a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
any gap or opening.
an indefinite period of time when most schools in the US are not in session and during which the primary contributor to this blog takes a break from posting while joining family in observance of the solstice, religious holidays, and the beginning of the new year.
[Origin: 1555–65; < L hiātus opening, gap, equiv. to hiā(re) to gape, open + -tus suffix of v. action]
Source: hiatus. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved July 15, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hiatus
Vyacheslav K. Osipov, a governing party lawmaker, was absent on Wednesday but still cast 31 votes in the lower house of Parliament, all of them ayes.
You might say he was in an agreeable mood, except that he was dead.
While it was not known exactly when Mr. Osipov died, his colleagues in the Russian Parliament held a moment of silence in his memory at 5:39 p.m., a little more than an hour after he was recorded as voting in favor of banning American adoptions of Russian children. Mr. Osipov, 75, a United Russia party deputy from Mordovia in central European Russia, had been ailing for some time…
[W]hile proxy voting by absent Duma members is relatively common, it was not immediately clear that the rules permitted voting by the deceased. In any event, United Russia members said they stopped voting on Mr. Osipov’s behalf as soon as they were informed of his death…
When over 50% of the non-farm jobs in a country are government jobs, no one should be surprised that attracting applicants is easy. But even Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission was surprised when it advertised some entry-level openings.
What does this response tell us about Nigeria's economy and political culture?
About 800,000 graduates have submitted applications to the Independent National Electoral Commission seeking to be employed to fill only 1,500 available job slots in the commission…
Only applicants with first degrees, Higher National Diplomas and National Certificate of Education (NCE) were invited to submit applications, but an official at the commission told Daily Trust that a number of PhD and master's degree holders also applied.
The official said INEC was alarmed by the huge inflow of applications into its website, as well as the calibre of applicants, some of whom are clearly "over qualified" for the jobs they applied for.
"In the first week alone, we had about 300,000 applications. We were alarmed," the official said…
He also disclosed that INEC contracted the recruitment… consultant, NEXIR, which is expected to sort out the applications and invite only 8,000 applicants for examination. That translates into just 1,000 out of every 100,000 applicants… And I am sure that some, especially those with PhD and master's degrees, will be screened out because they are over qualified. Don't forget that the positions advertised are entry points into the civil service."…
Law enforcement in China would lose much of its efficiency "if the police lose their ability to detain perceived troublemakers without the interference of judges or defense lawyers," according to law enforcement officials.
Andrew Jacobs, writing in the New York Times reports finding evidence of a political movement to end the ability of "security officials" to imprison people because they are a threat to public stability.
A political movement in China outside the Party? How can that be? How would it exercise influence? Is it more than a reporter's wishful thinking?
It is hard to say exactly which “subversive” sentiments drew the police to Ren Jianyu, who posted them on his microblog last year, although “down with dictatorship” and “long live democracy” stand out.
In the end, Mr. Ren, 25, a college graduate from Chongqing, the southwestern metropolis, was sent without trial to a work camp...
Last year Mr. Ren was among tens of thousands of Chinese who were dumped into the nation’s vast “re-education through labor” system, a Stalinist-inspired constellation of penal colonies where pickpockets, petitioners, underground Christian church members and other perceived social irritants toil in dismal conditions for up to four years, all without trial.
But now the labor system, known by its shorthand, laojiao, is facing a groundswell of opposition from both inside and outside the Communist Party. Critics say the once-in-a-decade leadership transition last month, which included the demotion of the chief of the nation’s vast internal security apparatus, has created a potential opening for judicial and legal reform.
The calls for change go beyond longstanding advocates of political reform… China’s national bar association is circulating an online petition… Legal experts have convened seminars to denounce the system. And almost every day, it seems, the state-run news media, with the top leadership’s tacit support, report on hapless citizens ensnared by the arbitrary justice that the local police impose with the wave of a hand…
People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, took aim at the system last month, saying it had become “a tool of retaliation” for local officials.
