the training of newly inaugurated officials during this year's local leadership reshuffling.

Xi Jinping (C), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and also president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, talks with some students of the school at a symposium in Beijing, China, Nov. 23, 2011.

As officials at local levels were reorganized this year, a number of new leaders took office. It's imperative to build their leadership capacity as well as to make them excellent Party members, Xi… said…

Xi also stressed that personal integrity is the most important criterion for selecting officials, and those who always hold on to their principles and never shy away from duties are preferred.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Whose corruption?

2011-11-30T06:01:00.000-06:00

President Jonathan has appointed a new head of the anti-corruption agency. The position has long been the center of contention depending upon whose corruption has been exposed. So, how much legitimacy does the agency and the director (and the president) still have?

Nigeria president fires anti-corruption czar

Nigeria's president unexpectedly fired the head of the oil-rich and graft-prone nation's lead anti-corruption agency Wednesday, removing an official who has been criticized and portrayed as being controlled by the country's political elite.

Farida Waziri still had at least another year in her tenure as chairwoman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission before the sudden decision by President Goodluck Jonathan, agency spokesman Femi Babafemi said. Babafemi confirmed Waziri had been fired, but said he didn't know the president's reasons for pushing Waziri out…

The anti-graft agency came into existence only a few years after Nigeria became a democracy in 1999 following a series of military rulers and failed civilian governments. Its first chief, Nuhu Ribadu, claimed at one point that Africa's most populous nation likely lost more than $380 billion to graft between 1960 and 1999, the country's post-independence period that saw a string of military dictatorships and failed civilian governments.

Theft may also be rising as crude oil prices have spiked in recent years, sending more unaccounted-for cash into one of the top suppliers to the U.S.

The administration of late President Umaru Yar'Adua forced Ribadu from the agency in 2008. Waziri, who took over the commission, has been criticized by U.S. diplomats in leaked cables for being unprepared and for apparently being controlled by politicians. Others have leveled corruption allegations against her and operatives of the commission, though none have been proven.

The commission under Waziri has charged several prominent bankers over the fraud that caused the near-collapse of the country's banks in 2009. It also recently arrested and charged former House Speaker Dimeji Bankole over corruption allegations -- the first major strike against the nation's political elite in many months.

Still, prosecutions by the agency have not risen since 2007, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report…

The president appointed agency deputy Ibrahim Lamurde as the commission's acting chairman, Babafemi said. Lamurde served as a trusted official under Ribadu, but later was sidelined following his departure.

The return of Lamurde could signal a more robust and aggressive pursuit of corruption in Nigeria. However, the agency under Ribadu trampled on suspects' rights while avoiding targeting the allies of then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Human Rights Watch has said.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Looking to learn?

2011-11-29T11:31:00.000-06:00

Henry Farrell, one of the main contributors to The Monkey Cage blog, announced that "Scott Page at University of Michigan is offering a free graded course on ‘thinking with models.’" The topic is relevant to the study of comparative politics.

Model Thinking, taught by Scott E Page; Class starts mid-to-late January 2012

We live in a complex world with diverse people, firms, and governments whose behaviors aggregate to produce novel, unexpected phenomena. We see political uprisings, market crashes, and a never ending array of social trends. How do we make sense of it?

Models. Evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don't. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one…

I present a starter kit of models: I start with models of tipping points. I move on to cover models explain the wisdom of crowds, models that show why some countries are rich and some are poor, and models that help unpack the strategic decisions of firm and politicians.

The models cover in this class provide a foundation for future social science classes, whether they be in economics, political science, business, or sociology. Mastering this material will give you a huge leg up in advanced courses. They also help you in life.

Here's how the course will work.

For each model, I present a short, easily digestible overview lecture. Then, I'll dig deeper. I'll go into the technical details of the model. Those technical lectures won't require calculus but be prepared for some algebra. For all the lectures, I'll offer some questions and we'll have quizzes and even a final exam. If you decide to do the deep dive, and take all the quizzes and the exam, you'll receive a certificate of completion. If you just decide to follow along for the introductory lectures to gain some exposure that's fine too.

It's all free.

