Politics and the presidency in Nigeria
I guess it takes a visit from the UK's PM to get the British press to write about Nigeria.
Political intrigue swirls around Buhari as May arrives in Nigeria
It is Theresa May’s first visit to Nigeria, but Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, has made many trips to the UK over the past two years.
However, while May was greeted by drummers and a red carpet, Buhari has kept as low a profile as possible on his UK visits.
The septuagenarian president spent three months in London in 2017 on sick leave with an unknown illness thought to be cancer. He was not seen for two months and his aides refused to say what was wrong with him. His deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, ran the country in his absence.
Buhari’s health appears to have improved since, though he almost never speaks to the media so it is difficult to judge.
Political intrigue is thickening ahead of next year’s presidential election. Buhari has announced he will run again, but there has been a spate of defections from his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
One of the senators who left is due to announce his intention to run against Buhari… Rabiu Kwankwaso, a former governor of Kano with many votes behind him, will put himself forward for the main opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP).
Many Nigerians are disillusioned by a lack of progress made by Buhari’s administration. Promises to fight corruption and restore security have not been fully met.
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Labels: elections, leadership, Nigeria, politics
Reading statistics
It's never easy to extend one set of statistics to a whole political system, but they often offer glimpses of the system. IF you can "read" the numbers.
Life in Vladimir Putin's Russia explained in 10 charts
Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics as its undisputed leader for almost two decades.
Over successive terms as president and prime minister he has overseen an economic boom, military expansion and the re-establishment of Russia as a major power.
Living standards for most Russians improved, and a renewed sense of stability and national pride emerged. But the price, many say, was the erosion of Russia's fledgling democracy.
How has life changed for ordinary Russians during this time?
1. Fewer people are poor
Levels of poverty may be significantly lower than before, but Russia is still above the average for many of the world's biggest economies.
2. But wage growth has stalled recently
During Mr Putin's first stint as president, wages consistently grew by over 10% annually. Since returning to office in 2012, following a period as prime minister, significant growth has proved more elusive, with a series of crises and economic sanctions…
3. More people have a car, and there are more microwaves than households
Russia's enduring love affair with the Lada continues, with Ladas accounting for 311,588 of the total 1,595,737 new cars sold in 2017…
4. Russians fell in love with Ikea
Russia got its first store in 2000, as part of a MEGA branded shopping centre in Khimki, near Moscow. It went straight into Ikea's top 10 grossing stores worldwide.
By 2015, the country was the flat pack empire's second fastest growing market…
5. And champagne...
There's some dispute over how much Russians drink.
Official figures show a drop, but not the 80% claimed by the health minister…
6. Like everywhere, the internet took off
The Russian internet has its own giants - the top site is social media platform VK (aka VKontakte) with around 90 million users compared to Facebook's 20 million, according to World Bank analysis.
Search engine Yandex occupies the second slot. Being built on Russian language and algorithms gives it a competitive advantage over Google.
7. But circuses are in decline
With more than 60 permanent venues across Russia circuses, like the Moscow State Circus, are a national institution. But they have faced strong competition from, and defections to, western rivals such as Cirque du Soleil…
8. And so are public libraries
Much like everywhere else, the humble library has declined as access to the web has exploded…
9. Russia's population is growing again
One of President Putin's big goals is to turn around the dramatic population decline which began around the time of the ending of communism in 1991…
10. And Putin is spending more than ever on the military
A strong military has always been a key part of Russia's national identity, but the Soviet Union effectively bankrupted itself in an effort to match the United States during the Cold War…
Vladimir Putin gave early intent to reverse this decline and rebuild Russia as a modern military force…
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Labels: change, Russia, statistics
Is China a democracy?
The author of this opinion piece is John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and author of ‘The Life and Death of Democracy’. Are his arguments reasonable? Should we join in creating a new category of democratic governance: phantom democracy?
Phantom democracy: a puzzle at the heart of Chinese politics
As China rapidly moves to the centre of the international order, the question that’s becoming increasingly pertinent is: what kind of a political system is this new global power? In the booming business of China watching, the standard answer is that it is an “authoritarian” regime, with qualifiers such as “soft authoritarianism”, “hard authoritarianism” and “authoritarian capitalism” commonplace. But by all accounts, China is reckoned the antithesis of a “liberal democracy” defined by open competition among freely formed political parties.
