Ian Johnson, writing in the New York Times, offers a good profile of Xi Jinping, who is expected to become the supreme leader in China next year.
Ask your students: What qualities and skills does it take to become a successful political leader in China? How many examples of guanxi can they find in the article? How much luck was involved in Xi's ascendance?
How does Xi's success compare to the rise of other leaders?
Thirty years ago, a young government official with a plum job in Beijing made an odd request: reassignment to a poor rural area…
The move offers a window on the political savvy of Mr. Xi… [who] is on the cusp of taking over as China’s supreme leader at a party congress that officials announced... would begin Nov. 8.
Mr. Xi (his full name is pronounced Shee Jin-ping) gained a measure of credibility to speak for rural Chinese compared with many other well-connected children of the elite. He also realized, according to several inside accounts, that his powerful family stood firmly behind him, ensuring that his stint in the countryside would be a productive and relatively brief exercise in résumé building that could propel him up the Communist Party hierarchy…
Even three decades into the country’s rapid industrialization, China’s leadership still pays heed to its heritage as a party of peasants, and it has tended to promote officials who can claim to be deeply rooted in the rural struggle. But it has also tended to favor “princelings,” the privileged offspring of former leaders who had ties to the party’s revolutionary history…
After his time in Zhengding, Mr. Xi could check both boxes…
Still, Mr. Xi took on the assignment with gusto. He wore a green army greatcoat from his involuntary service in another rural area under Mao, roaming the town night and day to survey its problems. Wang Youhui, a local official, wrote in a published essay that he recalls seeing Mr. Xi for the first time and being taken aback by his plain style.
“I realized that this guy, who from his style of dress made him look like a lad from the canteen crew, was the new deputy party secretary,” Mr. Wang wrote…
A GLANCE AT THE news from China on Friday might suggest a political system reacting properly to high-level wrongdoing… But does the official version of events in Chongqing match what really happened?…
China possesses courts, laws and judges. But… China still is not governed by rule of law, the simple but unshakable principle that no one — not the party, not the Politburo — is above the law…
China’s Communist Party bosses see the law as a tool of control, a method to intimidate those who challenge their policies or their monopoly on power… A larger point is that rule of law is the best method for regulating competition among different groups in society, for settling disputes and serving as a check against abuse of power. It is an essential pillar of democracy, a concept that fills China’s leaders with trepidation.
In the case of the ousted Mr. Bo, it seems the party wanted to dispose of the embarrassing scandal before the Nov. 8 opening of the 18th Party Congress, at which the next generation of leaders will be anointed. But the high-profile expulsion of Mr. Bo only reinforces a sense that it is the party, and not the law, that reigns supreme.
2005 map of Worldwide Governance Indicators (based on the World Bank's data), which attempts to measure the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society. Colors range from dark green (90th-100th percentile) to light green (75th-90th percentile),yellow (50th-75th percentile),orange (25th-50th percentile),pink (10th-25th percentile) and red (0th-10th percentile). Percentile rank indicates the percentage of countries worldwide that rate below the selected country.
Look for a trial and conviction leading up the installation of China's new leaders at the Party Congress, which will begin November 8. Once the old mess is cleared up and Bo's allies are put on notice, the new guys can more easily take over.
Top Chinese politician Bo Xilai has been expelled from the Communist Party and will face justice, state media have said.
Mr Bo, the ex-Communist Party leader in the city of Chongqing, is accused of abuse of power and corruption…
The state news agency, Xinhua, said Mr Bo stood accused of corruption, abuse of power, bribe-taking and improper relations with women.
A statement carried by Xinhua said Mr Bo "committed serious errors and bears a major responsibility".
It added: "Bo Xilai's actions created grave repercussions, and massively damaged the reputation of the party and the state."
Xinhua said the violations included Mr Bo's time as an official in Dalian and Liaoning provinces, and as minister of commerce.
Xinhua said Mr Bo has been expelled from the party and the elite decision-making Politburo and Central Committee "in view of his errors and culpability in the Wang Lijun incident and the intentional homicide case involving [Gu Kailai, his wife]"…
Iran plans to introduce a domestic internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the web…
The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) said the Google ban was connected to the anti-Islamic film posted on the company's YouTube site which has caused outrage throughout the Muslim world, however there has been no official confirmation.
Iran already has one of the biggest Internet filters of any country in the world, preventing normal Iranians from accessing countless sites on the official grounds they are offensive or criminal.
Sites expressing views considered anti-government are also routinely blocked.
Iranians commonly overcome the government filter by using virtual private network (VPN) software that makes the computer appear as if it is based in another country.
But officials have long spoken of creating an Iranian Internet system which would be largely isolated from the World
Wide Web…
According to Iranian media, the domestic system would be fully implemented by March 2013…
Civil society is a vital part of liberal regimes. But what if major parts of that civil society are funded by foreigners? What if China was a major source of funding for the U.S. League of Women Voters? Or what if the Russians funded the UK's Trades Union Council (TUC)?