And it's all here to help make you a better thinker!

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Implications for political culture

2011-11-29T11:07:00.000-06:00

Andrew J. Orzel who teaches in Alexandria, VA, posted, on the College Board discussion list (thank you, Andrew), a link to this Pew Research Center poll. The poll results might be a way of opening discussion about comparative government and politics. There are many bits of data and implications for politics and policies. It would have been preferable to have some Eastern European, Asian, African, and Latin American countries considered, but this task is huge already.

There is a good section on the polling methodology and it's possible to download a PDF version of the full report.

The American-Western European Values Gap

As has long been the case, American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Britain, France, Germany and Spain. Americans are also considerably more religious than Western Europeans…

These differences between Americans and Western Europeans echo findings from previous surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center. However, the current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations…

These are among the findings from a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, conducted in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain from March 21 to April 14 as part of the broader 23-nation poll in spring 2011…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The inability of the government to act

2011-11-29T05:50:00.000-06:00

When part of the government ignores rule made by other parts of the government, how does the system work? Maybe it doesn't.

Laws to rein in Russia’s pretrial detention system are ignored

Over the last 18 months, President Dmitry Medvedev has signed two laws meant to rein in Russia’s notorious pretrial detention system, an institution often used to extract bribes and enforce widespread corruption. He is trying to make the country more governable and conducive to business.

Medvedev sought to discourage police, prosecutors and judges from throwing businesspeopleinto jail on false charges, often in return for bribes from competitors bent on destroying a rival.

But the system quickly proved itself more powerful than the president. The laws were ignored. Yet another of Medvedev’s promised reforms would go unkept, and Russians would remain fearful of their courts and police.

The failed attempt to strengthen the rule of law illustrates an odd paradox: Even as the government has grown more authoritarian, it has become less capable of exerting its will over the vast bureaucracy beneath when that bureaucracy has other interests.

“Of course, they can say whatever they want,” said Yana Yakovleva, who leads Business Solidarity, an organization that fights for the rights of Russian businesspeople. “But there is not a single agency not poisoned with corruption here, and they will listen to what they’re told only if it’s profitable or when their fear is stronger than the desire for money.”

When a compliant judge denies bail, detention gets a businessman out of the way while his company is stolen. It’s a powerful tool for corrupt officials to extract a bribe: Pay up or go to jail…

In April 2010, Medvedev signed a law prescribing bail or release on personal recognizance for economic crimes and, in January, signed another law stipulating that seriously ill detainees need not await trial in jail.

Yelena Panfilova, who monitors corruption as director of Transparency International in Moscow, said this month that corruption has grown more entrenched in Russia over the last decade: If businesspeople once gave bribes voluntarily, perhaps to get a permit faster, now payoffs have become required. Those who refuse to pay often find themselves in jail, despite the new laws…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

The Mexican presidential campaign begins

2011-11-28T08:35:00.000-06:00

Putin is not the only politician who is beginning an election campaign.

Pena Nieto confirms Mexico 2012 presidential bid

The early frontrunner for next year's presidential election in Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, has formally registered his candidacy.

Mr Pena Nieto is standing for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed for 71 years before losing power in 2000…

Mr Nieto, 45, is often described as Mexico's most handsome politician.

In September he stepped down as governor of the state of Mexico, the country's most populous state, where he gained a strong support by delivering public works…

After registering his candidacy in Mexico City, he told supporters that the PRI could deliver positive change.

"Today in Mexico there is fear, but better times are coming," he said.

"A wind of hope and change is blowing: the PRI will restore the greatness of Mexico because we believe in solutions, not illusions."…

The election campaign is likely to be dominated by debate over how to combat drug-related violence, which has killed more than 40,000 Mexicans since Mr Calderon became president in December 2006.

Mr Nieto has called Mr Calderon's decision to use the army against drugs cartels "rushed and poorly planned," but he has not said if he would take the troops off the streets.

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Putin needs rebranding

2011-11-28T08:12:00.000-06:00

One analyst suggests that the Putin political brand is getting old, just like those politicians Putin cited as models for his long term leadership earlier this month.

