Teaching Comparative

World Toilet Day

Chinese President Xi Jinping said public toilets throughout the country – from rural villages to urban areas – should be upgraded to help improve living standards, Xinhua reported on Monday…

In 2015, China started a three-year campaign to improve the standard of public toilets at tourist sites across the country.

In April that year, Xi said upgrading toilet facilities was integral to improving conditions in China’s tourism industry…

As of last month, more than 68,000 public toilets had been refurbished, 20 per cent more than the original target, according to Xinhua.

The overhaul was backed by more than 1 billion yuan (US$152 million) in central government funding and over 20 billion yuan from local authorities.

To mark World Toilet Day on November 19, the National Tourism Administration pledged to erect another 47,000 toilets and refurbish 17,000 others over the next two years…

Bai Lin, China project manager with the World Toilet Organisation, said the toilet revolution was driven by a desire to boost tourism, but hygienic toilets were essential to the wider public.

“There is still a yawning gap between China’s strong economic development and people’s standard of living. A beautiful environment and hygienic toilets are essential to a good standard,” Bai said.

While building new toilets and upgrading others, China also needed to work on waste treatment, with sewage threatening the country’s vulnerable underground water system, he said…

He said China’s toilet coverage was good compared to other Asian countries, but its waste water processing was still not up to international standard.

Labels: China, economics, infrastructure

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

International influences on Iranian politics

After years of cynicism, sneering or simply tuning out all things political, Iran’s urban middle-classes have been swept up in a wave of nationalist fervor.

The changing attitude, while some years in the making, can be attributed to two related factors: the election of President Donald J. Trump and the growing competition with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s sectarian rival, for regional dominance.

Iranians listened during the 2016 campaign as Mr. Trump denounced the Iran nuclear treaty as “the worst deal ever negotiated” and promised to tear it up. They watched in horror when, as president, he sold more than $100 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and participated in a traditional war dance in Riyadh. And they are alarmed at the foreign policy moves of the young Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who they see as hotheaded and inexperienced.

At the same time, they now believe they have something to be proud of, with Iranian-led militias playing a central role in defeating the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq, increasing Iran’s regional influence in the process.

The two most popular stars in Iran today — a country with thriving film, theater and music industries — are not actors or singers but two establishment figures: Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s regional military effort, which is widely seen as a smashing success; and the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the symbol of a reasonable and measured Iran.

In short, it appears that Mr. Trump and the Saudis have helped the government achieve what years of repression could never accomplish: widespread public support for the hard-line view that the United States and Riyadh cannot be trusted and that Iran is now a strong and capable state capable of staring down its enemies…

Iran’s hard-liners are savoring the reversal in their fortunes, after losing influence in the Obama years. “Thanks to Trump’s dishonest, cheating and crazy remarks, he has proved what we have said for a long time: America cannot be trusted,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line political analyst. “Many didn’t believe us, but now they do.”…

Iran’s leaders have begun promoting patriotic causes, recognizing in the changing mood a chance to reinforce their credibility, which had been flagging…

Encouraging nationalism in Tehran

The state’s theocratic ideology has long dictated an artificial version of nationalism, where everything is related to Islam. Love for Iran’s long pre-Islamic [Persian] history has been illegal in some instances, and often deliberately ignored by officials and state television.

But in light of the new national unity, those restraints have been relaxed so long as the presentations encourage patriotism…

There are limits to the new nationalism. Iranians who tried in October to commemorate the ancient King Cyrus with a gathering at his tomb found roads blocked and a high fence around the site. Well-known nationalists were sent text messages warning them not to participate…

Labels: Iran, nationalism, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Comunist Party of China in the US

A group of visiting Chinese scholars in the United States have dissolved a Chinese Communist Party cell they set up at the University of California, Davis, citing fears about violating US laws.