China’s incoming president, Xi Jinping, has not yet weighed in on the issue, but reform advocates are encouraged by a speech he gave this month talking up the widely ignored protections afforded by China’s Constitution, which include freedom from unlawful detention and the right to an open trial. “We must establish mechanisms to restrain and supervise power,” Mr. Xi said.
Until now, China’s powerful security establishment has staved off any erosion of its authority, warning of calamity if the police lose their ability to detain perceived troublemakers without the interference of judges or defense lawyers.
The Ministry of Public Security has other reasons to preserve the status quo. The system, which employs tens of thousands of people, is a gold mine for local authorities, who earn money from the goods produced by detainees. Officials also covet the bribes offered to reduce sentences, critics say, and the payments families make to ensure a loved one is properly fed while in custody…
China’s internal security machine… grew by leaps and bounds in the decade under President Hu Jintao’s campaign for “social stability.” The annual $110 billion security budget now exceeds China’s military spending…
Rights advocates say a genuine overhaul of the laojiao system would require, among other things, allowing victims access to lawyers and the right to appeal. But many of them fear that party leaders may instead opt for only modest modifications…
The president once again makes nationalism his theme. This seems to be a continuation of his attempts to win more support from a less-than-enthusiastic electorate.
In an annual state-of-the-nation address in Moscow strong on patriotic themes, he talked of the need to preserve Russian national identity.
He urged more births, saying a family with three children should be the norm…
It is his first such speech since being re-elected in March for a third term following a winter of political protests over ballot-rigging and state corruption.
His return to office has been accompanied by a crackdown on dissent with the arrest of opposition activists and introduction of restrictive legislation.
"Any external interference in our affairs is unacceptable," he said.
"A politician who receives money from beyond the borders of the Russian Federation cannot be a politician on its territory," he said to applause.
In July, Mr Putin signed a bill forcing foreign-funded non-governmental groups (NGOs) involved in political activity to register as "foreign agents" in Russia.
Critics condemned the move as a bid to gag NGOs which exposed vote-rigging and other abuses…
Russians, Mr Putin said, should remember they had "1,000 years of history". This should give them "inner strength".
Russia must remain a sovereign and influential country and retain its national identity, he told parliament…
On the economy, Mr Putin said: "Our entrepreneurs have often been accused of lacking patriotism."
He criticised companies carrying out their business in offshore jurisdictions.
"According to available data, nine out of 10 transactions by them are not regulated by our laws."...
The new Mexican president may be showing the first signs of really new directions. It marks an assault on one of the products of the corporatist politics of the traditional PRI. And the proposal might mark the first signs of tri-partisan cooperation in the legislature. It's a long shot, but we ought to watch for results.
President Enrique Peña Nieto is proposing sweeping reforms to a public education system widely seen as moribund, taking on an iron-fisted union leader who is considered the country's most powerful woman and the main obstacle to change.
Flanked by the leaders of Mexico's three major political parties, Peña Nieto said Monday that he would send the initiative to Congress within hours to create a professional system for hiring, evaluating and promoting teachers without the "discretionary criteria" currently used in a system where teaching positions are often bought or inherited.
Elba Esther Gordillo
The plan, with multi-party support, moves much of the control of the public education system to the federal government from the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers, led for 23 years by union president Elba Esther Gordillo, who under current law hires and fires teachers…
The proposal would also establish a federal census of education data. Because the union controls the education system, no one knows exactly how many schools, teachers or students exist. The payroll is believed to have thousands of phantom teachers…
Peña Nieto and the three major parties signed a Pact for Mexico last week with other education goals, including raising the level of Mexican students who complete middle school to 80 percent and the number who complete high school to 40 percent. High school only recently became mandatory in the country…
The president said the change is crucial to make Mexico competitive in the new global technological market…
Putin's new Russia seems more and more an offspring of Tsarist and Soviet cultures. The next step could well be officially approved versions of literature, music, and film. (BTW: I have my own worker award pin with Lenin's profile on it. It probably came out of one of those jars-full when I bought it in the eastern sector of Berlin in 1990.)
When secretaries, financial analysts and the like spilled onto the streets of Moscow in antigovernment protests last winter, Vladimir V. Putin took one look and dismissed them as a crowd of “office plankton.”