In Russia, Evidence of Misstep by Putin

Two months after Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin revealed his intention to reclaim the Russian presidency, he returned on Sunday to the same podium, facing the same sea of rippling flags, to accept his party’s nomination…

It is now clear that instead of restoring public confidence in the political system, the announcement that Mr. Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev would switch jobs annoyed many Russians. Mr. Putin’s approval rating briefly dipped to 61 percent this month, high by international standards but lower than at any point in a decade.

Meanwhile, the governing party, United Russia, has had to scale back its expectations for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections, when it is likely to lose the two-thirds majority it has held since 2007…

Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar who is studying the role of public opinion in Russian politics [said] “But something has changed. The biggest problem is that people have gotten fed up with them. If you look at long-serving leaders like Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, you see that their ratings tank in the latter half of the decade. It’s like the seven-year itch of politics.”…

Ms. Hill, who is studying fluctuations in poll numbers, said… The current dynamic, she said, is reminiscent of the late years of Lady Thatcher or Helmut Kohl, who also enjoyed great popularity early on…

“By the end, the brand is shot; you can’t rebrand it,” she said. Russian authorities, she said, “seem too confident that they can pull it off.”…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

Elected British mayors

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000-06:00

The idea of devolution is not limited to the outer nations.

The mayors show

Next year 11 British cities will have the chance to replace the existing local-government structure, in which leaders are chosen from the ranks of councillors, with directly elected mayors. The coalition government sees this as a way of devolving power and strengthening localism…

Elected mayors are still a political novelty. Londoners embraced a mayoralty in 2000…

London’s mayor controls transport policy (hence the capital’s congestion charge), oversees the capital’s policing through the Metropolitan Police Authority and sets a council-tax “precept”—a small addition to the property taxes levied by boroughs. His regional counterparts probably won’t get anything like that degree of freedom. David Cameron, the prime minister, has backed away from earlier plans for powerful “executive mayors”. A consultation on powers, which will conclude in January, hints vaguely that mayors will be “ambassadors and champions” for their area…

So it is by no means certain that Britain’s cities will vote for mayors next year… In some solidly Labour cities, the reform is derided as a “Tory” gimmick. Councillors in towns like Coventry are already campaigning against a change.

There are reasonable doubts about how effective mayors can be without clear new powers. Sam Sims of the Institute for Government, a think-tank, notes that people are more likely to vote for mayors if they know local government will be reshaped as a result…

Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).

in·ter·mit·tent

2011-11-23T09:06:00.000-06:00

Pronunciation: \-ˈmi-tənt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin intermittent-, intermittens, present participle of intermittere
Date: 1601
: coming and going at intervals : not continuous ; also : occasional
— in·ter·mit·tent·ly adverb
Source: Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Intermittent
Retrieved 2 December 2010

The US version of harvest festival, Thanksgiving, happens tomorrow. It celebrates a mythical event in the early days of European immigration to the "new" world and serves as a harvest festival. Most of us will be busy, schools will be closed, more than 10% of us will travel to be with family, and, if we can afford it, we'll share a traditional meal.

Harvest festivals are not unique to the US. Canada celebrates on the 2nd Monday in October (harvest comes a bit earlier in Canada than in the US). Nearly all farming cultures celebrated harvests. In many countries, those celebrations have evolved into holidays for non-agricultural socieiies.

In the UK, Harvest Home is observed at the time of the full moon nearest the autumn equinox (late September or early October).

Peasant communities in Russia celebrated harvest time, and farmers still do.

The Chinese Moon Festival also takes place near the autumn equinox. Its origins can be traced back nearly 3,000 years.

The Yoruba in Nigeria recognize Ikore as a harvest festival.

Mehrgan or the Persian Festival of Autumn has been celebrated since pre-Islamic times. Because of the complex cultural history, modern observations have been on October 2nd.

Celebrate in your own way. The blog will resume next week.

If you find a bit of information that might be useful for teaching comparative politics, post it at Sharing Comparative or send me a note with the information.

Remember, nearly all the approximately 2,500 entries here are indexed at the delicio.us index. There are 78 categories and you can use more than one category at a time to find something appropriate to your needs.

The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).