Those are the kinds of questions some powerful leaders are asking in Russia.
Russia has ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide range of pro-democracy [like GOLOS], public health and other civil society programs here, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it views as American meddling in its internal affairs.
The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end two decades of work in post-Soviet Russia by the United States Agency for International Development…
GOLOS
The Kremlin has taken a number of actions in recent months to bring pressure on nongovernmental groups and clamp down on political dissent, including a new law requiring any organization receiving aid from abroad to register with the justice manager as “acting as a foreign agent.”…
Russia is not alone in its resentment of United States-led democracy building efforts. Those have become a sore point for a number of countries in recent years, including allies like Egypt and Pakistan, which have objected to outside groups telling them how to run their affairs. The aid agency’s cold war history of providing a front for American intelligence agencies is still fresh in the memories of foreign officials, many of whom have never fully dropped their suspicions…
Mr. Putin, facing large-scale dissent at home for the first time, has said unrest is being stoked by the State Department, working covertly through nonprofit organizations…
Another classic blog entry from 2006 that's still very relevant. My reasons for continuing to do this blog, update my book, and create teaching materials are still accurate.
Not long ago, someone asked me why I stay involved with teaching comparative politics. After all, I retired from high school teaching four years ago. My accountant says that my book publishing venture is a hobby that fortunately pays for itself. She tells me I could better help pay my youngest son's college tuition if I was a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Part of my response to explain why I keep working to promote teaching of comparative politics is that I think the course is one of the more important courses students can study.
The subject matter offers opportunities to expand our frames of reference.
Comparisons teach us that there aren't single, simple answers to big questions.
The comparative disciplines offer academic and intellectual methods for making sense out of variety and alternatives.
All these things are more and more important in today's global economics, politics, society, and culture.
Of course it's easy for all of us to see evidence that reinforces what we believe is true, so it wasn't difficult for me to see this message in the March 2006 issue of Fast Company, a business journal.
Columnist Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz answered a question about keeping up with advances in technology and the effects of globalization. Maybe there is advice here to offer your students.
I'm convinced that in the future, the most successful among us will be those who understand that they are citizens of the world. Keeping up with the effects of globalization takes both openness and work--openness to learning, reading, and seeing the world, and work to adapt to the competitive, intellectual, and cultural shifts before they bite you in the rear...
[T]he pace of technological development has long outstripped our human capacity to use that technology, including our brains' ability to process information and to do actual work...
The biggest variable in all this change is you, especially your personal flexibility and your open-mindedness to listening and learning... I'll go even further: With rapid globalization and technological innovation, the more you can tolerate or even enjoy ambiguity, uncertainty, and change, the more successful you'll be.
Teach comparative politics; teach ambiguity. (If you've read my book, you'll recognize that theme.)
Some students have difficulty grasping the meaning of legitimacy. Maybe this article about the legitimacy of the game of NFL football will help. Is it time for regime change in the NFL? Or just change to a legitimate government?
The play that best defines this N.F.L. season occurred at the end of another game in which replacement officials looked less like actual referees and more like the Keystone Kops. It was bizarre enough to almost defy description.
In summary: the player who caught the winning score clearly pushed off to do so. He did not appear to really catch anything. One referee signaled a touchdown for the hometown Seahawks. Another seemingly signaled an interception for Green Bay.
On the field afterward, Warren Moon, the Hall of Fame quarterback turned broadcaster, could only shake his head. He, too, had witnessed a game in which the teams combined for 26 points and the officials whistled 24 penalties, for 245 yards, or more than the 238 yards managed by the Seahawks.
“This could be the game that gets a deal done,” he said. “Something like this, on the league’s biggest stage, on Monday night, it’s just not good for the game.
[I]t was the late calls, on the final play especially, that will be remembered. They marred an otherwise magical finish for the home team, football’s equivalent of a game-winning home run, and struck at the very integrity of the sport…
Classic reruns: And now for something completely different
One of the first posts to this blog back when I started it 2006, was about a scene from a movie that I used in class. It bears repeating because many of you were not reading this blog back then. I think the advice is still good.
When it first came out in 1975, I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I saw it again several years after I began teaching comparative. From that point on, one of the beginning scenes (you know which one) became a regular feature of the first day of class.
It's full of conceptual ideas that go a long way to proving that the Pythons paid attention to at least some of their tutors at Cambridge.
Once you and your students have enjoyed seeing this scene (more than once, perhaps), there are many opportunities to explore concepts that should become very common knowledge before the course ends. Here's my beginning list of things students should explore, research, and discuss: social class, social cleavages, executive, elections, legitimacy, mandate, exploitation, ethnic identity, autonomy, autocracy, and divine right.
(Be careful, your students will want you to show more of this movie, especially the "I"m not dead yet" scene that follows the "Peasants" scene.)