The scholars – six party members and one probationary member – raised eyebrows over the weekend after they were reported to have founded a party branch at the university earlier this month…

“It is because we have later learned that this [establishing a party branch] does not comply with the local laws,” Mu Xingsen, secretary of the party branch, said. “Of course we should respect the local laws when we’re here.”…

The development at UC Davis comes as Beijing has made a more aggressive push for global “soft power” in recent years, ranging from promoting culture to exerting wider political influence abroad…

The branch, which planned to meet every two weeks, had tasked its members with promoting the organisation to their colleagues or neighbours who were coming to the US, it said, and to absorb party members into the organisation…

Labels: China, Communist Party, political culture, soft power

posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Party's over for some

At the end of 2016 China’s Communist Party boasted nearly 90m members, or around one in 12 adult Chinese. (Only the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of India, an outfit with much less stringent entry criteria, can claim deeper ranks.) The party has doubled in size since 1985, according to a recent analysis by Lea Shih of the Mercator Institute in Germany; in the past decade alone its ranks have swelled by nearly a quarter. Yet under Xi Jinping, who became the general secretary (leader) of the party in 2012, officials are closing the floodgates (see chart). Last year’s growth of 0.8% was the lowest in decades.

The party has good reasons to nurture a multimillion-strong membership. Sheer numbers lend it a helpful lustre of legitimacy. Party cells provide eyes and ears in all corners of the country, and inside myriad firms. Under Jiang Zemin, a former general secretary, the party sought to appear more modern and inclusive, not least by encouraging private businesspeople to join.

Mr Xi, by comparison, has spent a large part of his first five years rooting out corruption at the top of the party and renewing ideological fervour at its base. His government worries that a surfeit of half-hearted party members is a strain on resources, a risk to its reputation and an invitation to graft.

The decision to slow the growth in membership is popular among existing members, who are made less special by an influx of novices…

The party’s new quotas appear to squeeze all categories of applicants but are particularly affecting students, who had been the main beneficiaries of the more open entry policies pursued by Mr Xi’s predecessors…

Research suggests that many of these youngsters see membership not as a vocation but as a shortcut to stable employment (many jobs in public service and government-linked companies are reserved for party members), or simply as one more way of proving their superiority over classmates. In 2015 a survey at one middling university found that only one-sixth of those applying to the party were doing so to “serve the people”, and that only a quarter could say that they had a “very strong” desire to be accepted.

These applicants have tended to calculate—mostly correctly—that the demands of party membership are somewhat lower than publicly advertised. High achievers know that they can treat the application process as a formality because recruiters have been ordered to snap up the brightest sparks. Members are supposed to pay up to 2% of their salary in fees and attend regular study sessions, but in practice the obligations vary widely, depending on the enthusiasm and resources of their local branch… One young professional says that party membership has “no costs, only benefits”.

A more disciplined membership would doubtless improve the party’s image among ordinary Chinese. Yet it may not do much to quash corruption, which results less from ideological impurity than from the party’s unchecked grip on power. Moreover, throttling entry also risks impeding efforts to make the party more youthful and diverse. Although about 40% of new recruits are female, women are still only about a quarter of all members and hold only a fraction of senior jobs…

Labels: China, Communist Party, poltical culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Among the costs of Brexit

Critical agencies that oversee Europe’s banks and pharmaceutical sector will move from London to cities on the Continent, political leaders in Brussels decided Monday, potentially ominous harbingers of how Britain’s impending exit from the European Union could diminish the country’s economic clout.

The European Medicines Agency will move to Amsterdam, while the European Banking Authority is set to relocate to Paris…

The departure of the European Medicines Agency, Europe’s equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, is a blow to the prestige of Britain’s pharmaceutical industry, an important pillar of the economy and an example of the country’s bona fides in scientific research and development.

The European Banking Authority has strong symbolic value among cities jostling to become Continental Europe’s financial capital. Its departure serves as a warning of the consequences of Brexit for London, currently the banking capital of Europe…

From Britain’s point of view, the European Medicines Agency is the larger of the two losses in tangible terms, as it has around 890 staff members. It oversees the approval of drugs for use across Europe, has an annual budget of more than $300 million and generates significant additional revenue for London. For example, on most weekdays its visiting experts fill 350 hotel rooms in the city…

The decision to move the European Banking Authority… underlines the risks facing London’s lucrative financial industry from Brexit. The European Central Bank has suggested it might impose extra regulations on eurozone banks operating in London, in effect pressuring them to move to the Continent…

Labels: Brexit, economics, EU, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Honoring a political writer

Google is changing its logo to a doodle in honor of the late Chinua Achebe, who is considered to be one of Africa's greatest storyteller. He would have been 87 on Thursday.

Born in Ogidi to an Igbo family in 1930, Achebe was the son of an evangelical priest. In love with reading and writing, he completed English studies at the University of Ibadan in just four years instead of five, which was the standard.