Some Chinese observers celebrate the advantages of this “authoritarianism” and welcome the triumph of a “post-democracy” freed from the curse of free and fair elections and “showbiz democracy”. Outsiders… warn of the onset of dictatorial authoritarianism as the party leadership concentrates titles and decision making in the hands of one man, Xi Jinping.
Perhaps they are right about the dangers. But what’s wrong with their prediction… is its failure to understand the striking paradox of Chinese politics today – its vaguely democratic sensibility, strange as it may sound.
From Xi downwards, state officials understand well… that powerful people should fear too much power just as pigs fear growing fat. The anxiety about unrestrained power and the fear of power-sharing, power-chastening democracy explain why China is more a “phantom democracy” (shenjingshi min zhu) – where the fear of democracy forces a style of political management that in many ways mirrors and mimics electoral democracies, where the fear of elections puts leaders in constant campaign mode.
The leadership knows by instinct that full rice bowls, skyscrapers, shopping malls and holidays abroad aren’t enough. And that is why, for some time, it has been trumpeting China as a “people’s democracy” (ren min min zhu) that conducts experiments with a wide range of locally crafted democratic tools designed to win public support…
But what exactly are these locally made, so-called democratic tools? The examples are numerous. Most obvious are the election of village committees by villagers themselves, and (less obvious) the spread of a culture of elections into social media, city administration and experiments of business houses with “consultative democracy” among their staff…
There are public forums, neighbourhood assemblies, democratic hearings and participatory budgeting experiments. Accountability and competition mechanisms are built into public bureaucracy. Chinese democracy makes room for independent public opinion leaders (yu lun ling xiu), figures such as the online satirist Papi Jiang…
These and many other locally made democracy experiments are typically ignored by those who beat the drum against Chinese authoritarianism. That is unfortunate, if only because the conflict-producing and loyalty-inducing effects of these experiments are not to be underestimated, even if they fall far short of the standards of power-sharing democracy…
But the new anxiety-fuelled efforts of the current rulers to experiment with democratic mechanisms are truly without historical precedent. The official embrace of organised market research and opinion polling techniques is an example. Since the early 1980s, the regime has built a giant information gathering apparatus. The contraption has many parts, comprising different types of information gathering, including hundreds of registered polling firms. Some of them are classified as unofficial (private, for-profit, not directly part of state structures).
Others are semi-official (for-profit, operating at some distance from state ministries); still others are controlled directly by the state, as happens at the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Centre, which uses data-harvesting algorithms to send summaries of internet chatter trends in real time to officials, often with advice about which language to use and avoid in handling hot topics. Some polling agencies are joint ventures with foreign firms and agencies such as A.C. Nielsen, Gallup, Tailor Nelsen and Pew Research Centre…
Data gathering and opinion polling machinery function as early warning detectors, protecting governing structures from political resistance and social disorder. Polls are also cleverly used to calibrate proposed policy changes considered potentially controversial, such as measures to increase public transport fares…
The idea of China as a phantom democracy, rather than a fake democracy or a system of authoritarianism, naturally prompts basic questions about the efficacy and durability of these practices, and where they are steering the political order. The short answer is, nobody knows. In politics, as in life, surprise is often the most powerful player in defining what comes next…
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Labels: China, concepts, democracy
Social media manipulation in Europe
The US is not the only place where people try to manipulate public opinion.
Europe Worries as Facebook Fights Manipulation Worldwide
 |
| Iranian Facebook "stamps" |
Facebook revealed this post to be the work of an Iranian-backed campaign aimed at Britain, the first known influence campaign with a target outside the United States.
The picture was just like many of the other Facebook posts criticizing Britain’s decision to leave the European Union: a fake commemorative stamp showing a person preparing to shoot himself in the foot.
But on Tuesday, Facebook revealed that the unremarkable post was anything but. It originated from an Iranian-backed group aimed at Britain, in what the company said was the first known instance of a foreign influence campaign aimed at people outside the United States.
Facebook has spent the past two years trying to block foreign propaganda in the United States. But its disclosure of hundreds of fake accounts and pages, including the one tied to the Iranian-backed group, revealed that the foreign manipulation of elections through Facebook extends across the globe. Tactics used by Russia-linked groups ahead of the 2016 presidential election are being applied in Britain, the Middle East and Latin America.
