A "Free Vote"
Syria airstrikes: Jeremy Corbyn gives Labour MPs free vote
Jeremy Corbyn is to offer a free vote to MPs on David Cameron’s proposals for UK to bomb Isis in Syria but will make clear that Labour party policy is to oppose airstrikes…
Do you know what a "free vote" is in the context of Parliamentary politics?
His decision averts the threat of a mass shadow cabinet walkout while making it clear that his own firmly held opposition to airstrikes is official Labour party policy, backed by the membership…
A "free vote" is one of those rare occasions when MPs are "allowed" to vote against their party's policy position.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
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Labels: parliament, parties, UK
Sign of social immobility
After 50-plus years of government programs to create opportunities for social mobility in the UK, there's at least one area that's lacking.
Most senior judges and top QCs still privately educated, figures show
Nearly three-quarters of senior judges and 71% of top QCs [Queen's counsels] are privately educated, according to analysis by the Sutton Trust.
 |
| newly appointed QCs |
The proportion for judges has barely changed since the 1980s, despite the fact that only about 7% of the population attend fee-paying schools...
Comparable figures from 1989 recorded that 76% of senior judges were privately educated. The latest Sutton Trust survey found that this has fallen marginally to 74%.
The survey also found that 74% of senior judges, 78% of top QCs and 55% of solicitor partners… went to Oxford or Cambridge University.
The Sutton Trust [that conducted the survey] was established in 1997 with the aim of improving social mobility through education.
Sir Peter Lampl, the chairman of the trust and the Education Endowment Foundation, said: “Today’s findings, in particular the worrying fact that the high proportion of privately educated judges has barely changed since the 1980s, warns us that there is still a big social mobility problem within the legal sector… "
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format. $2.00.
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Want definitions of corruption and irony?
One of the world's leading producers of petroleum is facing a fuel shortage.
Nigeria hit by severe fuel shortage amid payment row
A severe fuel crisis has hit Nigeria with long queues of angry motorists waiting for hours outside petrol stations in major cities to fill up.
Importers are accused of withholding petrol because of a payment dispute with the government, which they [the importers, I believe] deny…
Nigeria is Africa's main oil exporter but imports most of its petrol because it lacks the capacity to refine it.
 |
| Shuttered petrol (gas) station in Kano |
The fuel is imported at a subsidised price under a scheme operated by the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Earlier this month, the government approved the payment of $2.1bn (£1.4bn) to the importers, or wholesale fuel sellers, to settle subsidy claims.
However, payment has been delayed because parliament has not yet approved it.
The BBC's Bashir Sa'ad Abdullahi in the capital, Abuja, says previous governments tended to pay the wholesale fuel sellers without parliamentary approval.
But it seems that President Buhari is trying to stick to the law…
The fuel subsidy scheme has become an enormous scam, our correspondent says.
The wholesalers often pretend to bring in a lot more oil than they do and pocket the money they get for the petrol that is not delivered, he says.
In May, the country was brought to a standstill when the importers went on strike following a row over payments with the outgoing government…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
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Labels: corruption, Nigeria, rule of law
It's not just distributions of income and wealth
In many (most) countries the distribution of incomes has become more and more unequal. (The distribution of wealth has always been very unequal.)(Think about it.)
Social welfare spending is, theoretically, a balancing feature of liberal economies. Is it?
Sharper elbows: The well-off are grabbing an ever-larger share of spending
PUSHY middle-class types are said to have a knack for getting the most out of the state. With their sharp elbows, the argument goes, the wealthy jostle others out of the way in the queue for doctors’ appointments, school places and other scarce public services. The conventional wisdom is half-right. In absolute terms, Britain’s poor consume more public services than the rich—but, after adjusting for need, studies suggest that the rich tend to get more than their due.