Arthur and his trusty servant Patsy "ride" into a field where peasants are working. They come up behind a cart which is being dragged by a hunched-over peasant in ragged clothing. Patsy slows as they near the cart...
Man: ...you automatically treat me like an inferior!
Arthur: Well I *am* king...
Man: Oh, king, eh, very nice. And 'ow'd you get that, eh? (he reaches his destination and stops, dropping the cart) By exploiting the workers! By 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. If there's ever going to be any progress,--
Woman: Dennis! There's some lovely filth down 'ere! (noticing Arthur) Oh! 'Ow'd'ja do?
Arthur: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, king of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
Woman: King of the 'oo?
Arthur: King of the Britons.
Woman: 'Oo are the Britons?
Arthur: Well we all are! We are all Britons! And I am your king.
Woman: I didn't know we 'ad a king! I thought we were an autonomous collective.
Man: (mad) You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Woman: There you go, bringing class into it again...
Man: That's what it's all about! If only people would--
Arthur: Please, *please*, good people, I am in haste! WHO lives in that castle?
Woman: No one lives there.
Arthur: Then who is your lord?
Woman: We don't have a lord!
Arthur: (surprised) What??...
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
Arthur: You don't vote for kings!
Woman: Well 'ow'd you become king then? (holy music up)
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake-- her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king!
Man: (laughingly) Listen: Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical aquatic ceremony!
Arthur: (yelling) BE QUIET!
Man: You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!!
Arthur: (coming forward and grabbing the man) Shut *UP*!
Man: I mean, if I went 'round, saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Arthur: (throwing the man around) Shut up, will you, SHUT UP!
Man: Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!...
The 3-minute YouTube version of the scene (low definition with sub titles)
They're aging, their numbers are dwindling and their influence has evaporated, but Mao's true believers are still around and they still want revolution.
Rebecca Small, who teaches at Oakton High School in Virginia recommended this article as one that offers some important context for contemporary change in China.
At a country inn in southern China, several dozen Maoists met for a Communist study session one evening in early September… Most of the Maoists were men in their 60s filled with nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution – a turbulent period they lived through along with the next generation of Chinese leaders who will be named next month.
But 36 years after Mao’s death, his loyal followers often feel more like dissidents.
“Today’s leaders are capitalist-roaders and revisionists,” says one retired worker surnamed Zhou, resurrecting terms used during the Cultural Revolution, which wreaked havoc on China from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976…
“They call it socialism, but Deng Xiaoping, [the architect of China’s market reforms], has created a system that combines the worst of all worlds: hyper-capitalism, corruption and fascism,” says Zhou…
Many on the left saw a leader in Bo Xilai, the charismatic politician who took over as Communist party secretary of Chongqing in 2005. After Bo launched policies that resonated with leftist ideals, including a low-income housing programme and a campaign that sought to revive Maoist traditions such as singing “red” songs and sending cadres to learn from peasants, they rallied around him – only to see him purged in March this year…
“Bo Xilai led a political struggle in the party, but the centre has hit back with a political counter-struggle against him,” says Fan Jinggang, manager of Utopia, a leftwing bookstore in Beijing…
Many Maoists say that China needs more than popular discontent to engineer change, but regret that there is nobody to lead their cause nationally.
“We need another revolution. You can’t bring about change without some violence,” says Mao Jianhui, a Maoist who lost his Communist party membership after siding with Tiananmen student protesters in 1989…
IN 1962, as Britain pulled slowly out of recession, Harold Macmillan told an audience that he was determined to “prevent two nations developing geographically, a poor north and a rich and overcrowded south”. The price of failure, the Conservative prime minister said, would be that “our successors will reproach us as we reproach the Victorians for complacency about slums and ugliness.”…
The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In [2008] men in the north were [20%] more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south…
England’s north… contains poor ex-industrial cities, like Bradford and Middlesbrough, and depressed towns like Consett, near Newcastle. But there are also impressively wealthy parts, such as Sheffield Hallam, where 60% of the residents have degrees, and York, where the unemployment rate is a quarter lower than the national average…
For much of the past 20 years growth in the British economy has come from two sectors: government spending, primarily on health care and education, and the private service sector. The north has benefited only from the first…
Now public spending is being cut everywhere, as the government tries to tackle a huge budget deficit. That would be expected to hurt the north more anyway, but the cuts are actually sharper there…
The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south…
This worries MPs and strategists, who know that the Tories cannot secure a parliamentary majority in 2015 without winning more seats in the north and Midlands…
David Cameron, like his one-nation hero, Macmillan, appears fated to watch England continue its slow separation into two distinct countries.
Thomas Friedman's analysis of change coming to China seems a bit optimistic to me. That's par for the course. One big thing to remember, besides his optimism, is that he's much better informed and more experienced than I am.
Can your students track the changes he expects and evaluate his analysis?
HERE is the story of today’s China in five brief news items.