Europe, where Facebook has more users than in the United States, is particularly worried. The company’s announcement exacerbated concerns that the region will be a regular target of foreign propaganda efforts — including ahead of next year’s European Parliament elections, which will help set the policy direction in Brussels for the next five years.
The discovery immediately added momentum in Europe to pass new laws to clamp down on social media platforms, including rules to remove terrorist content and to restrict how voters are targeted with political messages online…
“Facebook can be used for evil, that’s a fact,” said Claude Moraes, a British member of the European Parliament who leads a panel that has been investigating Facebook’s role in elections. “Facebook can be used to manipulate elections, that’s a fact.”
Russia has long viewed the European Union as an adversary, and influencing the parliamentary campaigns is a way to diminish its clout, said Mr. Moraes, who organized a recent series of hearings that featured testimony from Facebook executives.
“I have no doubt that Facebook will be a critical component” of Russia’s efforts to undermine the European Union, he said…
But unlike those targeted at Americans, the posts made public on Tuesday have a more international bent, including some written in Arabic and Farsi. And in identifying Iran for the first time, Facebook acknowledged that countries other than Russia… are now trying to manipulate its platform to intensify political divisions abroad…
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Labels: EU, politics, soft power, UK
The dangers of elected office
Politics can be a life and death "game" in Mexico.
Mexico violence: Newly elected Congresswoman kidnapped
A newly elected Mexican Congresswoman, Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, has been kidnapped at gunpoint on a highway in central Hidalgo state.
Two men shot at Ms Rodríguez's car, injuring an assistant and the driver and causing the vehicle to flip over.
The gunmen pulled Ms Rodríguez from the car and forced her into their vehicle.
The kidnapping comes little more than a month after the mayor of the town of Naupan was seized and killed in the same area.
Ms Rodríguez was elected on 1 July to represent eastern Veracruz state in the lower house of Congress for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
The 32-year-old was due to take up office on 1 September. The state she will represent is one of the most violent in Mexico…
The motive for his killing is not known but local politicians often become targets for criminal gangs if they are seen to interfere with the gang's business.
The campaign for the 2018 general election saw a spike in violence against political candidates…
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Labels: Mexico, politics, violence
Local government in a unitary system
What does the local government look like in unitary system like the UK's?
As Austerity Helps Bankrupt an English County, Even Conservatives Mutiny
Britain is already in upheaval over Brexit, its looming withdrawal from the European Union, with many experts warning of economic hardship ahead. But Northamptonshire is foreshadowing another potential fiscal crisis: Local governments drained of resources, cutting services to the bone.
 |
| Northamptonshire |
Councils are Britain’s fundamental unit of local government, dealing with an array of basic needs: trash collection, public transport, libraries, town planning, and care for children and other vulnerable people, among other things. They levy a tax on homes and charge fees for some services. They also collect a nationally set tax on commercial real estate, and keep an increasing share of it. But for years they received most of their funding from the central government.
The crisis in Northamptonshire is complicated and partly self-inflicted. But it has roots in the austerity policies and cost cutting that the Conservative-led national government imposed a decade ago in response to the global financial crisis…
Now some Conservatives, especially at the local level, are openly defying what has been a pillar of the party’s ideology.
Funding from London for local governments has fallen 60 percent since 2010, with reductions expected to total $21 billion by 2020…
The crisis is a political embarrassment for Conservatives, who are already divided into warring camps over Brexit. The former leader of the Northamptonshire council, Heather Smith, has resigned from her position, and from the Conservative Party. Investigators sent from London blamed her and other councilors for mishandling local finances, even as she blamed London for impossible mandates and a refusal to consider higher taxes.
Sounding increasingly like their Labour opponents, some Conservative councilors in Northamptonshire are now talking about stopping the outsourcing of public services and demanding tax increases…
This year, the government announced some new money for councils, including about $200 million for adult social services. Even so, some experts say that councils are still staring at a $4 billion funding hole.
In response, according to an annual government survey of council leaders, an overwhelming majority of county councils across England plan to raise council tax, their levy on homes, 5.99 percent this year — the maximum the central government will allow…
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Labels: local government, political culture, politics, UK
The New York Times finally notices
The conflicts and politics in Nigeria finally made the
NYT front page. Does that make it more real? How many Americans will read it?