That long-standing inequality may be growing…
[T]he [British] Office for National Statistics (ONS)… estimated the monetary value of certain public services, including education, the National Health Service (NHS) and transport, which combined offer the average household benefits worth £7,000 ($10,600) a year, more than the value of cash benefits such as pensions and jobseekers’ [unemployment] allowance…
Much the biggest of the various services analysed is the NHS, which eats up one-fifth of all government spending. One reason for its apparently growing generosity to the well-off is that the elderly, its main clients, are getting richer…
Yet data for NHS spending on the working population show a similar trend: whereas in 2000 households in the bottom income quintile received 27% more than those in the richest, today they receive the same as each other. One explanation is that the rich are ditching their private health insurance and instead using the NHS…
Just as fewer people are taking out private health insurance, fewer are sending their children to private school. Since 2008 the proportion of children at independent schools in England has slipped… Yet the long-term trend in education funding is steeply progressive…
In 2012 the government raised the cap on tuition fees from £3,375 to £9,000 per year, thus reducing a subsidy whose main beneficiary had been the middle class. Poor students have been protected by a generous maintenance grant and relaxed terms for the repayment of loans. Their participation rate has grown at a faster rate than that of their richer peers since the reform…
The most regressive public service is transport, from which the richest quintile benefit almost twice as much as the poorest. The reason is that they travel more—and by the most expensive means. The state subsidises rail travel by £5 billion a year. Yet intercity trains bulge with well-dressed folk tapping away on laptops; each year the average top-quintile earner travels 2,300km (1,400 miles) by train, five times as much as the bottom earners…
The wealthy also drive three times as many miles as the poor. This makes them big beneficiaries of spending on roads, worth £8 billion a year… Poor people make up ground elsewhere: they use buses twice as much. But bus subsidies are smaller, and the rich use them increasingly frequently…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
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Labels: cleavages, economics, public spending, UK
Memory shaping the future
In the novel
1984, George Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
As you study the political culture of China, remember that the paragraph (or so) in your text book about Tiananmen Square in 1989, includes more facts than most people in China ever see.
I Think It's Already Been Forgotten
Twenty-five years after June 4, 1989, even China’s educated youth have only a foggy understanding of the incident, and they’re skittish about discussing it openly. Textbooks don’t mention the violence that left hundreds, maybe thousands, dead in the streets of Beijing. The Chinese Internet has been scrubbed of all but the official accounts…
 |
| Protesters in Tianamen Square, June 1989 |
Awareness of the Tiananmen incident among young Chinese tends to correlate with education level, exposure to the world outside China, and general curiosity…
Most Chinese parents don’t talk about politics with their children, said Amy, a bright 26-year-old from Guangdong province who works for a tech company in Beijing. But she was an exception: she heard about the incident from her father. “He hated Deng Xiaoping,” she said. “He thinks Deng caused China to have no morals, no beliefs. I asked why, and he said, ‘Deng Xiaoping ordered tanks to run over college students. Do you think that’s what a good person does?’” Later, when she was attending a top university in Beijing, one of her professors showed photos and videos from the protests. “The teacher told us not to mention it outside class,” she said…
 |
| Some of the dead in Tiananmen, June 5, 1989 |
Everyone I talked to knew the basic outline: Student protests, government crackdown, innocent civilians shot dead. But they weren’t all sure why the protesters were so upset…
You can’t blame them for being confused. The 1989 protesters themselves didn’t know exactly what they wanted. They complained variously about high inflation, corruption, and a lack of democracy… Even if they’d agreed on a set of goals, they couldn’t agree how to achieve them: Some wanted revolution, while others pushed for incremental change.
The young people I spoke with agreed strongly that the government should not have resorted to violence. They found it ludicrous that the Chinese can’t discuss the incident freely. But they were also far from convinced that the protesters were correct…
Forgetting isn’t just easy; it’s often necessary. As Louisa Lim writes in her new book The People’s Republic of Amnesia, “moving on—not dwelling on the past—has become a key survival tactic, perhaps the most important one.” The young people I spoke with seemed torn between wanting to care, and knowing that caring wouldn’t make a difference… Susan seemed almost scared of what she herself would be capable of if she knew too much. “What am I going to do,” she said, “raise a revolution? Write an article? I can’t. I know myself, I know if I start writing I’ll be so aggressive, so critical, so negative. I don’t want to be noticed by the government.” She believes that even searching for forbidden key words could get her in trouble, she said: “They can track you down within minutes.”…
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Labels: China, history, political culture
New Nigerian cabinet
President Buhari has finally assigned portfolios to his new cabinet. Here are some names to remember.