STORY NO. 1 For most of the last two weeks, Xi Jinping, the man tapped to become China’s new Communist Party leader, was totally out of sight… I have a theory: Xi started to realize how hard the job of running China will be in the next decade and was hiding under his bed. Who could blame him?
Chinese officials take great pride in how they have used the last 30 years to educate hundreds of millions of their people, men and women, and bring them out of poverty. Yet, among my Chinese interlocutors, I find a growing feeling that what’s worked for China for the past 30 years — a huge Communist Party-led mobilization of cheap labor, capital and resources — will not work much longer… More and more, the Chinese people, from microbloggers to peasants to students, are demanding that their voices be heard — and officials clearly feel the need to respond…
Alleged Ferrari crash
STORY NO. 2 In March, Chinese authorities quickly deleted from the blogosphere photos of a fatal Beijing car crash, believed to involve the son of a close ally of President Hu Jintao… It was the latest in a string of incidents spotlighting the lavish lifestyles of the Communist Party elite.
Chinese authorities are so sensitive to these stories because they are the tip of an iceberg — an increasingly corrupt system of interlocking ties between the Communist Party and state-owned banks, industries and monopolies, which allow certain senior officials, their families and “princelings” to become hugely wealthy and to even funnel that wealth out of China…
As a result, you hear more and more that “the risks of not reforming have become bigger than the risks of reforming.” No one is talking revolution, but a gradual evolution to a more transparent, rule-of-law-based system, with the people having more formal input…
STORY NO. 3 Last week, the official Xinhua news agency reported that authorities in the city of Macheng, in Hubei Province in central China, agreed to invest $1.4 million in new school equipment after photos of students and their parents carrying their own desks and chairs to school, along with their books, “sparked an outcry on the Internet…
STORY NO. 4 President Hu Jintao suggested that it would be good if the people of Hong Kong learned more about the mainland, so Hong Kong authorities recently announced that they were imposing compulsory “moral and national education” lessons in primary and secondary schools… High school students from Hong Kong… organized a protest against Beijing’s “brainwashing” that quickly spread to parent groups and universities. As a result… Hong Kong’s chief executive… announced the compulsory education plan was being dropped…
Deng Yuwen
STORY NO. 5 A few weeks ago, Deng Yuwen, a senior editor of The Study Times, which is controlled by the Communist Party, published an analysis [which]… argued that President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao “had ‘created more problems than achievements’ during their 10 years in power. ... The article highlighted 10 problems facing China that it said were caused by the lack of political reform and had the potential to cause public discontent… ‘The essence of democracy is how to restrict government power; this is the most important reason why China so badly needs democracy,’ Deng wrote. ‘The overconcentration of government powers without checks and balances is the root cause of so many social problems.’ ” The article has triggered a debate on China’s blogosphere.
This is just a sampler of the China that Xi Jinping will be inheriting. This is not your grandfather’s Communist China. After three decades of impressive economic growth, but almost no political reforms, there is “a gathering sense of an approaching moment of transition that will require a different set of conditions for Chinese officials to maintain airspeed,” observed Orville Schell, the Asia Society China expert. The rules are going to get rewritten here. Exactly how and when is impossible to say. The only thing that is certain is that it will be through a two-way conversation.
THE CLOSEST COMRADE: Chairman Mao Zedong’s ‘‘closest comrade in arms’’ and hand-picked successor, Lin Biao dropped from view in September 1971 amid the radical turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution. Turns out he had died…
THE PARAMOUNT LEADER: After authorizing the military crackdown that ended the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement with untold deaths, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was shown on state television congratulating martial law troops on June 9. Then he stayed out of the public eye for more than three months…
PURGED REFORMER: At the height of the student-led democracy movement in 1989, party chief Zhao Ziyang went to Tiananmen Square on May 19 and tearfully appealed to student hunger strikers to go home, saying ‘‘I came too late.’’ The next day, the government declared martial law and Zhao disappeared…
THE HARDLINER: When Premier Li Peng suddenly canceled a meeting with the Philippine president in 1993, the excuse the government gave was that he had a cold. Over the next four months, Li made only two public appearances…
When we study "others," it matters that we have accurate perceptions of "them." This article suggests that most of us in the USA might have to update our perceptions of Mexico.
Thanks to Rebecca Small, who teaches in Virginia, for directing me to this article.
When the governor of Colorado came to Mexico on a trade mission this year to see the sights, “one of the most amazing” was a Costco…
The growing middle class that is fast becoming Mexico’s majority is buying more U.S. goods than ever, while turning Mexico into a more democratic, dynamic and prosperous American ally.
“We are obsessed with China when we ought to seriously focus, for our own benefit, on our neighbor Mexico,” said Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University and author of “The North American Idea.”…
In a Costco store in the suburbs at the edge of Mexico City, shoppers browse shelves loaded with pallets of Kirkland vitamins, value packs of Nature Valley granola bars and sacks of Cape Cod kettle-cooked potato chips…
“Costco members here in Mexico are middle class, even upper middle class,” [Iñigo Astier, the executive in charge of purchasing for Costco’s Mexico operations] said. “As our economy grows, consumers are looking for quality products, and Costco is consistent in quality.”…
Emergence of the middle class in Mexico 2011
This video was distributed by Ogilvy Public Relations on behalf of the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of Mexico. Additional information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
(Sorry about the advertisement at the beginning.) Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.