Achebe was disappointed in the European interpretation of African culture and the ignorance about the continent and its people.

In 1958, he published his first and most widely read novel, Things Fall Apart. The novel portrays the clash of cultures that took place when Christian missionaries and Western colonials encountered traditional African societies in the 19th century.

Things Fall Apart is still one of the most read books in modern African literature. The novel sold over 12 million copies and was translated into more than 50 languages…

When Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe became a strong Biafran supporter…

In 1969, frustrated by corruption and political unrest in Nigeria, Achebe relocated to the United States as a university lecturer.

He returned to Nigeria in 1971 and worked as an English professor…

In 1990 Achebe was in a car crash in Nigeria that left him permanently paralyzed and in a wheelchair. That same year he relocated back to the US and taught at Bard College for 15 years…

Achebe joined Brown University as a professor of African Studies in 2009.

He died in Boston on March 21, 2013, at the age of 82.

Labels: Achebe, cleavages, history, Nigeria, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Fighting corruption positively

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday encouraged ethical role models and pioneers to make new contributions to raising socialist cultural-ethical standards.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while meeting representatives attending the award ceremony on the initiative.

Fifty-eight people were honored as ethical role models, the sixth group to receive the honor since 2007.

President Xi meets ethical award winners

They were recognized for their outstanding experiences in helping other people, acting bravely for a just cause, being honest, devotion to work or showing filial piety and love for their family…

Recognition was also given to another 265 nominees for the awards, which are given out on biennial basis, according to the Central Commission for Guiding Ethic and Cultural Progress…

Wang Huning, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, addressed the ceremony.

He attributed the historic achievements in the initiative during the past five years to the leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core and the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

To promote socialist cultural-ethical development in the new era, studying and implementing the essence of the 19th CPC National Congress is a primary political task, and the most important task is to study and publicize Xi's thought, said Wang, who is also head of the Central Commission for Guiding Ethic and Cultural Progress.

Labels: China, corruption, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Ms Black Rod

Black Rod - a Parliamentary role that can trace its origins back 650 years - is to be a woman for the first time.

Sarah Clarke is currently in charge of organising the Wimbledon tennis championships.

She will be known as The Lady Usher of the Black Rod when she starts her new job early next year.

The Lady Usher of the Black Rod

Black Rod is best known for the State Opening of Parliament, knocking on the door of the House of Commons to summon MPs for the Queen's Speech.

As well as organising ceremonial events, Black Rod, who can earn up to £93,000 a year, manages a team of 30 staff involved in the day-to-day running of the House of Lords…

[Clarke] said the House of Lords was "a place where the smallest detail is as important as the big picture and the depth of heritage and tradition is second to none," adding: "I am truly looking forward to starting work."

Lord Fowler, who as the Speaker of the House of Lords advised the Queen on the appointment, said it was an "historic moment".

He said Black Rod played an important role behind the scenes "in organising addresses to Parliament by visiting heads of state and other state events, as well as ensuring we have appropriate plans in place to keep the important work of the Lords going in a crisis".

He added: "Sarah's fantastic record at Wimbledon and elsewhere shows she is the right person for the task."

Black Rod summons MPs to the Lords to hear the Queen's Speech but has the door to the House of Commons slammed in his face, and has to knock three times to gain entry.

He is the monarch's representative in the House of Lords and the routine is symbolic of the House of Commons' independence from the Crown…

Labels: history, parliament, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Checking in on state capacity

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to "find the culprits" responsible for buildings collapsing in a 7.3-magnitude earthquake on Sunday.

He suggested that government-built buildings had collapsed while privately-built ones remained standing.

As he spoke in the worst-affected city, Sarpol-e Zahab, he gestured to two buildings, one of which had collapsed while the other had not…

A photograph circulating on social media shows an unaffected private building next to a collapsed building that was part of the Mehr project, a scheme created by previous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to build two million housing units for people on low incomes.

Mehr is Farsi for kindness, and under the scheme hundreds of homes were built…

Forty-eight hours after the earthquake, thousands of people complain that still they have no tents, food or water. They complain about the lack of co-ordination between security forces and aid agencies. Although many soldiers showed up, they didn't have enough ambulances or proper machinery to move rubble.

More than 1,900 Kurdish mountain villages have been affected. The villagers say no one from the government has come to their rescue but ordinary Iranians from neighbouring cities and provinces have started sending aid.