Deadly Lack of Security Plagues Nigeria as Buhari Seeks Re-election
Nigeria is beleaguered by security threats. In the northeast, Islamist extremists from Boko Haram and its splinter groups are waging increasingly complex attacks on military forces and civilians. In the middle part of the country, more than 1,300 people have been killed in increasingly vicious land disputes between cattle herders and farmers. Farther to the south, violence spikes from time to time in the Biafra region, where separatists are pushing to secede. And in various pockets throughout the country, like a major highway between Kaduna and Abuja, kidnappings of prominent figures and regular Nigerians alike have become common.
The threats are becoming a major issue for President Muhammadu Buhari as he tries for a second term in February. Increasingly, critics, and even allies, complain about his failure to take control of the security situation…
After almost a decade into the Boko Haram insurgency, security resources on the frontlines of the conflict are increasingly stretched. On Sunday, according to local reports, several soldiers brought an airport in Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria, to a halt, shooting into the air and threatening their superiors to protest working conditions. It is the third time this year that security forces have protested their plight stemming from the conflict.
Recently, security has deteriorated significantly. In July alone, a total of more than 400 people were killed by Boko Haram or gangs in Zamfara, or in the herder-farmer conflict, according to the International Crisis Group.
 |
| People prepare to flee a village near Jos |
In recent weeks, Mr. Buhari’s All Progressives Congress party has been hit with a wave of defections. More than 50 lawmakers, state governors and party members have joined the opposition People’s Democratic Party, many of them worried that any alignment with the president could challenge their prospects in next year’s elections.
And bizarre events have left many in the nation concerned about the general state of democracy. Twice in recent weeks, security forces from the Department of State Services, the top spy agency, have appeared in black face masks outside the National Assembly. On Aug. 7, they blocked lawmakers from entering.
Later that day, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo fired the head of the agency. And on Tuesday, he announced that a notorious security agency, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, would be shut down. The decision was widely welcomed; it followed several months of criticism that Mr. Buhari was again deaf to the concerns of Nigerians, after several protests against alleged abuses by the agency…
The violence has also fueled ethnic divisions within the state between the Hausa and Fulani communities. Many gangs are thought to comprise mostly Fulani members, but Fulani have also been victimized. When they show up at displaced persons camps, Hausa victims have tried to push them away.
Lawal Mustapha, a university student in Zamfara, said he hoped the military intervention in Zamfara would lead to lasting changes. “We want them to restore Zamfara to how it was before all these killings, a peaceful state,” he said. “That will only happen if they improve security permanently, not just to send soldiers in who will then leave soon after.”
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Labels: cleavages, Nigeria, political culture, rule of law, violence
A cleavage in the UK
Does age bring wisdom? Or does youth imply knowledge of how the modern world works? Why the opinions don't necessarily translate into policy?
How young and old would vote on Brexit now
Few issues divide opinions between different age groups quite as sharply as Brexit. And it could be that the differences are becoming even more pronounced…
If there were to be a second referendum now, 52% would vote Remain and 48% Leave, an average of polls over the past three months suggests…
So, it is a stable picture, albeit one that reverses the position in 2016.
But the opinions of voters vary dramatically across different groups - none more so than between young and old.
Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave.
In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave.
These younger and older voters may be even more polarised now.
A total of 82% of 18 to 24-year-olds with a voting preference say they would vote Remain in a second referendum… while only 18% of this age group say they would vote Leave.
In contrast, two-thirds of those aged 65 and over would back Leave, while only one-third would favour Remain…
As a result, the UK is divided into the under-45s who, on balance, favour staying in the EU, and the over-45s, who want to leave…
Younger people are much keener on the idea of revisiting the Brexit vote.
Asked whether there should be a referendum on whether to accept the terms of Britain's exit from the EU once they have been agreed, about half of 18 to 24 year-olds say they are in favour of another poll.
Only three in 10 of those aged 65 and over hold that view.
However, only half of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they would be certain to vote in a second EU referendum, according to recent polls by Survation. This compares with 84% of those aged 65 and over.
So if there were another ballot, it is far from certain that young people would necessarily take the opportunity to register their distinctive views.
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Labels: Brexit, cleavage, political culture, public opinion, UK
No respect from the "first world"
Is the evaluation of African cities by "first world" standards legitimate? What does it tell us about the evaluated and the evaluators?
Lagos ranked among 'world's worst cities' to live in
Seven out of the 10 least liveable cities in the world are in Africa, according the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) annual survey.