The First Edition ofWhat You Need to Know: Teaching Toolsis now available from the publisher The Fourth Edition ofWhat You Need to Knowis available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
If you wander around abandoned industrial sites in Nigeria, you're likely to find the foundations of electrical generation plants. Sometimes large pieces of generation machinery, still on their delivery pallets, sit on the ground inside chain link fences. If you could check the financial records, you'd probably find that a local company had been paid for building a functioning generation facility. The company probably went out of business shortly after getting the final payment from the government.
What's going on? It's part of the way things often work in Nigeria. Owners and bureaucrats (often the same people) walk away with wads of cash and the country is starved for energy. Now, it seems, the government is suffering from a different setback.
ALTHOUGH Nigeria has almost as many inhabitants as Brazil, it produces only 5% of the electricity. Many Nigerian leaders have tried to boost the state’s power supply, but many more have become rich by obstructing it, earning fees from private generation and stealing official funds meant for new power plants. When he was elected last year, President Goodluck Jonathan promised to make electricity reform his big thing, hoping to transform the lives of millions of Nigerians who have spent decades in the dark.
Nnaji
But the resignation of his power minister on August 28th over a conflict of interest has exposed the rot in a process that seemed to be running relatively smoothly. Bartholomew (“Barth”) Nnaji, a respected technocrat who had been minister of power since last year, was meant to sell six generating companies and 11 distribution companies. Months ago he declared that a firm in which he owns shares held in a trust was involved in the bidding. It is not unusual for Nigerian politicians to engage in business overseen by their office; what is unusual is for any of them to resign.
Mr Nnaji’s supporters say that opponents of privatisation belatedly and unfairly engineered his departure…
The minister had certainly made enemies. He took on trade unions opposed to mass job cuts. A key aspect of privatisation is unbundling the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, a bloated and ill-managed monopoly, with thousands of “ghost” workers on the payroll. Two-fifths of the staff are apparently listed as drivers…
Mr Nnaji also warred with the vice-president, Namadi Sambo, who owns companies with interests in the public power sector, oversees the government’s national privatisation council and heads a programme to build ten new state power stations that Mr Nnaji hoped to privatise. This may have hastened his departure…
According to the government, the power sector needs $10 billion of investment a year for at least a decade. Mr Nnaji’s resignation is troubling investors who feel he brought expertise to a process that had previously been paralysed by corruption…
The presumed future supreme leader has not been seen for a couple weeks in China. Rumors abound about a power struggle, an accident, or a heart attack. Will the system be able to adjust when the carefully constructed political deals were almost complete?
With still no sign of China’s designated new leader, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public since Sept. 1, many insiders and well-connected analysts say the Chinese political ship is adrift, with factions jockeying to shape an impending Communist Party conclave…
Xi Jinping
By Thursday, a number of ranking party members with years of experience following Chinese politics were generally in agreement that Mr. Xi, 59, had suffered either a mild heart attack or a stroke, forcing him to cancel his appointments…
Planned years in advance, the 18th Party Congress is slated to be the most sweeping government reorganization in a decade, with scores of leaders scheduled to retire. It was still expected to take place next month or soon after in Beijing, where Mr. Xi was to take over as leader from Hu Jintao. The Communist Party has numerous factions, but the overall framework of the transfer was thought to have been mostly ironed out over the past year.
But recent developments, including Mr. Xi’s mysterious cancellation of several public appearances, suggest that may not be the case.
The most obvious sign of discord is that the dates for the congress have not been set. Most political experts here expected it to be held in mid-October, but without an official announcement, some are predicting it will be delayed…
One reason for the delay, the experts say, is what now appears to have been a contentious meeting in early August at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, China… “The atmosphere was very bad, and the struggles were very intense,” said a political analyst with connections to the party’s nerve center, the General Office…
Nomadic people have never fit into societies that expect people to have a home address. It was true in prehistoric times, Roman times, Han times, and 19th century America.
A helpful way of seeing the issues is to be clear about the cleavages in the political culture that separate settled folk from their mobile neighbors. It's not just ethnic, religious, and wealth cleavages. Culture can also be a politically relevant cleavage.
Nigeria offers one contemporary case study. It's also important to note which cleavages coincide and which ones cut across others. Is it more than identity politics?
Apparently fed up with the incessant clashes involving them and farmers over grazing areas, some 12 million Fulani cattlemen have stated that their right to fend for themselves and their livestock as citizens of Nigeria are being infringed upon across many states because of their age-long nomadic way of life.