Most of the government-sponsored affordable housing complexes for the poor were damaged severely, and many died inside…

President Rouhani brought attention to this, saying those responsible for the projects - initiated under his predecessor's presidency - must be held accountable…

Labels: cleavages, concepts, Iran, state capacity

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Nigerian history: where do cleavages come from?

In 1914 Nigeria’s colonial master, Great Britain, set off a chain of events that would lay the foundation for the secessionist conflict known as the Biafran War. The conflict lasted from 1967 to 1970 and reportedly killed 1 million of the Igbo ethnic group, which had attempted to break away from the country. The Biafran War, though omitted in most history textbooks, is an important chapter in the story of Nigeria’s internal division.

Before the advent of colonialism, Nigeria was not a nation-state as we know it now. It was a collection of independent native groups not states]—more than 300 in total. The largest groups were the Igbos, who populated 60 to 65 percent of the southeast region; the Hausas, who populated 60 percent of the north, and the Yorubas, who made up 70 percent of the west. Each group was separated by distance and had its own distinct and proud political traditions, culture, language, and religion.

Ignoring the value of these distinctions, Britain “unified” the country in 1914, joining the Northern Protectorate (the Hausas) and the South (the Yorubas and Igbos) as one nation: Nigeria.

Of all the three groups, the Hausas were most adaptable to Britain’s administrative strategy, because they had always operated a feudal system that deposited all political power and religious authority in one person: the Sultan…

Conversely, the Igbos and Yorubas had more participatory and democratic systems of government in which citizens had a say in political and economic decisions. They were also, unlike the [mostly Muslim] Hausas, more open to Christian missionaries and Western education. This accelerated industry and ambition in the south—especially among the Igbos—to become the first set of civil servants for the British government…

Education and wealth soon joined the list of differences between the regions. Politically they remained sharply divided…

In 1956, oil was discovered in the southeastern region, and economic potential suddenly added fresh questions to the already brewing flashpoints between the regions. Who would control the oil? Who would benefit most from it?…

Nigeria gained its independence in October 1960; four years later an election was disputed amid accusations of fraud. The foremost party in the north—the Northern Peoples’ Congress—emerged victorious…

On Jan. 15, 1966, a group of majors—mostly Igbos from the east… attempted to overthrow the elected government in a coup, citing electoral fraud… The coup was broadly seen as a move by the Igbos to dominate the country, an accusation intensified in the context of their other perceived advantages…

Seven months later, Col. Ojukwu [the military governor of the eastern region] declared the eastern region, to be called Biafra, an independent nation. On July 6, 1967, the Biafran War commenced.

What followed was three years of armed conflict that shocked the world… Nigeria blockaded all transportation routes into Biafra, starving millions and leaving children malnourished…

The Biafran War is conspicuously absent from the curriculum of the country’s educational system…

Yet a particular group—the Igbos—have not forgotten this history. How could they? They remain politically marginalized… There is no federal infrastructure—such as highways and roads that would aid in the transport of goods and people—in the east as there is in the other regions…

This has fueled the echoing of secessionist calls…

Labels: cleavages, history, Nigeria, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Earthquake in Iran

A strong 7.3-magnitude earthquake has rattled the northern border region between Iran and Iraq, killing scores.

At least 61 people died in western Iran, state media said, with four more reported dead in Iraq. The death toll is likely to rise.

The earthquake sparked panic, with residents fleeing their homes for the streets.

Mosques in the Iraqi capital Baghdad have been saying prayers through loudspeakers.

Iranian news channel IRINN said rescue teams have been despatched to western parts of the country.

"Damage has been reported in at least eight villages," Morteza Salim, the head of Iran's Red Crescent Organisation, told the channel.

"Some other villages have suffered power cuts and their telecommunications system has also been disturbed."

The earthquake was felt in Turkey and Israel too.

It struck in the evening local time south of the Iraqi town of Halabja at a depth of 33.9 km (21 miles), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

Labels: concepts, Iran, state capacity

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:42 PM 0 comments

Corruption

Babachir Lawal

Nigeria’s highest ranking civil servant [Babachir Lawal] has been sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari following allegations that he diverted aid funds intended for the humanitarian crisis in the country’s north-east.