Hero of Socialist Labor
And then he set about burnishing his credentials as a champion of real, working-class Russians, a project that continued on Monday with his decision to dust off a relic of Soviet heraldry: the set of lapel pins called the Hero of Socialist Labor award, now conspicuously shortened in these capitalistic times to the Hero of Labor.
Mr. Putin, who was elected this year to his third term as president, has brought back the Soviet anthem, military parades and political repression. But until now he had not set about restoring the grandeur of the Soviet lapel pin collection for civilians — awards marked by the heads of Lenin and ribbons that once caused jackets to sag…
As wages level off, medals and awards that raise status without costing hard currency might substitute as compensation, as practiced in the Soviet period, beginning principally in the 1930s, when such status symbols, rather than salaries, measured accomplishment.
By the 1980s, medal inflation had rendered such awards all but meaningless, as nearly everybody had some, and they became the objects of near universal derision — eventually sold by the hundreds in canning jars on the sidewalks of East bloc countries…
Observers commented on the prominent place that China's former president Jiang Zemin had in the recent Party Congress. They noted that Jiang seemed to be more in charge than a president from a decade ago would usually be.
It turns out the observers were right. The situation illustrates the complexity of Chinese politics among the tiny elite that runs things from Beijing.
China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai… But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death…
Ling Jihua
Before dawn on March 18, a black Ferrari Spider speeding along Fourth Ring Road in Beijing ricocheted off a wall, struck a railing and cracked in two. Mr. Ling's son was killed instantly, and the two young Tibetan women with him were hospitalized with severe injuries. One died months later, and the other is recovering, party insiders said.
[There was] a tangled effort to suppress news of the crash that killed the younger Mr. Ling… Under normal circumstances, party insiders said, suppressing such news to protect the image of the party would be a routine matter. But Ling Jihua went further, they said, maneuvering to hide his son’s death even from the leadership…
[T]he exposure [of the cover-up] helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Mr. Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Mr. Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Mr. Hu’s clique…
Under Mr. Hu, Mr. Ling had directed the leadership’s administrative center, the General Office, but was relegated to a less influential post last September…
Mr. Hu, who stepped down as party chief, immediately yielded his post as chairman of the military, meaning he will not retain power as Mr. Jiang did…
According to The Economist's editors, there's something different about Putin's leadership lately. Nobody, it seems — not even the editors — are sure what the difference is.
STATE-RUN television is not usually the place to find news of corruption scandals involving officials close to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Murky business dealings have never been a bar to government service. When high-level bureaucrats fall, they usually go quietly. But viewers have recently been treated to quite a spectacle on Channel One: evening broadcasts full of current and former ministers, their lovers, their expensive homes and millions in misappropriated funds.
This nascent anti-corruption campaign began in October with the dismissal of Anatoly Serdyukov as defence minister… And on November 27th Rossiya-1 channel aired a documentary linking a former agriculture minister, Yelena Skrynnik, to a reported $1.2 billion fraud.
Putin
For Mr Putin, taking on graft in his own circle has several benefits. It is popular: between 2005 and 2012, corruption rose from tenth to third in the concerns of ordinary Russians. It is also an issue that unites his opponents. Mr Putin may dismiss democratic worries, but he sees himself as a popular leader, responsive to the national will. Legitimacy of a kind matters deeply.
Eight months after his election to a third term, Mr Putin’s support looks shaky. The polls give him some of his lowest approval ratings ever. So he feels “compelled to carry on a populist course, as if the elections were still ahead of him,” says Nikolay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. Fighting corruption also defangs the most resonant complaint of the opposition…
All this feeds a sense of uncertainty, with the Moscow political elite “disoriented,” according to Mr Petrov…
For much of October and November, Mr Putin worked at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, rarely going to the Kremlin and cancelling foreign trips to Bulgaria, India and Turkey (though he is now going to Turkey next week). News reports discussed a possible back problem caused by flying an ultralight plane beside some wild cranes in September. The Kremlin dismissed this, saying only that Mr Putin had pulled a muscle while exercising…
Over the years, Mr Putin has played on traditional Russian deference to the leader while relying on manipulation of the media…
Compared with his early years in charge when he relied on economic aides like German Gref and Alexei Kudrin, Mr Putin has less faith in the counsel of those around him and more certainty in his own judgment. After a difficult year, he believes that he “owes his position to a hard-fought electoral victory, unlike his colleagues who have no mandate from the voters”, says Sergei Guriev of the New Economic School. On many issues, says one former adviser, Mr Putin “thinks he understands the situation, but in fact it can be quite incomprehensible for him”.