Primary Fulani populations within dotted line
Consequently, they have now formed themselves into social groups to demand that the federal government address the issue of food security and grazing rights in the country, with a view to securing grazing land rights for the Fulani nationwide…
The association lamented that 12 million Fulani herdsmen were currently living under the fear of losing their means of livelihood, as clashes between them and farmers continue to escalate…
[T]he executive director, Pastoral Resolve, Sale Momale, stated that… "The fact is that they are in remote rural areas and their high level of illiteracy makes it hard for them make formal complaints under the modern system of government."…
"Discrimination against the pastoralists cuts across all tiers of government, even at the village and district levels. The modern system introduced since the colonial times gives priority to a formalised system for laying out grievances, which favours the educated elite.
"In 1990, only 0.02 percent of the pastoralists were literate. By 2005, after 15 years of nomadic education, their literacy level stood at 2 per cent. Right now, according to the Federal Ministry of Education, the Fulani pastoralists have three million children that are out school.
"With this level of illiteracy and the complexity of governance, they have nowhere to lay their complaint. The only government they know is the village head and the village head cannot influence policy. He has no say in the affairs of government. And with a government that is not concerned with reaching out to its citizens, you can understand why the problems of the Fulani have gone unresolved."
This election won't take place until after the next AP exam, but the maneuvering and campaigning will probably offer opportunities to see how the system in Iran works.
During a recent interview on state television in which a journalist mentioned that his presidency would finish within a year, the president interjected, laughing: "How do you know?"
Under Iranian law Ahmadinejad cannot run for a third term, and on Friday officials announced the next election would be held on 14 June 2013…
The president's joking response prompted speculation that he planned to preserve his dwindling power by grooming someone in his inner circle as his possible successor…
Mohammad Dehghan, who sits on the parliament's executive board, criticised Ahmadinejad and accused him of pursuing a Putin/Medvedev-style reshuffle.
"Ahmadinejad should know that Iran is not Russia and he is not Putin…
Speculation is rife about who will be Ahmadinejad's successor. Tehran's mayor, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is one name often mentioned. Another is Saeed Jalili, the chief nuclear negotiator and a close ally of Khamenei. Many also tip Ali Larijani, the parliamentary speaker…
The Federal Government has for the second time, decided to mark the Independence Day Anniversary of the Country in a low key. This time, it is not because it is wary of bomb attacks by the Boko Haram sect, which has been waging a relentless war against it, but in tune with the national mood. The occasion will rather be used to reflect on our national lives as well as correct some anomalies in the nation such as fixing the nation's dwindling economy.
The Minister of Interior, Comrade Abba Moro who made this disclosure while intimating journalists on the activities that have been lined up for the 2012 and 52nd Independence Day celebration, explained that the low key celebration ,is in tandem with the current transformation agenda of the current administration.
"No aspect of the celebration has been withdrawn. The country is troubled at this particular time, and we have several cases of decayed infrastructures, natural disasters which affected so many people. Instead of a flamboyant celebration where a lot of money would be allocated, the federal government has decided to channel the money towards assisting victims of the natural disasters", the minister said…
Gunmen attacked and damaged many mobile phone masts belonging to MTN and Airtel in Kano and Maiduguri yesterday, disrupting telecommunications in parts of the two cities, Daily Trust learnt.
In what appeared to be coordinated attacks on telecom installations, at least eight MTN masts were destroyed and its office burnt in Maiduguri between Tuesday night and early morning yesterday, while attackers detonated an explosive in front of a cell phone tower in Bauchi…
It's not always easy to get everyone up to speed on the basic concepts. Here's a good article from the New York Times about Mali in which reporter Adam Nossiter uses the concept of state in a proper political science way.
Remind yourself and your students, that the state in a place like Mali takes on considerably more responsibilities than it does in Western countries. Those responsibilities strain the capacities of those poor countries.
The radical Islamists who control northern Mali appear incapable of managing basic services — including electricity, water and schools — and in some cases are asking for the return of state functionaries to run them…
Mali in West Africa
[T]he Islamists’ grasp on administering the vast desert region, which is larger than France, seems much less secure…
“They asked for the state to resume its functions, because it’s too complicated for them to manage,” said Daouda Maïga, who used to run a state development program in Kidal…
About 400,000 people have fled the north since the Islamist takeover, creating a vacuum of talent that the Islamists have apparently been unable to fill….
Some… were surprised by the supplicatory tone of the Islamists, many of them religiously indoctrinated guerrilla fighters used to living lives of isolation in the desert…
“There are so many things that the state does, that they cannot do,” Mr. Maïga said. “Run the water system, the electricity, schools.” In Kidal, there is electricity one night a week at most, he said, and the same was true for water and telephone service.
[T]he Islamists wanted help running all state services except justice and security…
The defeated candidate in Mexico's presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has announced he is leaving his left-wing coalition to form a new political youth movement.