A preliminary report by the Nigerian senate alleged that funds intended to cover the cutting of weeds to prevent flooding in refugee camps and other vulnerable areas had been diverted through companies set up by Lawal…

Femi Adesina, the president’s spokesperson, said Lawal had been replaced following the internal investigation.

“Everything that the president ought to have done as regards the matter has been done already as per our statement,” said Adesina, who did not indicate whether Lawal would face criminal charges or whether the internal report would be released…

Lawal is the latest casualty of a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that critics in Nigeria claim is partisan…

Babachir Lawal declined to comment on the allegations.

Labels: corruption, legitimacy, Nigeria, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Sorting out government, state, rule of law, and politics

King Salman’s close relatives not only rule Saudi Arabia. They are also in business with it.

A major Saudi investment firm founded by one of the king’s sons, and now chaired by another, owns a significant stake in a conglomerate that does extensive government business… A smaller firm founded by another of his sons says it invests in health care, telecommunications, education and other regulated or state-funded fields.

None of that apparent conflict of interest seems to be against the law.

But now their brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is leading a sweeping crackdown against what he has labeled “corruption”… But his immediate family’s complicated and mostly undisclosed business interests are raising questions about what that accusation means in a kingdom where the law has so far included little or no regulation of what other countries have labeled and outlawed as self-dealing.

Saudi laws, issued by royal decree or derived from Islamic law, have so far included little or no regulation of the sprawling royal family and its closest clients. The family has never disclosed the sources of its income, how much its members might take from the country’s oil revenues, how much they earn from state contracts or how they afford their lavish lifestyles…

The kingdom, an absolute monarchy, has also never attempted to create an independent court system to adjudicate claims…

And it was unclear which branch of the court system might hear the cases — the main Shariah court system or the more specialized board of grievance courts that handle administrative complaints.

“The law is not meant to govern the ruling family in any meaningful way, or to govern the relations between the ruling family and the state,” said Nathan J. Brown, a scholar at George Washington University who studies Arab legal systems.

“Ultimately, the king and some high members of the royal family can do what they want and make it legal later,” he said, and the lack of regulation over royal self-dealing “opens the door wide to what would be considered corruption in other systems.”…

Labels: concepts, corruption, government, judiciary, legislation, rule of law, state

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Scandal and politics

A spreadsheet began to circulate last week among journalists covering Britain’s Parliament, matching up the names of three dozen Conservative Party officials with brief descriptions of misconduct…

A dam-burst of accusations has engulfed Westminster over the last 10 days, released by the revelations about the sexual misconduct of the Hollywood power broker Harvey Weinstein.

Complaints about leading political figures have accumulated for years, in part because of the power asymmetry within the halls of Parliament. Young staff members… are told to inform party whips, in-house disciplinarians who were widely believed to stockpile compromising information for their own purposes. Newspapers, for their part, have often sat on reports of abuse rather than risk libel claims…

The scandal has hit Prime Minister Theresa May at a difficult time, as she struggles to control warring factions in her party and break free from a deadlock in negotiations for Britain’s exit from the European Union, known as Brexit…

In all, about a dozen members of Parliament, eight from the Conservative Party and four from Labour, are under investigation. One Tory, Charlie Elphicke, was suspended after “serious allegations” were referred to the police, the party has said. He has denied any wrongdoing…

“Britain’s political class feels pretty fragile right now,” said Tom McTague, the chief Britain correspondent for Politico…

Labels: politics, scandal, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:59 AM 0 comments

Fighting poverty in China

From his home in the mountains of northeast China, Li Zhi has watched from a distance as prosperity has transformed China into a land of high-speed trains, billionaires and skyscrapers.

But the economic boom that made China rich never came to Chashan, a desolate village of 40 people about a six-hour drive from Beijing. Mr. Li, 72, spends his days limping along dusty roads to collect trash in exchange for tips. Stiff and gaunt, he subsists on a diet of rice, steamed bread and hard liquor.

Farmyard in Chashan

Nearly seven decades after the Chinese Communist Party rose to power on a promise of prosperity for all, President Xi Jinping has vowed to fulfill the Communists’ original intent, staking his legacy on an ambitious plan to complete the eradication of rural poverty by 2020.