Nigeria gets new cabinet after six-month delay
Choosing a cabinet in Nigeria is a complicated balancing act. One must juggle the need for skilled leaders with the requirement to repay political allies, while navigating the shifting alliances of internal party politics and eliminating accumulated deadwood. Then there’s the need to carefully maintain an ethnic and religious balance, and to make sure each of the country’s 36 states is somehow represented.
 |
| Buhari and (most of) the cabinet |
No wonder it took newly elected president Muhammadu Buhari nearly six months to make his decision.
“Impatience is not a virtue,” said the president to his critics, who thought that the long delay in naming a new government was bad for business. Buhari was unmoved: “Careful and deliberate decisions after consultations get far better results,” he said.
Finally, on Wednesday, Buhari unveiled the results of his lengthy deliberations, swearing in 36 ministers at a ceremony in the capital Abuja…
The most notable decision involves Buhari himself. The president has taken charge of the ministry of petroleum, which for years has been associated with gross mismanagement and corruption on a grand scale…
The influential finance portfolio has been handed to Kemi Adeosun, a former investment bank chief who has a daunting task ahead of her. Collapsing oil prices have slashed the government’s revenue, and stunted economic growth, with analysts predicting more turbulent times ahead…
[S]he will have to work closely with the new minister of trade and investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, head of the private equity company African Capital Alliance…
Buhari, a military man himself, chose a retired brigadier-general as defence minister. The appointment of Dan Ali might rile a few feathers in the military, however.
Another minister to watch is Babatunde Fashola, who heads the new power, works and housing ministry. His job is to maintain and overhaul the country’s creaking infrastructure, an impossible task for most people.
But Fashola has a track record: as governor of Lagos, Africa’s largest city, until May this year, Fashola is credited with huge improvements in public transport, roads, affordable housing and security. Can he do the same on a national level?
Although it remains to be tested, Buhari’s first cabinet is a positive statement from the new leader, and a sign that he is, at the very least, paying lip service to the promises he made in his victorious electoral campaign…
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Labels: government, leadership, Nigeria
A cleavage that's not usually politically relevant
This is a reminder that there are ethnic cleavages in Iran, but not all of them are always politically relevant. (After all, the Supreme Leader and several cabinet members are Azeris.) However, a children's TV show seems to have exposed some background prejudice.
Iran's Azeris protest over offensive TV show
Police in Iran have clashed with people protesting against what they say is the state broadcaster's offensive portrayal of the country's Azeri ethnic minority…
 |
| Azeri protest |
The protests were sparked by a children's television programme... that ridiculed the accents of Azeris and included offensive jokes…
There are approximately 13 million ethnic Azeris in Iran, or 16% of the population.
The US state department says Azeris are well integrated into government and society, but that they have accused the government of discriminating against them by prohibiting the Azeri language in schools, harassing Azeri activists or organisers, and changing Azeri geographic names…
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Labels: cleavages, Iran
All the right words
Nigeria's electoral commission is much better than it used to be. But elections are still suspect. President Buhari used all the right words when he appointed the new commission. Will behavior change to match the ideals?
President Buhari Swears in INEC Chairman, Commissioners
 |
| Yakubu |
President Muhammadu Buhari… swore in the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, alongside new national commissioners, at a ceremony at the council chambers of the presidential villa…
"The nation has reposed a lot of trust and confidence in you. You cannot afford to fail," he said…
He said "It starts from change of attitudes, change of work ethics, change in attitude to corruption and corrupt practices, change of party political conduct-right from primaries to the emergence of candidates and finally the conduct of elections".
President Buhari said his administration respects the independence of the electoral body, by not interfering in its activities, but will encourage them to conduct transparently free and fair elections…
"In almost all the States, the party of the sitting government wins all the Council Elections. There is nothing wrong with that if it is the true wish of the people, but majority of Nigerians more often than not think it is not, hence have little respect for the outcome of our council elections. This is responsible for questioning the integrity of such election winners throughout their tenure" he said.
Another area of concern, the President said is the justice administration of the Electoral Tribunals. He said addressing the electoral shortcomings was long overdue adding that all found culpable in electoral fraud, violence and thuggery should be prosecuted…
The INEC chairman who responded on behalf of the newly sworn in commissioners, pledged commitment in the discharge of duties.