The league table ranks 140 cities on a range of factors, including political and social stability, crime, education and access to healthcare.
 |
| Carefully selected Lagos street scene |
Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, was ranked 138 - two slots ahead of the bottom of the league table which is held by Syria's war-torn capital, Damascus (140).
It was closely followed by Zimbabwe's Harare (135), Libya's Tripoli (134), Cameroon's Douala (133), Algiers in Algeria (132) and Senegal's Dakar (131).
Johannesburg gained the rank of 86, making it the most livable of African cities.
The annual report says cities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia account for the ten-lowest scoring cities where "violence, whether through crime, civil insurgency, terrorism or war, has played a strong role".
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Labels: ethnocentrism, Nigeria, standard of living
More on philosophical liberalism
So I discovered that
The Economist is doing a whole series on "Liberal Thinkers." The first one, which I missed in the throes of moving, was about John Stuart Mill. In future weeks the essays will be about John Maynard Keynes, "Schumpeter, Popper, and Hayek," "Berlin, Rawls, and Norzick," and "Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche." Look for them.
Against the tyranny of the majority
Above all, though, like all liberals Mill believed in the power of individual thought. His first big work, “A System of Logic”, argues that humanity’s greatest weakness is its tendency to delude itself as to the veracity of unexamined convictions. He renounced shibboleths, orthodoxies and received wisdom: anything that stopped people thinking for themselves.
He wanted them to be exposed to as wide a range of opinions as possible, and for no idea or practice to remain unchallenged. That was the path to both true happiness and progress…
As Richard Reeves’s biography makes clear, Mill thought the coming industrial, democratic age could enable human flourishing in some ways, but hinder it in others…
Yet Mill was even more taken by the philosophical argument for free trade. “It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.” This applied to everyone: “there is no nation which does not need to borrow from others.”…
As democracy spread, he anticipated, ideas would clash. He supported the Reform Act of 1832, which, as well as extending the franchise, did away with “rotten boroughs”, constituencies with tiny electorates, often controlled by a single person. He praised France’s move in 1848 to institute universal male suffrage. Each voter’s views would be represented—and each would have reason to be informed. Participation in collective decision-making was for Mill part of the good life.
For the same reason he was an early proponent of votes for women. “I consider [sex] to be as entirely irrelevant to political rights as difference in height or in the colour of the hair,” he wrote…
EXCERPT
Mill believed that society was advancing. But he also foresaw threats. Capitalism had flaws; democracy had an alarming tendency to undermine itself…
Mill loved the idea of a country founded on liberty, but he feared America had fallen into precisely this trap. Americans displayed “general indifference to those kinds of knowledge and mental culture which cannot be immediately converted into pounds, shillings and pence.”…
Democracy itself threatened the free exchange of ideas in a different way. Mill thought it right that ordinary people were being emancipated. But once free to make their own choices, they were liable to be taken in by prejudice or narrow appeals to self-interest. Give the working classes a vote, and chaos could result…
That in turn might cramp society’s intellectual development, the views of the majority stifling individual creativity and thought. Those who challenged received wisdom—the freethinkers, the cranks, the Mills—might be shunned by “public opinion”. Expertise could be devalued as the “will of the people” reigned supreme.
The upshot was frightening. Paradoxically individual freedom could end up being more restricted under mass democracy than under the despotic sovereigns of yore…
One solution was to give educated voters greater power. In this dispensation, people who could not read or write, or who had received the 19th-century equivalent of welfare benefits, would not get a vote…
Although that approach looks snobbish, or worse, Mill was enlightened for his time. Indeed, he would have approved many of the social changes in the 21st century, including the universal franchise and women’s rights…
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Labels: concepts, economics, history, liberalism
What's a liberal?
In the second of a series about liberals and liberal philosophy (the first was about John Stuart Mill), the editors of
The Economist offer their understanding and prospects of de Tocqueville. It's good (even with some editing) for FRQs or debates.
De Tocqueville and the French exception
The gloomiest of the great liberals worried that democracy might not be compatible with liberty
HE IS the most unusual member of the liberal pantheon. Liberalism has usually been at its most vigorous among the Anglo-American middle classes. By contrast, Alexis de Tocqueville was a proud member of the French aristocracy… Tocqueville believed that liberal optimism needs to be served with a side-order of pessimism. Far from being automatic, progress depends on wise government and sensible policy…
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| Alexis de Tocqueville |
He broadened the liberal tradition by subjecting the bland pieties of the Anglo-American middle class to a certain aristocratic disdain; and he deepened it by pointing to the growing dangers of bureaucratic centralisation. Better than any other liberal, Tocqueville understood the importance of ensuring that the collective business of society is done as much as possible by the people themselves, through voluntary effort, rather than by the government.
Tocqueville’s liberalism was driven by two forces. The first was his fierce commitment to the sanctity of the individual. The purpose of politics was to protect people’s rights (particularly the right to free discussion) and to give them scope to develop their abilities to the full. The second was his unshakable belief that the future lay with “democracy”. By that he meant more than just parliamentary democracy with its principle of elections and wide suffrage. He meant a society based on equality.
Many members of Tocqueville’s class thought that democratisation was both an accident and a mistake—an accident because cleverer management of the old regime could have prevented the revolution in 1789, and a mistake because democracy destroyed everything they held most dear…
The great question at the heart of Tocqueville’s thought is the relationship between liberty and democracy. Tocqueville was certain that it was impossible to have liberty without democracy, but he worried that it was possible to have democracy without liberty. For example, democracy might transfer power from the old aristocracy to an all-powerful central state, thereby reducing individuals to helpless, isolated atoms. Or it might make a mockery of free discussion by manipulating everybody into bowing down before conventional wisdom…
[H]e was the first serious thinker to warn that liberalism could destroy itself. Tocqueville worried that states might use the principle of equality to accumulate power and ride roughshod over local traditions and local communities. Such centralisation might have all sorts of malign consequences. It might reduce the variety of institutions by obliging them to follow a central script. It might reduce individuals to a position of defencelessness before the mighty state, either by forcing them to obey the state’s edicts or making them dependent on the state’s largesse…
[T]he United States represented democracy at its finest… His real wish was to understand how America had combined democracy with liberty so successfully. He was impressed by the New England townships, with their robust local governments, but he was equally taken by the raw egalitarianism of the frontier.
Why did the children of the American revolution achieve what the children of the French revolution could not? The most obvious factor was the dispersal of power. The government in Washington was disciplined by checks and balances. Power was exercised at the lowest possible level—not just the states but also cities, townships and voluntary organisations that flourished in America even as they declined in France. The second factor was what he called “manners”. Like most French liberals, Tocqueville was an Anglophile. He thought that America had inherited many of Britain’s best traditions, such as common law and a ruling class that was committed to running local institutions.
America also had the invaluable advantage of freedom of religion. Tocqueville believed that a liberal society depended ultimately on Christian morality. Alone among the world’s religions, Christianity preached the equality of man and the infinite worth of the individual. But the ancien régime had robbed Christianity of its true spirit by turning it into an adjunct of the state. America’s decision to make religion a matter of free conscience created a vital alliance between the “spirit of religion” and the “spirit of liberty”. America was a society that “goes along by itself”, as Tocqueville put it, not just because it dispersed power but because it produced self-confident, energetic citizens, capable of organising themselves rather than looking to the government to solve their problems.
He was not blind to the faults of American democracy. He puzzled over the fact that the world’s most liberal society practised slavery, though, like most liberals, he comforted himself with the thought that it was sure to wither. He worried about the cult of the common man. Americans were so appalled by the idea that one person’s opinion might be better than another’s that they embraced dolts and persecuted gifted heretics…
It is worth adding that the threat to liberty today does not stem just from big government. It also comes from big companies, particularly tech firms that trade in information, and from the nexus between the two. Gargantuan tech companies enjoy market shares unknown since the Gilded Age. They are intertwined with the government through lobbying and the revolving door that has government officials working for them when they leave office…
China is an example not of democracy allied to liberty but of centralisation allied to authoritarianism. Its state and its pliant tech firms can control the flow of information to an extent never dreamed of. Increasingly, China embodies everything that Tocqueville warned against: power centralised in the hands of the state; citizens reduced to atoms; a collective willingness to sacrifice liberty for a comfortable life…
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Labels: concepts, history, liberalism
Cozy retreat for the Chinese elite
Most of this is historical trivia, but it also offers clues about how the elite in China rule.
Where China’s top leaders go in summer and in secret: a brief history of Beidaihe
When state radio reported on Wednesday that Premier Li Keqiang met United Nations General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa in Beidaihe, it was the clearest confirmation that the annual summer gathering of China’s most influential politicians was taking place at the northern Chinese seaside resort.