The plan targets the more than 43 million people who still live on the equivalent of less than 95 cents a day, the poverty line set by the Chinese government…

But Mr. Xi’s lofty vision clashes with a harsh reality across much of rural China. In many villages, young people have gone, leaving older residents to fend for themselves…

“The whole idea of socialism was that all Chinese would have a reasonable living standard,” said Kerry Brown, a China scholar at King’s College London. “The nagging concern is that the Communist Party has created billionaires and a strong middle class, and yet there are still a lot of poor people. That seems to be a massive contradiction.”…

[D]uring a speech marking the beginning of his second five-year term as party leader, Mr. Xi described eradicating poverty by 2020 as one of his chief priorities, vowing to “leave no one behind in the march toward common prosperity.”…

While international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank have praised the government’s work in helping hundreds of millions of Chinese rise out of poverty in recent decades, some experts worry that Mr. Xi’s plan is more about making headlines than bringing lasting change to poor communities.

Some say the government’s focus on 43 million people is too narrow, noting that millions more live just above the official poverty line in conditions that are not much better. Others say that by concentrating on rural areas, Mr. Xi is neglecting the plight of the urban poor, many of whom are rural migrants…

But the hardest work remains ahead. As many as half of the 43 million people who are officially classified as in poverty could be disabled…

Corruption has emerged as a problem, with more than 1,800 people having been investigated last year for embezzling antipoverty funds…

Then there is the fact that Mr. Xi’s campaign is not focused on urban areas. There are more than 200 million rural migrants in China’s cities, where many struggle to receive education, heath care and other benefits because the local government does not consider them residents. Some fall into unemployment or bad health and live in squalid conditions.

“This is a very big hole in the overall picture, which the government rarely addresses,” said Philip G. Alston, a scholar and adviser to the United Nations who issued a report this year on extreme poverty and human rights in China. “The reality is that many of them are living in extreme poverty.”

Labels: China, economics, ideology, politics, poverty

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Cleavages and conflict in the Middle Belt

Violent clashes between farmers and herders have claimed over 2500 lives in four states of Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa within one year, former head of state General Abdulsalami Abubakar has said.

Speaking at a one-day forum on farmers, herders clash organised by the Search for Common Ground [an American NGO] in his farm yesterday in Minna, the former head of state also said over 62, 000 people were displaced, while the country lost $13.7 billion to the clashes…

"With respect to economic impact, the federal government lost $13.7 billion annually as a result of farmer/herder conflicts in Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states," he said, adding, "It has been estimated that about 2,500 persons were killed nationwide in 2016."…

He said there was a breakdown of communal conflict resolution mechanisms and the conflicts had become deadly.

He said the widespread conflicts were wake up calls to all "relevant stakeholders, states and federal government, legislatures, traditional rulers, civil society organizations, security agencies and communities on the need to address the deadly conflicts which he said were expanding gradually to other states in the federation.

"The current situation is threatening the fragile peace of the nation," he asserted…

Labels: cleavages, Nigeria, political culture, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Is Mexico still a nation state?

The forces driving violence in Mexico, which is now on track for its worst year in decades, were first set in motion 20 years ago…

First, Colombia defeated its major drug cartels in the 1990s, driving the center of the drug trade from the country into Mexico.

Then, in 2000, Mexico transitioned to a multiparty democracy.

This meant that the drug trade moved to Mexico just as its politics and institutions were in flux, leaving them unable to address a problem they have often made worse.

Since then, a series of bad breaks, missteps and self-imposed crises have led to an explosion of violence…

In 2006, a new president and a new drug cartel both took extreme actions, the consequences of which are still unfolding.

The implosion of Colombian cartels set off a fierce competition in Mexico for control of the drug trade. A new cartel, La Familia Michoacána, broke off from a larger group, then cemented its power by deploying extreme, theatrical violence…

That same year, Felipe Calderón won the presidency by a hair... the narrow victory for Mr. Calderón left him without a strong mandate.

Mexican army on anti-cartel patrol

Shortly after taking office, the new president declared war on the cartels and sent in the military…

Defenders say he had little alternative. Mexico had been a single-party state and, like most such states, had controlled local officials through patronage and corruption. When that system disappeared, drug cartels filled the vacuum, buying off mayors and judges. Only the military had the firepower and autonomy to take them on.

This began the drug war that has killed tens of thousands of people. But it also created a subtler set of problems now driving more and broader violence.