"We shall not fail the nation," said Mr. Yakubu.
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Labels: elections, Nigeria, transparency
Political science and history
My rule of thumb for students writing responses to FRQs has been, "Don't worry about anything more than 25 (30?) years old UNLESS you're specifically asked about it. This is political science, not history."(I had to say that because nearly all my students had taken AP history courses and loved writing responses explaining everything they could think of that led up to the topic of the FRQ.)
My rule of thumb for teachers is that you really have to understand a lot of history in order to explain what's going on today.
Geremie R. Barmé is a professor of history, so we should expect that he'd emphasize history more than I do.
Q. and A.: Geremie R. Barmé on Understanding Xi Jinping
Geremie R. Barmé is a professor of Chinese history and founding director of the Australian Center on China in the World at the Australian National University…
Q: As a longtime China watcher, what is special for your craft in the Xi era?
A: As an historian… the Xi era is something of a gift. The dark art of Chinese rule combines elements of dynastic statecraft, official Confucianism, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist legacy and the mixed socialist-neoliberal reforms of the post-Mao era.
Under Xi Jinping, the man I like to call China’s C.O.E., or Chairman of Everything, these traditions are being drawn on to build a China for the 21st century… For the many students of China who haven’t bothered reading Mao… Xi’s version of China is positively discombobulating.
Q: Some people in China refer to Mr. Xi as “Emperor Xi.” Are there similarities?
A: Since the Mao era, it has been a commonplace for even rather levelheaded analysts and observers to speak of Chinese leaders as emperors or want-to-be emperors. This generates a comfortable metaphorical landscape, one that Chinese friends also often encourage. It puts Chinese political culture and behavior beyond the realm of the normal or knowable…
Of course, Xi aspires to something like that… The official adulation of Xi and the fact that he is omnipresent are reminiscent of the leader complex of other, older socialist states…
Q: How is the current crackdown on expression affecting creativity on the Internet?
A: There is no doubt that the threnody [a song or poem that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead] of the era of “Big Daddy Xi,” as the official media call the C.O.E., is boredom. The lugubrious propaganda chief, Liu Yunshan, the Internet killjoy Lu Wei and Xi himself have together cast a pall over Chinese cultural and intellectual life…
Q: Do you see nationalism getting out of hand?
A: In a way, nationalism in China has been out of hand for years: the intense and costly nationwide re-education campaign launched in the wake of June 4, 1989, emphasized China’s unique national situation, its undivided “nationhood” and grand history. The popular sense of exceptionalism is here to stay.
But this exceptionalism is threatened by Taiwan… It is threatened by Hong Kong… It is threatened by the very pluralism that market reforms engender in China itself.
Of course, China is achieving long-cherished goals of strength and power, but in the process it has forged a one-party nation-state that, apart from tireless police action, maintains unity through aggravated propaganda and public bellicosity. But there is also the “Other China” — one that is educated, informed, skeptical, well-read, often well-traveled and part of a modern global society. This Other China is often silenced, ignored or ill-understood, but it will flourish well beyond the tenure of Xi Jinping…
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Labels: China, history, leadership, politics
Leadership recruitment in Russia
Editors of
The Economist don't think one of Vladimir Putin's KGB buddies from St. Petersburg is likely to succeed him. The editors are betting on the current Minister of Defense, who has served in every government since 1990. What does that say about recruitment in Russia?
Russia’s Sergei Shoigu: Master of emergencies
 |
| Sergei Shoigu |
Since Mr Shoigu took over the defence ministry in late 2012, his partnership with Mr Putin has flourished… The Russian armed forces have emerged as the primary instrument of Mr Putin’s foreign policy… Under Mr Shoigu, Russia’s armed forces have “demonstrated a capability and organisation and logistics skill-set that we have not seen before,” says Evelyn Farkas, who was until recently the Pentagon’s top official on Russian affairs.
But Mr Shoigu is much more than Russia’s latest defence minister… he is the longest-serving member of the Russian government; his tenure stretches back to 1990… He made his name at the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS)…
Russia is a land of emergencies, from droughts and forest fires to sinking submarines, apartment-block bombings and school hostage dramas. The most recent addition is the crash of a charter plane over the Sinai peninsula… So it is hardly surprising that the minister of emergency situations should become one of the best-known figures in Russian politics…
In the chaos of the 1990s, Mr Shoigu became a reassuring presence. Besides handling fires and natural disasters, he served as a mediator in conflicts… In 1999, as Mr Yeltsin prepared to hand the reins to Mr Putin, his team tapped Mr Shoigu to lead a new political party called Unity, which later morphed into United Russia…
In 2000 he gave Mr Putin a black labrador, Koni, who became the president’s favourite dog. He accompanied Mr Putin on his macho, shirtless adventure trips. He patriotically took holidays in Russian forests rather than on French beaches. The men shared an interest in history…
The question of what comes after Mr Putin haunts Russia’s political system. The president’s grip on power is based in part on the idea of bezalternativnost, the lack of alternatives…
But if a shortlist exists, Mr Shoigu is probably on it. He remains Russia’s most trusted and popular politician not named Putin. He has avoided scandals and is perceived as relatively clean... Mr Shoigu has long denied having political ambitions. Yet that may work in his favour. “He’s not obviously desperate to climb the greasy pole,” argues Mark Galeotti, a Russia scholar at New York University, “which might mean that he’s precisely the one who ends up on top of it.” When the ultimate emergency strikes, Russians may well turn to their first rescuer-in-chief.
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Labels: leadership, politics, recruitment, Russia
Women in government
Since Canada's new Prime Minister brought it up, this might be a good time to ask questions about women in government.
Treating the fair sex fairly
“A TOKEN sprinkling of women,” is how Luciana Berger, a member of parliament for the opposition Labour Party, dismissed the recent British cabinet reshuffle, the avowed aim of which was to make the government less male. Similar cries of tokenism followed last year’s appointment of Julie Bishop as Australia’s foreign minister, which made her the sole woman in the country’s cabinet. Almost everywhere women are in a minority in government cabinets… Some fret that they are treated as mere window-dressing, making the government look more representative but given neither meaningful portfolios nor the support needed to be effective.
New research suggests such criticisms may miss the mark. In a forthcoming paper, Maria Escobar-Lemmon and Michelle Taylor-Robinson of Texas A&M University compare the experience and accomplishments of the men and women among 447 cabinet ministers in recent administrations in five countries in the Americas... Experience was measured by relevant academic background, previous cabinet posts and political connections; and success by the number of bills presented, length of tenure and whether a minister’s time in office ended with firing or forced resignation.
If women were given unimportant portfolios or overlooked by the president, the authors reasoned, they would probably produce less legislation and be easier to get rid of than men…
But this was not what the authors found. Although female ministers initiated fewer bills than comparable male ones, overall they were as likely to succeed…
None of this is to say that female politicians are dealt a decent hand… And as the authors point out, their analysis says nothing about whether the women they studied were treated differently in cabinet meetings or by the media…
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Labels: cleavages, gender, government, leadership
Analyzing the politics
Examining the arguments and the participants in political disputes often sheds light on the nature of politics and the regime.
Iran President Pushes Back Over Anti-U.S. Crackdown
 |
| Rouhani |
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran on Wednesday criticized the recent arrests of journalists and others by the Revolutionary Guard Corps…
His reaction signaled a deepening divide between his administration and hard-line adversaries over Iran’s future relationship with the United States and other Western powers. The hard-liners have vowed to severely limit dealings with the Americans despite the signing of an international agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for ending onerous American and European economic sanctions. Mr. Rouhani’s administration was the main advocate in Iran for that accord…
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has declared that despite the nuclear deal, the United States remains Iran’s main enemy and cannot be trusted. The ayatollah has warned against what he has called Americans’ desire to infiltrate Iran culturally and economically to subvert the country’s revolutionary foundation…
A report about the meeting on Mr. Rouhani’s official website conspicuously omitted his critical remarks about the arrests, a possible indication of its delicacy given the internal political rivalries that have become apparent over his two-year-old term…
An anti-American backlash that has been gaining momentum in Iran since the nuclear agreement was reached in July has been abetted by state news media, much of it dominated or influenced by hard-liners…
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Labels: Iran, politics
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