Decision-making in the Kremlin appears to be on hold. Mr Putin has slowed down progress on the budget, on pensions and on privatisation. This may partly be a prudent move to sit out recent turmoil in global markets. But the danger of what Chris Weafer of Troika Dialog calls a “deliberate policy of inactivity” is that Mr Putin waits too long, acting only when the next political or financial crisis hits him…
According to this analysis from The Economist, the power relationships within the political elite in China are at least as complicated as the organization of sub-national units of government in Russia.
There's a chart that accompanies this article, but I'm not sure it helps. If your students can explain it to you, you can be pretty sure they know their stuff.
IN THIS year of drama, intrigue and scandal at the highest levels, the opaque machinery of China’s political system has received unusual scrutiny. The outcome of intra-party manoeuvring among China’s ruling Communist Party officials was finally revealed in November, at the 18th Party Congress. Now, as Xi Jinping and other party leaders get their feet under their new desks, the focus turns to the reshuffling of senior government posts due in March.
Part of the Economist's chart
But even when that is done, there will still be plenty of mystery. China’s power grid is a tangle of interlocking entities, overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of authority, and complex interplay between government, party and military bureaucracies…
For foreigners, the first challenge is determining whether the officials they meet actually have the authority implied by their titles… Positions that foreigners expect to be powerful, such as foreign minister, defence minister and finance minister, are not even members of the Politburo, let alone its standing committee…
This is one consequence of all those jumbled horizontal and vertical lines. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enjoys the same rank as China’s State Council, or cabinet, meaning the executive branch of the government can issue no orders to the PLA. Even the Ministry of Defence lacks command authority over China’s armed forces…
In China more power is held by “leading small groups”, informal bodies that report directly to party leaders, than by ministers, who control portfolios in most systems of government…
Internal affairs also have tangled webs of power. Central ministries rank equal to provincial governments. So do many large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), a fact which, according to a study by America’s Congressional Research Service, leads to vast regulatory difficulties. SOEs, it said, sometimes outrank party and state leaders in their locales, and so are not bound by their orders…
Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University says the same problem plagues sectors like oil, gas and heavy industry, where SOE leaders enjoy the rank of minister-level officials. Some, he says, also serve on the powerful party Central Committee. “These SOE leaders belong to the nomenklatura. They are aristocrats, or promoted through connections,” he says…
The author of this op-ed piece is Calestous Juma, professor of international development at Harvard Kennedy School. His examples are primarily from Kenya, but it's easy to apply his ideas to Nigeria.
The comments that follow this BBC piece (on the web site) reflect controversies over his use of the term "tribe." Those controversies are a reason that many comparative political scientists prefer to talk about identity politics. I've attached Basil Ibrahim's sidebar comments after the main article.
It would be a good exercise to apply Juma's main theses to political systems outside of Africa. Are there tribes in the UK (Scots, Welsh)? Are British politics successful in diminishing those cleavages? If so, how is that done? What about Russia or China or Mexico or Iran?
Africa's democratic transition is back in the spotlight. The concern is no longer the stranglehold of autocrats, but the hijacking of the democratic process by tribal politics…
Some of the Nigerian region's 250+ tribes or ethnic groups
The challenge to democracy in Africa is not the prevalence of ethnic diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests. It is tribalism…
Much attention over the last two decades has been devoted to removing autocrats and promoting multiparty politics.
But in the absence of efforts to build genuine political parties that compete on the basis of ideas, many African countries have reverted to tribal identities as foundations for political competition.
Leaders often exploit tribal loyalty to advance personal gain, parochial interests, patronage, and cronyism.
But tribes are not built on democratic ideas but thrive on zero-sum competition.
As a result, they are inimical to democratic advancement.
In essence, tribal practices are occupying a vacuum created by lack of strong democratic institutions.
Tribal interests have played a major role in armed conflict and civil unrest across the continent…
The way forward for African democracy lies in concerted efforts to build modern political parties founded on development ideas and not tribal bonds.
Such political parties must base their competition for power on development platforms.
Defining party platforms will need to be supported by the search for ideas—not the appeal to tribal coalitions.
Political parties that create genuine development platforms will launch initiatives that reflect popular needs.
Party manifestos are fundamentally documents in which parties outline their principles and goals in a manner that goes beyond popular rhetoric.
They arise from careful discussion, compromise, and efforts to express the core values and commitments of the party.
Building clear party platforms requires effective intellectual input, usually provided through think-tanks and other research institutions.
Most African political parties lack such support and are generally manifestos cobbled together with little consultation.
Tribal groupings see themselves as infallible but parties have to be accountable to the people.
By stating a vision for the future, political parties provide voters with a ways to measure their performance.
Forging platforms fosters debate within parties that transcends tribal and religious differences…
Indeed, it is becoming clear that issues such as infrastructure - energy, transportation, irrigation, and telecommunication - and youth employment are emerging as common themes in African politics irrespective of ideological differences.
The predominance of such issues will select for pragmatic leadership over ideology…
Tribe or ethnic group?
Those who oppose using the word "tribe" desire that African ethnic groups are understood as similar to those elsewhere.
They want the complexity of these groups paid attention to, and are attentive of the word "tribe's" associations with notions of backwardness, atavism and superstition - its roots in colonial policies aimed at defining African societies and making them legible for control.
They are attentive to the fact that the term is only used to describe their cultural formations, of the fact that Western societies' cleavages would never be defined as tribes.
They also reject the notions of fixity, of common ancestry that come with the term "tribe", preferring the looseness of the term ethnic group, and how this acknowledges internal differences of language, culture and descent, and permits accretion…
The political party that ruled Mexico for seven straight decades is back, assuring Mexicans there’s no chance of a return to what some called ‘‘the perfect dictatorship’’ that was marked by a mixture of populist handouts, rigged votes and occasional bloodshed…
President Enrique Pena Nieto calls it a crowning moment of an effort to reform and modernize the party that ruled without interruption from 1929 to 2000.
He promises an agenda of free enterprise, efficiency and accountability. He’s pushing for reforms that could bring major new private investment in Mexico’s crucial but creaking state-owned oil industry, changes that have been blocked for decades by nationalist suspicion of foreign meddling in the oil business.
PRI leaders acknowledge the party is returning to power in a Mexico radically different from what it was in the party’s heyday. The nation has an open, market-oriented economy, a freer, more aggressive press, an opposition that can communicate at the speed of the Internet and a population that knows the PRI can be kicked out of power…
Political analyst Raymundo Riva Palacio says a return to the old ways is unlikely, noting there are now independent electoral authorities, judges and rights groups to help keep authorities in line. ‘‘I don’t think they'll try to restore the old regime, like we saw in the 1970s,’’ he said.
But Alejandro Sanchez, the assistant leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), warns of an attempt ‘‘to return to the authoritarian regime of the 1970s, when torture, contempt for opponents and impunity were the norm.’’
The PRI no longer holds a majority in Congress, so it will probably have to negotiate more.
PRI members in Congress… supported a bill that would give federal and state auditors more authority to block spending by state governors, who currently face little fiscal oversight. That may help curb the unchecked power governors have acquired since the PRI lost power, but some critics see the measure as a bid to return to the days when presidents controlled the states from Mexico City…
‘‘We have learned from the mistakes we made,’’ Coldwell, the PRI’s leader, told a local radio station. ‘‘The people have given us a chance, and we have to be very conscious of the fact that if we don’t do well, they won’t give us a third chance.’’
In fact, the PRI had already begun changing in the 1980s. Stung by public outrage over some of the economic messes it had made, the party oversaw the privatization of inefficient state-owned industries that were once vast reservoirs of patronage jobs. It gradually allowed electoral reforms that finally gave opponents a chance to win elections.
During its time in power, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) tried to lend a more informal air to the presidency. The office also became weaker in the face of the rising independence of the Supreme Court as well as state governors, many from opposition parties who owed no allegiance to the president. Opposition also increased in Congress.
Ruben Aguilar, who was a spokesman for then President Vicente Fox, the National Action candidate who defeated the PRI in 2000, said he’s willing to give the PRI ‘‘the benefit of the doubt,’’ in part because the party is known for pragmatism. It never had much ideology beyond keeping itself in power, and returning to old abuses could be suicidal…
Many Mexicans retain a cynical fondness for the old party’s populism, as reflected in one old saying that translates roughly: ‘‘They stole, but at least they let others get what they dropped.’’
Some expect a comeback of the PRI political style that combined a devotion to high-flown rhetoric, strict obedience among party members and an unquestioned respect for the authority of the president…
The PRI’s discipline is enshrined in another old saying. Counseling against jostling for political position, late PRI union boss Fidel Velazquez counseled, ‘‘He who moves around doesn’t show up in the photo.’’
Transparency is a concept that is used frequently to describe a set of good qualities about governments and regimes. Transparency International does a yearly survey related to perceived corruption around the world. The results of their 2012 survey have just been released. There are some good teaching tools to be had.
As a preview, here are the rankings, out of 176 countries, for the AP6. Lower rankings indicate less corrupt systems.
17. UK
80. China
105. Mexico
133. Russia
133. Iran
139. Nigeria
Why is the lack of transparency considered a negative characteristic of a government or a regime? Is transparency a universally good thing in a government or a regime? Can your students find any correlations between a country's CPI ranking and other regime or government characteristics?
There's a wonderful world map illustrating the rankings. And if you hold your cursor over a country on the interactive map, that country's ranking and score appear.
Part of TI's map
And there's an innovative circle chart presenting the rankings in another way.
And there's a two-minute video explaining Transparency International's efforts to publicize their work.
Daniel Lazar teaches at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin. On November 11, he posted this provocative question: Is the Chinese political system more legitimate than democratic systems? (I just found it.) There are two very relevant charts from Pew Research Center accompanying the post.
This is a great reminder of the variety of routes to achieve legitimacy.
China and the United States are about to choose new leaders via very different methods. But is a candidate voted for by millions a more legitimate choice than one anointed by a select few?.
You probably think that the legitimacy and authority of the state, or government, is overwhelmingly a function of democracy, Western-style.
But democracy is only one factor. Nor does democracy in itself guarantee legitimacy.
Now let me shock you: the Chinese state enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state. How come?…
THE United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has come far, chortles Nigel Farage, its leader. Not so long ago, he admits, UKIP was a “hardline protest party” dogged by scandal and monomaniacally focused on ending Britain’s European Union membership. Now, he says, it is a force to be reckoned with and a grown-up party of government. He is half right.
At a time of public hostility to politicians and Eurocrats, UKIP is doing a roaring trade in populist outrage…
Peter Kellner, head of YouGov, a polling firm, says it is quite possible that the party will then come first in the 2014 European elections…
Despite growing Euroscepticism in the country as a whole, Mr Farage intends to use every electoral opportunity to show that UKIP is not a single-issue party. It already champions lower immigration, selective grammar schools and lower taxes, he stresses… The party even claims to be the “third force in British politics”, supplanting the Lib Dems. Some polling supports that assertion (see chart)…
The comparison is inaccurate. UKIP’s growing media profile obscures the complex psychodramas and organisational chaos below the surface. A former adviser describes a hollowed-out structure with few engaged members, opaque finances and little internal democracy…
So far its successes at easier-to-fight European and by-elections have not been matched at general elections. In 2010 it won just 3.1% of the vote; even with an electoral pact, the party would probably secure few—if any—seats in 2015. It has many fewer local councillors even than the Green Party, which, unlike UKIP, is already represented in the Commons.
It is, then, too large and popular to be a mere protest party, but too chaotic and ill-defined to be a viable party of government. For the Tories, this is the worst of both worlds. It is hard to imagine David Cameron going anywhere near an electoral alliance with UKIP, whatever Eurosceptics and fearful activists may want. The jaws of the pincer await.
Some awful years are giving way to what, if managed properly, could be a prosperous period for Latin America’s second-largest economy. Big, irreversible trends… are starting to move in Mexico’s favour. At the same time the country’s leaders are at last starting to tackle some of the home-grown problems that have held it back.
Plaza de la Constitucion
Many of the things that the world thinks it knows about Mexico are no longer true. A serially underachieving economy… Out-of-control population growth and an endless exodus to the north… Grinding poverty… A raging drug war…
A vast country with deeply ingrained problems and unreformed corners, Mexico could yet squander the opportunities that are coming its way. But there are signs that it is beginning to realise its potential…
Preparing to lead Mexico into this brightening future is the party most associated with its past. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ran Mexico without interruption for most of the 20th century, silencing opposition through a mixture of co-option, corruption and occasional violence…
Mr Peña says his priority is to make the economy grow faster in order to reduce poverty. Nearly half the population are poor… To achieve more rapid growth he will need to introduce a series of big economic reforms…
Mr Peña has reason to be optimistic. The opposition PAN shares much of Mr Peña’s agenda, and together the two parties have a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. A new power to fast-track two bills per congressional session will help. A lot will depend on who ends up leading the PAN…
The government may also face opposition outside Congress. Though a majority of the political class now seems to be convinced of the need for economic reforms along the lines that Mr Peña proposes, the same may not yet be true on the street, in the public universities or in much of the press…
Mexico has form in turning triumph to disaster, and could yet do so again. Its economy remains dependent on the fortunes of the United States, and financial crises in Europe make investors jittery. Promised reforms will depend on persuading entrenched interests to accept them. Corruption and bad government, especially at the local level, may cause good initiatives to fall at the last hurdle. And the drug war is by no means over. But Mexico deserves a fresh look—not least because its economy is revving up…
I never would have compared Curtis Sliwa's group to the Cossacks of Imperial Russia until reading this account from the Boston Globe.
The questions for students of comparative politics involve the capacity of the state, the need for political integration, rule of law, and explanations for the need for paraprofessional law enforcement.
Renowned for their sword-fighting prowess and notorious for their anti-Semitism in czarist Russia, the Cossacks are taking on new foes: beggars, drunks and improperly parked cars.
Cossacks on patrol in Moscow
With the approval of city authorities, eight Cossacks clad in traditional fur hats and uniforms patrolled a Moscow train station on Tuesday looking for signs of minor public disturbances.
The Kremlin is seeking to use the once-feared paramilitary squads in its new drive to promote conservative values and appeal to nationalists…
Tuesday’s patrol was a test run on whether the group can become an armed and salaried auxiliary police force, with the power of arrest, patrol leader Igor Gurevich said…
The conservative Cossacks have increased their political activity in response to an impromptu protest that feminist punk rockers Pussy Riot staged in Moscow’s main cathedral in February…
Russia plans to restore the functions Cossacks had in the imperial Russian army, where they were instrumental in repelling Napoleon’s invading army in 1812 and led pogroms against Jews. A 400,000-strong All-Russia Cossack Host directly subordinate to Putin is scheduled to be launched by the end of the year.
Enrique Peña Nieto became president of Mexico early Saturday, beginning a six-year term in which he has promised to accelerate economic growth, reduce the violence related to the drug war and forge closer, broader ties with the United States…
Mr. Peña Nieto begins his term on a politically shaky foundation. He won 38 percent of the vote in the July election... The PRI-led coalition is the largest in Congress, but it does not have an absolute majority and will need alliances to get anything done.
In unveiling his cabinet on Friday, Mr. Peña Nieto relied largely on PRI stalwarts, including five former governors, but placed several young, foreign-educated technocrats from his inner circle, including Mr. Videgaray, in prominent positions to present a fresh face for the old party. Men dominate the cabinet, with only 3 of the 27 positions filled going to women…
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.
