Political evolution in China and Russia
While doing some research yesterday, I was reminded that I ought to look at Foreign Affairs more often.The current issue has several articles that are relevant to comparative teachers and students (if there's time to go beyond the syllabus).
The first is John L. Thornton's Long Time Coming, The Prospects for Democracy in China. The article summary describes it this way: "Is China democratizing? The country's leaders do not think of democracy as people in the West generally do, but they are increasingly backing local elections, judicial independence, and oversight of Chinese Communist Party officials. How far China's liberalization will ultimately go and what Chinese politics will look like when it stops are open questions."
Another is John Ikenberry's The Rise of China and the Future of the West which suggests that "China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China..."
Two other articles are more specifically about Chinese international relations and economics.
But there is Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss' The Myth of the Authoritarian Model, How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back. It contends that "growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin's attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity -- providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism. But the correlation between autocracy and economic growth is spurious. Autocracy's effects in Russia have in fact been negative. Whatever the gains under Putin, they would have been greater under a democratic regime."
Labels: China, concepts, political culture, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:13 AM
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