Mr. Calderón adopted the so-called kingpin strategy, in which troops captured or killed cartel leaders. This generated headlines, pleased the United States and could be accomplished top-down, with little input from corrupt or weak local law enforcement…

In bypassing mayors and governors because Mexico’s pre-democratic practices had left them systemically corrupt and unaccountable, the government further reduced their accountability…

“In the process of that fragmentation, we didn’t do the job of structuring the institutions of the police forces,” said Mr. Valdés, who ran the civil national security intelligence service as this was unfolding. “So we have the worst of the worst.”

Joy Langston, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City, traces many of the country’s woes to a seemingly minor quirk in its political system.

All candidates are selected by the party, and officials serve one term before being shuffled off to another post.

During the one-party era, this was meant to impose accountability, which flowed from party leadership. Oversight institutions, seen as superfluous, never fully developed…

For example, voters have little opportunity to kick out bad leaders or reward good ones, giving officials little incentive to push through difficult reforms. And criminal groups are able to fill the pockets of notoriously underpaid policemen and other civil servants — often providing the wrong kind of incentives.

“At the end of the day, this is all an issue of accountability,” Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, said. “That is the key point of failure in Mexico.”

“Nothing happens if a police officer does not do their work,” he added. “Nothing happens if a mayor fails to transform local law enforcement. Nothing happens if a governor fails to invest in prosecutorial services. Nothing happens.”…

This is leading communities to do, at the grass-roots level, what Mr. Calderón did a decade earlier: bypass distrusted institutions, worsening the underlying problem.

Businesses and middle-class Mexicans are hiring private security in record numbers…

Rural communities, which are more vulnerable, have formed “self-defense” militias to run off gangs and mayors alike…

Mexicans seem keenly aware that their government is growing less responsive just as streets are becoming more dangerous. Polls show growing dissatisfaction, particularly over corruption.

“We have this political class that totally forgets why they are there,” said Armando Torjes, a community activist in Guadalupe, a working-class city in the northeast.

Each election, he said, brings a new official with a new three-year plan. Most, he added, leave office conspicuously wealthier…

“We wanted to improve the institutions, the judges, the jails, the police,” Mr. Valdés, the former head of the intelligence service, said. “We spent years trying to convince the political class.”

But he found those institutions — dominated by parties rather than technocrats and subject to the whims of officials who are required by law to cycle out every term — unresponsive…

“What’s happening in Guadalupe is what’s happening in all of Mexico,” Mr. Torjes said. “There was a political demand for change, but nothing really changed for us.”

Labels: change, corruption, Mexico, state, state capacity

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Populism in the UK

The letter is as British as it gets: polite, polished and understated.

Written by a senior Conservative Party lawmaker, Christopher Heaton-Harris, and sent to British universities, it asked officials to reveal the names of professors involved in teaching students about Europe, including Britain’s decision last year to leave the European Union, a process known as Brexit.

“Furthermore,” the missive read, “if I could be provided with a copy of the syllabus and links to the online lectures which relate to this area I would be much obliged.”

Despite its apparently mild tone, the letter has provoked a national debate on freedom of speech in universities and whether the country is being subjected to political censorship…

While the letter itself is the work of a single politician, the backlash underscores the toxic climate and the searing divisions that dominate Britain more than a year after its referendum on Brexit.

There is deep uncertainty and little consensus over what Britain’s future should look like. Negotiations with the European Union over divorce terms have all but stalled. Even the ruling Conservative Party, which called for the referendum in the first place, is divided over what kind of a break it wants. Resentment against elites remains as acerbic as ever…

Typically, in the Brexit debate, those in the “leave” camp are described as populist and anti-immigrant, while the “remain” camp is often disparaged as elitist — educated, professional, mainstream media, academics and others — and called things like traitors or “enemies of the people.”…

“There is an illiberal liberalism among universities in the sense that ‘we are right’ and ‘we are morally superior,’ ” said David Goodhart, author of “The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics.” There is a “massive liberal bias” against Brexit in universities, he said, and “they have the kind of economic, political and cultural clout of enormously rich organizations through which millions of young people go.”

In the end, wrote Stephen Glover, a Daily Mail columnist and an alumnus of Oxford, “The patronizing, elitist hysteria of universities over being asked about Brexit will harden the views of millions who voted for it.

“It was partly as a revolt against such patronizing attitudes that so many less privileged Britons voted Brexit.”

Labels: Brexit, cleavages, politics, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments