It's good to be the king
The perks of high office are meant to reflect the glory of the state. This report on benefits of the Russian president offers one glimpse. How do Putin's perks compare with those of other heads of state?
For Putin, Report Says, State Perks Pile High
President Vladimir V. Putin is rumored to be among the world’s wealthiest men, with an oil-fed fortune worth tens of billions of dollars. He denies that, vehemently, but a report to be published Tuesday suggests that the dispute may be beside the point.
In the report, sarcastically titled “The Life of a Galley Slave,” after the president’s own description of his tenure in office, Russian opposition leaders describe what they call an extraordinary expansion of presidential perks during the 12 years since the start of Mr. Putin’s first term as president — palaces, a fleet of jets and droves of luxury cars.
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| Constatine Palace |
Among the 20 residences available to the Russian president are Constantine Palace… a ski lodge in the Caucasus Mountains and a Gothic revival palace in the Moscow region. The president also has at his disposal 15 helicopters, 4 spacious yachts and 43 aircraft, including the main presidential jet… an Airbus and a Dassault Falcon. The 43 aircraft alone are worth an estimated $1 billion, the report says.
In response to a written query, the Kremlin’s press office said Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, was on vacation and unable to respond to the substance of the report. In a response reported by Kommersant, however, Mr. Peskov said the residences, aircraft and cars were government property used lawfully by the president…
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Labels: leadership, Russia, state
Photographs from northern Nigeria
The
New York Times blog, "Lens," has posted 20 photographs taken by Benedicte Kurzen, a French photographer, taken in the months following the 2011 presidential election.
Her photos and commentary offer glimpses of the reality that are more immediate than a textbook summary.
See
Looking at the Tangled Roots of Violence in Northern Nigeria.
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| Part of the vice-presidential bodyguard |
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Labels: cleavages, Nigeria, politics
Quaint Quangos
Back in ancient times, when I first began teaching comparative politics, quangos were a big deal. Margaret Thatcher was out to eliminate them as a way to reduce the cost of government. (Plus, the word was almost as much fun for students as cleavage.)
Have quangos brought government closer to the people? Or have they been un-democratic rule makers not responsible to elected officials?
More than 100 quangos axed by coalition, say ministers
More than 100 quangos have been axed and a further 90 merged into other bodies since the coalition came to power, ministers have said.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the cull of publicly funded agencies was on track to save £2.6bn by the end of this Parliament.
However, costs from the reorganisation, including redundancy payouts to staff affected, could be as high as £900m…
Quangos - "quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations" - are "arm's-length" bodies funded by Whitehall departments but not run by them.
They are advisory bodies, consumer watchdogs or organisations carrying out public services.
MPs have questioned the projected savings and the wider benefit to government in terms of quicker decision-making and greater accountability.
Last year, the cross-party public administration committee said the process had been "poorly managed" and pre-election claims about how much could be saved were "probably exaggerated".
The up-front cost of the reorganisation is projected to be between £600m and £900m…
The Taxpayers' Alliance, which campaigns for better value for money from public spending, said the abolition of "unnecessary and costly" quangos was welcome.
"But there is plenty more to do in terms of cracking down on the quango state," said the organisation's chief executive Matthew Sinclair.
Quango staff keep jobs despite Cameron's promise to cull numbers
Five in six quango staff will keep their jobs despite David Cameron's promise to have a bonfire of bureaucracy.
Ministers have been criticised for slow progress in getting rid of "non-departmental public bodies" as new figures reveal that 100 out of 900 have been culled.
Around 150 more have been merged down to 70 but it appears many staff have simply been transferred across to different bodies.
Labour claims the Government has actually created more than 150 new quangos since coming to power, including 140 alone in the NHS shake-up.
Official statistics show only 18,000 jobs out of more than 110,000 at quangos will be scrapped in total…
Coalition beware: bonfires of quangos usually burn themselves out
I have sat beside blazing quango bonfires, real and rhetorical, for at least 30 years, and the net effect is that quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations – to give them their full name – continue to thrive.
They will do under this government – and the next one, too. They did so under Margaret Thatcher, who came to power in 1979 determined to slaughter many of them, but – as in much else – found it hard even for her formidable willpower to achieve…
Quangos survive because they usually serve a useful purpose to the public and do so at arm's length from politicians and Whitehall officialdom…
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Labels: bureaucracy, government, UK
Five-month transition
There was some discussion in the
Sharing Comparative group about the long time between the presidential election in Mexico and the assumption of office by the winner. The editors at
The Economist were considering the same thing.
The waiting game: The perils of a five-month transition
LIFE sometimes moves slowly in Mexico, and the handover of power is no exception… Mexico’s president-elect must wait five months before taking office. For Enrique Peña Nieto, who won July’s presidential election as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and will take office on December 1st, the lengthy limbo brings risks.
One is a news vacuum. This has given undeserved coverage to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-wing candidate who claimed fraud after his narrow defeat in the 2006 election and has done so again after losing by 6.6% this year…
On August 9th the PRI announced that its priority in the new Congress, which starts on September 1st, would be a bundle of rather flimsy-looking measures to fight corruption and make the government’s dealings with the media more transparent.
This will delay more pressing reforms to tax, energy, the labour market and social security, all of which are vital if Mexico is to grow at the 6% that Mr Peña has promised. His aides say there will be progress on these bigger reforms before December. But that requires help from the opposition, since the PRI failed to win a majority in either house of Congress…
Political reform could be the price of the PAN’s co-operation on economic matters. Innovations such as consecutive re-election of congressmen and mayors, or a run-off in presidential elections, are not to Mr Peña’s taste, but they would be good for Mexico’s democracy. So would a shorter transition period.
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Talking to the enemy
It seems that at least part of the government is talking to part of Boko Haram in Nigeria.
Nigeria confirms informal Boko Haram talks
The Nigerian government says it has started informal talks with Boko Haram to try to end deadly attacks by the militant Islamist group.
A presidential spokesman said the dialogue was through "backroom channels", without elaborating further.
The group's main faction earlier this week ruled out peace talks…
This is the first official government confirmation of dialogue with the militant group, the BBC's Nigeria correspondent Tomi Oladipo reports.
An earlier attempt at peace talks collapsed very quickly.
The group has so far made no public comments over the latest revelation of the ongoing attempts towards negotiations, our correspondent says…
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How much will people pay?
The Iranian government is asking a lot of its citizens in order to pursue its nuclear goals. The question is how much are people willing to "pay" for the those policies?
When will it ever end? For ordinary Iranians, daily life goes from bad to worse
THE last time fruit and chicken were luxuries in Iran was back in the 1980s, when the country was fighting against Iraq… Non-combatants in the big cities generally accepted shortages and other privations with patriotic stoicism.
Two-and-a-half decades on, Iran again gives the impression of a country at war even if, for the moment, the guns are silent. Prices of basic food, clothes and electronic goods have soared as a result of international sanctions and a plummeting currency…
The solidarity of the 1980s is conspicuous by its absence. Last month a limited sale of subsidised chicken prompted mini-riots…
The country’s leaders have belatedly acknowledged that their insistence that Iran must enrich its uranium in defiance of the West is causing pain. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called for an “economy of resistance” based on self-reliance…
In fact, Iran is much richer than it was in the war years of the 1980s. On paper at least, it earned a plentiful $120 billion from oil revenues in the financial year ending in March 2011. Some of the lucre has gone to finance the pro-poor subsidies beloved of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but big sums have also found their way into the pockets of senior clerics, former Revolutionary Guard commanders and well-connected businessmen at the heart of the economic elite. Porsche says it sold more cars in Tehran in 2011 than in any other city in the Middle East…
The president has accused his political enemies of deliberately stoking inflation in order to harm him. Parliament plans to deny the government a role in staging next year’s elections, the plan apparently being to “elect” a candidate more fully obedient to the supreme leader, whom obsequious disciples now consider quasi-divine.
The Islamic Republic now seems to be more disliked than at any time since the revolution of 1979 that ended the monarchy, for which some people are showing nostalgia…
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Yes, there are cleavages in China
Textbook authors are keen to impress on readers that the kind of ethnic cleavages seen in places like Nigeria and Russia are mostly absent in China. That oversimplification glosses over Xinjiang, Tibet, and the massive programs to encourage Han Chinese to move to provinces near the border.
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| Xinjiang |
Keep in mind that Xinjiang is one of those places (geographic cleavage) where ethnic Uighurs (ethnic cleavage) who used to dominate the population are practicing Muslims (religious cleavage). Note that all those cleavages coincide, and you know what that means. Add to that the political tradition represented by the Chinese maxim, "Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away."
Fast and loose: The party’s interference in the observance of Ramadan stokes grievances in China’s north-west
Xinjiang, the vast region in whose west lies the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, has a history of tension between the ethnic-Turkic, mostly Muslim, Uighurs who used to make up most of its population, and the authorities, dominated by ethnic-Han Chinese. During Ramadan, which comes to an end on August 19th, that tension has been exacerbated by the government’s intervention in religious practice.
It has been discouraging, and in some places even banning, Communist Party cadres, government officials, students and schoolchildren from fasting and attending mosques during working hours…
Groups representing Uighur exiles say that this year the campaign has been more intense than usual. Xinjiang’s government has denied forcing people to break the fast. Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman, was quoted by Global Times, a party-owned newspaper, saying that the government did, however, “encourage residents to eat properly for study and work purposes.”
This is resented by many Uighurs as yet another encroachment on their traditions. Kashgar is rapidly becoming a Chinese city like many others… In Xinjiang as a whole, Uighurs and other minorities are now outnumbered by Han Chinese.
Many Uighurs long for independence, which the region briefly enjoyed as East Turkestan in the 1930s and again in the 1940s… But independence is not on the cards, though anti-Chinese sentiment does at times turn violent—most dramatically in 2009 in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi…
Given this history, it seems surprising that the government should risk inflaming passions by interfering with religious observance. Exiled activists see it as fitting a pattern. “The whole idea,” says Alim Seytoff of the Uighur American Association, “is to secularise the Uighur people.”…
It is understandable that China is nervous about the spread of Islamist extremism. It has only to look at its own borders to see its consequences in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia…
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Maintaining male dominance, again
While news from Iran is dominated by international issues, social-cultural-political engineering continues within Iran. What would have to change if women got more power in public and politics?
Anger as Iran bans women from universities
In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men.
It follows years in which Iranian women students have outperformed men, a trend at odds with the traditional male-dominated outlook of the country's religious leaders. Women outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year's university entrance exam.
Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.
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| Exam time for Iranian students |
Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.
The Oil Industry University… says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree…
Iran has highest ratio of female to male undergraduates in the world, according to UNESCO. Female students have become prominent in traditionally male-dominated courses like applied physics and some engineering disciplines.
Sociologists have credited women's growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The relative decline in the male student population has been attributed to the desire of young Iranian men to "get rich quick" without going to university.
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Labels: civil society, cleavages, gender, Iran, women
Judicial reform in Mexico
The PRI will again control the presidency in Mexico, but it might have competition not only from the legislature, but also the judciary.
Mexican court: Military law is unconstitutional
Mexico's Supreme Court on Tuesday declared unconstitutional a key portion of a military law that has broadened the influence of military courts and angered civilian victims seeking justice.
The 8-2 ruling said a provision of the Code of Military Justice that claims authority over all crimes committed by soldiers on duty is incompatible with Mexico's constitution. The ruling said it violates a federal law stipulating that military courts should not expand their scope over civilians affected by a case…
Rights groups and Mexican news media obtained records that showed military prosecutors opened nearly 5,000 investigations into alleged violations of human rights between 2007 and April 2012, but only 38 service members were convicted and sentenced. The number of complaints has increased since President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to crack down on drug traffickers…
"This is the most important step the Supreme Court has ever taken toward ending the longstanding practice of sending abuses by soldiers to military courts," said Nik Steinberg, the Mexico and Cuba researcher of Human Rights Watch…
In Mexico, five separate rulings in different cases are required to set a broad precedent beyond the individual cases. The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling in another case holding that when the victim of an alleged crime is a civilian, an ordinary judge should oversee the case, and it still has to rule on 27 other cases involving the military.
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Labels: judiciary, Mexico, rule-of-law, separation of powers
Move people and end poverty
"Government-sponsored" resettlement is common in China, and doing so to end poverty is one reason. What kinds of government powers and legitimacy are needed to make these policies work?
Two million people to be moved out of poverty
One of the country's poorest provinces plans to solve its poverty problem by moving two million people out of its mountains and barren terrains before 2020.
The project will be one of the largest government-initiated migrations in the country, surpassing the Three Gorges Dam relocation that involved 1.27 million people along the Yangtze River.
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| Guizhou |
Guizhou plans to move the first 100,000 this year, which will cost 1.8 billion yuan (283 million U.S. dollars), according to Chen Yiqin, deputy governor of Guizhou, who said the relocation scheme is key to Guizhou's "final offensive against poverty."…
The province has very few flat areas suitable for growing food… Living conditions are harsh and the environment cannot sustain that many lives in many areas…
[P]eople will be relocated to towns and industrial districts where there will be opportunities. Construction of 181 resettlement communities for this year has already begun…
For this year, each relocated family will be allocated a house no smaller than 80 square meters. The government has also pledged to offer retail stalls to families, officials said…
China has migrated many people, such as in the Three Gorges project...
But the largest relocation was launched in Shaanxi province last year. The government aims to move nearly 2.8 million people out of either poverty-stricken or geological disasters-prone areas in the next ten years.
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Dissent will get you in trouble
In Russia, dissent will still get you sent to prison, even if it's not in Siberia.
Russian Punk Band Is Found Guilty of Hooliganism for Anti-Putin Protest
A Moscow judge handed down prison sentences of two years on Friday afternoon for three young women who staged a protest against Vladimir V. Putin in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior last February and whose jailing and trial on hooliganism charges have generated worldwide criticism of constraints on political speech in Russia…
As the judge, Marina Syrova, read the lengthy verdict, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse and shouted, “Free Pussy Riot!”
Riot police officers arrested dozens of them, including the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is active in the Russian political opposition. Mr. Kasparov fought with the police and appeared to be beaten as he was bundled into a paddy wagon…
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| Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in court |
The case has become a touchstone in the unfolding political drama that began in Russia after disputed parliamentary elections last December. That is partly because of the sympathetic appearance of the defendants — two are mothers of young children — partly because their group uses music to carry its message, and because it has pitted them against a united power-structure: the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
While the case has allowed opponents of Mr. Putin, the president, to portray his government as squelching free speech and presiding over a rigged judicial system, it has also handed the government an opportunity to portray its political opponents as obscene, disrespectful rabble-rousers, liberal urbanites backed by the West in a conspiracy against the Russian state and the Russian church…
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Aging populations and government capacities
A brief press release from the office of Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu, provides a good introduction to an analysis in
The Economist. The topic should sound familiar to Americans listening to campaign speeches, but the problems are much more complex. And, we have to ask, how does China's situation compare with less prosperous nations?
Vice premier calls for actively coping with aging problem
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| Vice Premier Hui |
Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Thursday called for actively coping with the country's aging problem that has extended its far-reaching influence onto economic and social development.
The first half of the 21st century is a key period for the rapid development of the country's aging problem, and China has not adequately prepared to respond to the aging population, Hui, who is also director of the China National Committee on Aging, said at a meeting.
Some 123 million Chinese were over age 65 by the end of 2011, accounting for 9.1 percent of the total population, according to official data.
The scale of the aging population, the level of its development and the burden put on society have exceeded expectations, Hui said…
Pensions:
Fulfilling promises
Public pensions are fairly new to China’s countryside. Security in old age used to mean the family farming plot, not a pension pot. But by the end of last year 326m rural residents had been enrolled in a public pension… This wave of rural Chinese joins nearly 300m city dwellers enrolled in a variety of urban pensions…
The number of Chinese aged 60 or more is projected to grow from 181m today to almost 390m in 2035, almost a quarter of the world’s total. And only two working-age Chinese will support every person in retirement…
Pensions can rest on a variety of “pillars”, among them government handouts, schemes financed by mandatory contributions, and voluntary arrangements. China’s pillars are all of different heights, and some are wobbly…
[A] kind of apartheid is at work, distinguishing urbanites from country folk, and locals from migrants…
[M]any of China’s workers are highly mobile. Yet China’s pensions are not…
Another problem: the government envisages urban workers retiring on nearly 60% of their final wage. But that assumes their contributions earn high rates of return, keeping up with wage growth. In fact, most of the system’s assets languish in bank deposits or government bonds, where they barely keep up with inflation.
And that is not the worst of it. A lot of individual accounts hold no assets at all. According to Zheng Bingwen of the Centre for International Social Security Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, individual accounts held assets worth only 270 billion yuan at the end of 2011, even though 2.5 trillion yuan had been paid into them. Local authorities had collected the remainder and diverted it to other, more pressing ends. These include building stadiums, buying cars and outright fraud…
These pressures have turned the “pre-funded” part of China’s pension system into a de facto “pay-as-you-go” system, where today’s payroll taxes pay for today’s pensioners…
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Labels: capacity, China, demographics, economics
Promoting your brand
The story from the
New York Times is about Chinese efforts in Kenya, but it's likely a model to be followed in places like Nigeria, Iran, Mexico, and Europe. A good reputation makes it easier to buy African farmland and oil fields. All of which can promote greater economic growth.
Pursuing Soft Power, China Puts Stamp on Africa’s News
Beijing’s efforts to win Kenyan affections involve much more than bricks and concrete. The country’s most popular English-language newspapers are flecked with articles by the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua. Television viewers can get their international news from either CCTV, the Chinese broadcasting behemoth, or CNC World, Xinhua’s English-language start-up. On the radio, just a few notches over from Voice of America and the BBC, China Radio International offers Mandarin instruction along with upbeat accounts of Chinese-African cooperation and the global perambulations of Chinese leaders.
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| CCTV headquarters in Nairobi |
“You would have to be blind not to notice the Chinese media’s arrival in Kenya,” said Eric Shimoli, a top editor at Kenya’s most widely read newspaper, The Daily Nation, which entered into a partnership with Xinhua last year. “It’s a full-on charm offensive.”
At a time when most Western broadcasting and newspaper companies are retrenching, China’s state-run news media giants are rapidly expanding in Africa and across the developing world. They are hoping to bolster China’s image and influence around the globe, particularly in regions rich in the natural resources needed to fuel China’s powerhouse industries and help feed its immense population.
The $7 billion campaign, part of a Chinese Communist Party bid to expand the country’s soft power, is based in part on the notion that biased Western news media have painted a distorted portrait of China...
“The fundamental difference is that Western-style media views itself as a watchdog and a protector of public interests, while the Chinese model seeks to defend the state from jeopardy or questions about its authority,” said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington.
At home, Chinese officials make little effort to conceal their view of journalism as a servant of the Communist Party. “The first social responsibility and professional ethic of media staff should be understanding their role clearly and being a good mouthpiece,” Hu Zhanfan, the president of CCTV, said in a speech. “Journalists who think of themselves as professionals, instead of as propaganda workers, are making a fundamental mistake about identity.” …
See also
this article from January 2012 about the opening of CCTV news operations in Kenya.
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Labels: China, concepts, SoftPower
High tech Nigeria
When headlines from Nigeria are full of corruption, terrorism, bombings, polio, natural disasters, and polluted environments, it's good to remind ourselves that Nigeria is a huge, diverse country. If we try to analyze government and politics against a background of disaster and failure, we'll miss important parts of the "story." Here's at least one aspect we should keep in mind.
Nigeria's low-cost tablet computer
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| Adepoju's tablet computer |
Nigeria's Saheed Adepoju is a young man with big dreams. He is the inventor of the Inye, a tablet computer designed for the African market.
According to the 29-year-old entrepreneur, his machine's key selling point is its price - $350 (£225) opposed to around $700 for an iPad.
He believes that, because of this, there is a big market for it in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, particularly amongst students.
He is also hoping to sell his tablet - which runs on the Google Android operating system - to the Nigerian government and plans to have at least one computer in each local government area…
"You have the standard software applications that come pre-installed and then you have the ones that we are working with various local developers to bundle on," he added.
Among those local apps there is one designed to raise awareness about HIV and others related to water and sanitation…
Mr Adepoju has a background in software development and is a Sun-certified Java programmer.
After doing a first degree in maths and computer science in Nigeria, he completed another one in advanced computing by research at Bournemouth University, in the United Kingdom…
He borrowed money from friends and family, raising a total of about $60,000.
According to him, all of that went on the devices and the logistics - there was no budget for marketing, so early advertising was "word of mouth" on social media…
According to Mr Adepoju, the company and the apps it develops are focused on preserving local culture through technology and making products which are specific to the local market…
However, he says that it has not been easy to raise capital in order to develop the business faster.
"Here venture capital (VC) is still in its infancy and most VC firms wound want to invest in tried and trusted companies that have gained some form of traction," he said…
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Unusual frankness
Corruption is a political issue in many countries. How often is it discussed so openly?
Indian officials told they can steal a little, but 'don't be a bandit'
Indian bureaucrats can steal a little as long as they work hard, according to a minister in the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
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| Yadaf |
"If you work hard, and put your heart and soul into it ... then you are allowed to steal some," Shivpal Singh Yadav told a gathering of local officials in comments caught on camera. "But don't be a bandit."
The comments made on Thursday were played on newscasts across the country. Yadav, a minister for public works who belongs to the state's ruling Samajwadi party, quickly sought to control the damage, calling a news conference to explain that the comments had been taken out of context and that he had been discussing how to combat corruption…
Foreign-educated Akhilesh Yadav, who is the state's youngest chief minister, had projected himself as an agent of change, even though members of his party have been involved in criminal investigations…
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Labels: concepts, corruption
Politics in the Party's Liberation Army
Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield, writing in the
New York Times describe the politics within the Chinese Communist Party's military.
Party Bristles at Military’s Push for More Sway in China
[A] series of events this year that have fueled concerns among Communist Party leaders over the level of control they exercise over military officials, who are growing more outspoken and desire greater influence over policy and politics…
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| PLA Emblem |
“Party authorities have come to realize that the military is encroaching on political affairs,” said one political scientist with high-level party ties. “Although the party controls the gun, the expression of viewpoints from within the military on political issues has aroused a high level of alarm.” He, like others who agreed to discuss internal party affairs, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals…
The party’s need to maintain stable rule over an increasingly vocal military is one reason Mr. Hu, its top civilian leader, is expected to hold on to his position as chairman of the Central Military Commission for up to two years after he gives up his party chief title in the fall…
Nonetheless, conversations with officers suggest that some may feel an affinity for the incoming Mr. Xi they do not share with Mr. Hu, a tea trader’s son who has struggled in Mr. Jiang’s shadow to win respect. Mr. Xi, 59, is the “princeling” son of a revered Communist guerrilla leader who grew up in Beijing with military families. He is stepping into the leadership role with closer military relationships than anyone since Deng Xiaoping…
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Tradition...
It looks like the House of Lords is safe from drastic change for now. Is the coalition safe as well?
Cracks in British Governing Coalition as House of Lords Overhaul Falls Apart
Britain’s two governing parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, announced on Monday that they had abandoned attempts to overhaul the House of Lords, a development that many on both sides of the coalition government saw as evidence of its growing fragility.
Reform of the House of Lords, by replacing its appointed and hereditary membership with a mostly elected chamber, was one of the principal aims of the Liberal Democrats in joining the coalition in May 2010…
As the perennial third party in British politics, the Liberal Democrats have long regarded an elected upper chamber as a potential steppingstone beyond the marginal role the party [has]… played in British politics since the 1930s.
By confirming that a bloc of Conservatives had scuttled the reform effort for at least this Parliament… Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ leader, threw a wrench into the already creaking machinery of the coalition. In doing so, political analysts said, he thrust the coalition deeper into impasse on broad aspects of its legislative program, and raised the prospects of a collapse even before 2015.
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| Nick Clegg |
In return for the Conservatives not fulfilling their pledge to support the House of Lords reform, Mr. Clegg said, the Liberal Democrats would no longer back the Conservatives’ push to change the electoral rules to bring parliamentary constituencies closer to a nationwide norm [reapportionment] in terms of overall voter numbers…
The overhaul ran afoul of a revolt by a group of nearly 100 Conservative backbenchers, supported quietly by at least some Conservative ministers in the coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.
Their principal objection was that an elected House of Lords would challenge the supremacy of the House of Commons, Parliament’s elected lower chamber, and that it would move the Lords away from the subsidiary role it has traditionally played, as a forum for detailed examination and revision of legislation approved by the Commons.
The abandonment of the reform package has been a deep personal blow to Mr. Clegg, exposing him ever more starkly as a man caught between a strong commitment to sustaining the coalition until the election and a gathering revolt among a powerful bloc of Liberal Democrats…
When the Conservative backbench revolt became clear in a parliamentary vote on the House of Lords bill last month, Mr. Clegg joined Mr. Cameron in pledging continuing support for the coalition…
Increasingly, though, the two leaders’ resolve has seemed to rest on personal chemistry more than any sound political foundation…
In its place is what some British commentators have likened to a failing marriage, held together by necessity rather than conviction, with both sides sensing that calling it off and forcing an early election — with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both low in the opinion polls and Labour with a substantial lead — would be disastrous.
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Labels: government, legislature, reform, UK
If not parties, what?
Parties are a part of all representative systems. Seems natural. Is it? What if the parties are no longer there?
Lonely at the top: Is the mass political party on its way out? And does it matter?
BELONGING to a political party has never been cheaper…
Yet despite such attractive prices, Europeans and Americans are turning away in droves from affiliating with any one party. Membership has been falling for many years, but the decline seems to be accelerating and taking on a different quality…
Party membership has shrivelled in Europe since the 1980s, and at an especially fast rate in the first decade of this century. In roughly ten years up to 2008 party membership fell in Germany by 20%, in Sweden by 27% and in Norway by 29%. In Britain, where the decline is even more pronounced at 36%, the Caravan Club now has more members than all the political parties put together…
In America, where people can state a party preference when registering to vote, the proportion of voters eschewing a party affiliation and calling themselves “independent” reached an average of 40% last year, a record high…
People have many reasons for falling out of love with parties. In a globalised and complex world, more voters doubt that politicians can solve their problems. As individualism has grown stronger, political tribalism has weakened. The decline of unions has hurt parties on the left.
But shifts in the media and in technology matter, too…
Now the internet lets multitudes of politicos thrive. Many voters see better ways of making their voices heard than parties… Blogging provides more interesting forums than ward meetings ever did. The internet also reduces the cost of asserting your political identity. Why fill out forms and carry a party card when you can sign a petition online, tweet and sport a wristband to show you care?
Some say that the old parties could even stage a comeback—thanks to prolonged economic troubles…
It is more likely that the decoupling of voters from political parties will continue. But how much does it matter? Party leaders may not mind much. They will not have to listen to all those pesky members’ resolutions at party gatherings. And although it may be harder for a party to run a campaign with fewer volunteers… Politicians will give more weight to wider opinion outside the party.
Even so, there are drawbacks. Without fee-paying supporters, parties will have to find financing elsewhere—which makes them more dependent on donations from vested interests…. And a more fragmented political spectrum can make forming governments much harder.
The risk is that mass political parties, despite being abandoned by many of their members, will seem strong—until they quickly fall apart. History is littered with once-dominant institutions that were imperceptibly hollowed out and then suddenly collapsed. Such a tipping point could be near, particularly in Europe. If so, the landscape of Western politics could suddenly look very unfamiliar.
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Labels: concepts, parties, political culture, politics
He who controls the past…
Limiting imagination is so difficult.
China bans foreign TV remakes and calls for fewer jokes in history dramas
Chinese television may get more boring after the country's top broadcasting regulator issued six new guidelines banning remakes of foreign shows and demanding serials cut back on excessive family conflict and jokes in historical dramas.
China's state administration of radio, film and television issued the new guidelines recently and they were put into effect over the past few days, the state-run Beijing News reported.
Other guidelines include forbidding online games being adapted into television series and demanding that dramas on China's communist revolution – a staple of the Chinese airwaves – clearly distinguish between heroes and villains…
Aside from the usual restrictions on sensitive topics such as human rights or excessive violence, previous guidelines have also demanded television stations broadcast "healthier" content, such as programmes on public safety and housework.
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Labels: bureaucracy, China, history, political culture
What does PLA mean?
As we pause to remember the 85th anniversary of the founding of the PLA (What was going on in 1927?), it's good to remember that the Chinese military is commanded by a committee of the Communist Party, not the government. Should it be called the Party's Liberation Army instead of the People's Liberation Army?
People's Daily hails PLA's role in socialism with Chinese characteristics
The People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), will carry an editorial on Wednesday hailing the important role of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in building socialism with Chinese characteristics.
 |
| The PLA includes naval and air forces |
The editorial, written for the 85th anniversary of the founding of the PLA on Aug. 1, said the PLA has been a "strong pillar and an important construction force" in helping to create socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The editorial said the key to the PLA's growth was that it revered the Party's leadership and thus maintained great cohesion.
It is important to promote the scientific development of national defense forces, improve the core military capability of the armed forces and carry out military-related reform in an active yet prudent manner, the editorial said.
The editorial said the army must strengthen its capabilities in order to help the Party consolidate its ruling status, guarantee security, provide support for safeguarding the country's interests and maintain world peace.
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Labels: China, military, politics
in·ter·mit·tent
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 family is gathering. We're headed off into the wilds of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. Even cell phone service is limited, so I'll be out of touch with my usual sources and unlikely to post things regularly. If I run into something stupendous, I'll post it here, but mostly you're on your own for a few days.
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Mexico City is different
If there was any doubt that the political culture and civil society of Mexico's capital differs from the rest of the county, the protests that followed the last two presidential elections should put those doubts to rest.
Mexican demonstrators blockade Televisa studios over election scandal
Thousands of protesters have blockaded the studios of Televisa, Mexico's most popular TV network, accusing it of biased coverage of the 1 July presidential election.
Shouting "Tell the truth," the demonstrators, including students and union workers, stopped employees entering the offices of the Televisa studios in Mexico City although they allowed others to leave.
The protesters allege that Televisa supported Enrique Peña Nieto, who won the election by almost 7 percentage points over leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador…
Televisa, which carried on broadcasting as normal, argues it covered the election fairly and gave time to all candidates on primetime news shows…
López Obrador has claimed that Peña Nieto paid Televisa for favourable coverage and bought votes. He has filed a legal challenge to the vote with an electoral tribunal, asking it to annul the ballot.
The tribunal has until September to rule on the accusations and officially declare Peña Nieto as president. It is widely expected to uphold the vote.
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Labels: civil society, cleavages, dissent, elections, Mexico, politics