Speaking to tens of thousands of his supporters in Mexico City, Mr Lopez Obrador said he would focus on changing Mexico through the new group, Morena…
Analysts say his departure from the main coalition could weaken the left in Mexico…
The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico says that the apparently mutual decision to split with the traditional left suggests Mr Lopez Obrador does not have wide support for continuing a long-term fight against the inevitable succession of Mr Pena Nieto to the presidency…
When the Russian authorities began a series of investigations this spring into the business affairs of a prominent opposition lawmaker, it was widely viewed as thinly veiled political retribution.
Gennady V. Gudkov
But in a sign of how quickly the tables can now be flipped in such disputes, allies of the politician, Gennady V. Gudkov, have begun pointing at other members of the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, with private business holdings or whose obvious personal wealth — fancy cars, opulent real estate holdings — could not possibly be afforded on their five-figure government salaries…
Investigators… accused the elder Mr. Gudkov of having a management role in two Russian businesses, a construction market… and a textile company… as well as active business interests in Bulgaria. And they raised allegations of tax fraud.
Members of United Russia are now threatening to strip Mr. Gudkov of the legislative immunity that would shield him from prosecution.
According to Russian law, Duma members “may not engage in business or other paid activities” and also may not serve on boards of directors or in any other leadership capacity of a business. But many lawmakers maintain investments that seem not to be restricted by the law, or earn money from family businesses though they may not be listed as owners.
[United Russia] legislators [are] being featured in blog posts by the younger Mr. Gudkov, and his friend and ally Ilya V. Ponomarev, who is also a Duma deputy from Just Russia…
“We continue to acquaint the ungrateful Russian people with the most honest deputies from the ‘Party of Power’ who have been relentlessly battling corruption and illegal enrichment,” Mr. Ponomarev wrote sarcastically on Thursday, as he posted another installment of their efforts.
Among the 10 featured lawmakers was Boris D. Zubitsky, a billionaire whose family controls the KOKS Group, a metallurgical company, and who along with his wife has reported owning multiple homes and apartments, a Bentley Mulsanne… and three Mercedeses.
Also on the list was Aleksei V. Knyshov, who is described as having annual income of about $4 million, owning two houses and six apartments, including a property in Miami Beach, and being the founder and co-manager of a wholesale business in Slovakia.
In August, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the federal Investigative Committee, which has led the inquiries into the Gudkov family businesses as well as criminal investigations into other opposition leaders, declared at a news conference that investigators had found “evidence providing violations of Constitutional and legal bans by Gudkov.” But Mr. Markin’s office said it could not immediately respond to written questions about whether it is examining the business dealings of other lawmakers…
MORE EXCERPT
William Wan and Liu Liu venture into comparative politics and political culture while discussing the upcoming leadership transition in China in the Washington Post.
Can your students identify the evidence used by the reporters for their assumptions and comparisons? Are the comparisons persuasive? What standards did they use in making those evaluations? (There are more comparisons made in the complete article.)
With China facing a worsening economy, its biggest political crisis in two decades, and growing public anger and domestic unrest, what do people here say about the seismic change about to take place in the country’s top leadership?
“Wu suo wei.” It doesn’t matter.
Exercises in the park
You hear this from old men exercising in the park, from young professionals heading home from work and even, in hushed tones, from lower-ranking members of the Communist Party.
On one level, they’re probably right. The leadership change is unlikely to have an immediate effect on the majority of China’s 1.3 billion people. Neither will the masses have any say in the Communist Party’s mysterious selection of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee that rules China.
The process is so cloaked in secrecy that no one knows for sure who’s in the running besides the top two officials set to replace President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao…
But on another level, the leadership change will affect everything and everyone, and in many ways already has. Preparations for the 18th Party Congress have forced most of the government into gridlock for the past year, as though the entire system were holding its breath in anticipation. Major reforms and new laws have been stymied. No real solutions have been prescribed for the economy’s systemic problems even amid a worrying slowdown…
The indifference is something the government has at times nurtured. For years, the party — looking to preserve its lock on power — has pushed the idea that an uneventful, smooth transition was not only expected, but inevitable.
And while American children are taught basic civics and the importance of elections from grade school, the real method by which China’s top leaders are chosen is unknown to anyone but the leaders themselves. Many experts, in fact, think the new lineup was decided at a meeting of party elites at a luxury costal resort early last month.
Similarly, while nearly all aspects of the American candidates’ lives have been thoroughly explored in the course of the U.S. presidential campaign, most Chinese know little about China’s leading contenders beyond their official hagiographies…
“We are walking down a road filled with serious problems,” said one 82-year-old retired party member exercising on a recent day at a downtown park. “So, of course, the direction of the country is important and depends on the upcoming meeting. But these are not things for ordinary citizens to know, so what’s there to talk about?”
Is this just another of Putin's unfortunate analogies? Or is it really his desired path to the future? Let's hope it's not a reference to Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Russia needs a "leap forward" to rejuvenate its sprawling defence industry, Vladimir Putin said on Friday, harkening back to the ambitious industrialisation carried out by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the runup to the second world war.
"We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernisation of the defence industry as the one carried out in the 1930s," Putin told his security council, without mentioning Stalin by name.
Stalin, who ruled the Soviet empire for 25 years, is blamed for the death of about six million people but also is praised by many Russians for winning the second world war and industrialising the country.
Russian drone
Putin has made renewed industrialisation a priority during his third term in the Kremlin…
In the 1930s Soviet leaders transformed a rural country devastated by civil war into an industrial superpower, using terror and executions to impose strict discipline at new plants built across the vast country…
Putin plans to spend £430bn in the next eight years modernising the military, with the bulk of the money going to 1,350 defence plants which employ about two million Russians. Many defence sector workers backed Putin during the election.
He sees the sector as a new growth driver for the stagnating economy which can help wean Russia off its dependency on energy. He promised to open up the sector to private businesses.
Putin's critics argue that the arms industry is too backward and corrupt to be given such money and point to numerous recent failures and delays such as space satellite crashes or failed test launches of new intercontinental missiles…
Political scientists regularly wonder about the political effects of those cleavages that separate some people from others. The editors at The Economist are pointing at the political relevance of gender differences in Scotland.
Are there similar differences in other democracies?
MEL GIBSON recently boasted that “Braveheart”, his breastplate-beating film about a Scottish rebellion against English rule, got the ball rolling among those seeking a Scotland independent from Britain. Unfortunately, such macho calls for freedom are not polling well among women. A Panelbase opinion survey in July found that 51% of males believe Scotland should be independent but only 38% of women do…
Women for Independence is a new all-female cross-party group that aims to persuade women that voting “yes” will improve their lives…
Perhaps this feminine touch will help, as women appear to be put off by the muscular language in which male politicians clothe their arguments for independence. Female voters have never been too keen anyway on Alex Salmond, the brusque if charismatic leader of the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) and first minister of the Scottish government. But they are not alone in being squeamish about much of the pro-independence rhetoric. Scottish voters tend to dislike terms that emphasise a fundamental split from Britain, preferring upbeat mentions of “exciting opportunities”…
The problem, says John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, is that the consequences of a yes vote remain uncertain, which irks women more than men. Polling data show that women feel “less confident and more worried” about the prospect of independence—which, he adds, “fits the stereotype that women are more risk-averse than men”.
That may be just another way of saying that women voters are often more pragmatic, says Margaret Curran, Labour MP for Glasgow East and shadow secretary of state for Scotland…
[T]ough questioning may seem the bedrock of courtroom justice in the United States, but here in Mexico… trials are decided by judges and rely almost entirely on written briefs…
Four years ago, Mexico’s Congress adopted a legal overhaul that will enable prosecutors and defense lawyers to present evidence and question witnesses in open court, a practice that already exists in a few states but whose rollout is scheduled to be completed nationwide by 2016.
Discussing cross-examination
More open trials, the theory goes, will increase due process and accountability in a country where the much-publicized arrests of cartel bosses are common, but the actual convictions of criminals are not…
Police corruption is rife. Investigations are often shoddy, and mass jailbreaks common. And while Mexico’s effort to turn around its justice system is a slow, long-term process that may not pay dividends for years, analysts on both sides of the border say it is vital nonetheless.
These reforms “are key,” said José Antonio Caballero Juárez, an investigator at CIDE, a Mexico City research institute. “They will give transparency to a process that is at the moment very opaque.”…
Judges, American officials have said, have been among the most resistant to the change because in the current system, which dates to the 19th century, their determinations face little scrutiny. Prosecutors and defense lawyers submit written reports and documents to a judge who reviews them privately and issues a verdict, often with little explanation. Proceedings are conducted almost entirely behind closed doors, leading to worry about the possibility of bribery…
Mexico has 31 states and one federal district, but only a handful of them have fully adopted the oral trial system. Prosecutors, lawyers and judges have to undergo training, but legal experts say that it is mostly a lack of willingness from the government that has delayed the transition…
Mexico's presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has rejected a court ruling upholding July's election and called for a mass demonstration.
The left-winger said the country's highest electoral tribunal made an illegitimate decision…
The former Mexico City mayor also called on his supporters to hold a demonstration in the capital's main square on 9 September.
Six years ago, after losing the presidential election by a narrow margin, Mr Lopez Obrador led weeks of protests that caused disruption in central areas of the capital…
Mexico’s highest election court voted Thursday night to dismiss legal challenges from the second-place leftist candidate seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
All seven justices on the Federal Electoral Tribunal voted to dismiss accusations by Andrés Manuel López Obrador that the campaign of the winner, Enrique Peña Nieto, engaged in widespread vote-buying and campaign overspending for the election, which took place July 1.
Teaching (and learning) comparative government and politics is a complex and demanding task. We can all use all the help we can get. This cyber place is somewhere to facilitate helpful interactions.