It was Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the key founders of the People’s Republic in 1949, who initiated senior party and government officials in Beijing to work at the famed seaside town of Beidaihe as early as 1953.
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| Mao at Beidaihe |
Instead of the capital, all crucial meetings in the summer were held in Beidaihe from then on. In August 1958, party elites headed by Mao made two key decisions during an expanded meeting of the party’s Politburo held in the resort…
The closed-door meetings were suspended for nearly two decades in the aftermath of the outbreak of the notorious Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping came to power after Mao’s death and decided to resume the annual gathering in 1984.
Party elders and most members of the party’s decision-making Politburo gathered in Beidaihe to come up with the party’s new leadership a few months ahead of its five-yearly national congress, which brought major power reshuffles in late 1987.
Deng was effectively pulling the strings behind the scenes in power plays within the party even when he held no key position except the head of the Central Military Commission with the People’s Liberation Army…
Former President Jiang Zemin followed the rule set by the party’s revolutionary veterans after Deng’s death in 1997.
That summer, all key reshuffles of the next Politburo, and Jiang’s five-yearly work report draft, to be presented at the Communist Party national congress late in the year, were deliberated among party elders and political heavyweights at Beidaihe before they gave their blessing…
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| Politburo HQ in Beidaihe |
By the time Xi Jinping took the party’s helm in late 2012 – even though he had two living predecessors who might have watched over his shoulder, during a general decline of party elders’ influence and Xi’s consolidation of power – the political significance of the Beidaihe gathering, now described as the leadership’s retreat, has ebbed.
The source close to a party elder said: “Unlike the practice in 1980s and 1990s, in which there was at least one issue or two scheduled to be discussed in Beidaihe, nobody knows for the time being whether there is any agenda or meeting in the resort, although party elites are supposed to be all there to spend their summer holidays.”
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Labels: China, history, leadership, political culture, rule of law
Fewer people expect the Mexican inquisition
Americans seem to assume that the adversarial system of enforcing laws (used in the USA, Canada, and the UK) is "normal." It's not, but more countries are trying it out. Mexico is slowly making changes.
Judging Latin America’s judges
ONE morning this year, in a windowless modern courtroom, Jorge Alberto Rodríguez faced justice. He was accused of driving a stolen car with changed number plates. The judge began by explaining his rights to him. His lawyer then tried to trip up the policemen whom the prosecution had produced as witnesses. To no avail: after an adjournment to allow a missing defence witness to appear via video link, the judge found Mr Rodríguez guilty. That seemed to square with the evidence. Having been on bail for the nine months since his arrest, he was given a suspended jail sentence of five years and fined 15,000 pesos ($800).
Such a trial could have taken place in a British magistrate’s court. In fact, it was in Mexico City. The case was conducted under a radical judicial reform. This replaces an inquisitorial model, long the norm in Latin America, under which judges investigated and evidence was all in writing… The new system has taken more than a decade to roll out and is more expensive. But it has several advantages. Fewer defendants are remanded to overcrowded jails, cases are heard more quickly and the prosecution must publicly prove its case. Under the old system, judges relied on confessions (often extracted by torture).
Yet the reform is much criticised. Its introduction has coincided with a big rise in violence in Mexico. Although this was caused mainly by the fragmentation of criminal gangs and their move into new lines of business, many politicians blame the reform instead. Judges and prosecutors are insufficiently trained in the new ways and many are going back to “old practices”…
Mexico’s experience is not unique. Since the 1990s the main focus of judicial reform in Latin America has been on criminal procedures. In all, 15 countries have made the switch to the adversarial system. This is an improvement, but not a panacea…
Many Latin American countries have reformed their economies, electoral systems and welfare states. But establishing the rule of law is much harder. Courts depend on many other actors, especially police and prosecutors, as well as politicians and citizens. Judicial reform nearly always involves trade-offs, especially between independence and accountability. And better procedures do not in themselves create better judges or justice…
Judicial reform in Chile, as well as Mexico, has produced some improvements... But public vigilance has to be sustained if a reformed judicial system is not to lapse into bad ways…
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Labels: judicial system, Mexico, rule of law
Control social media
The great Chinese firewall is well known. Who's in charge of maintaining it? Why a protege of Xi Jinping.
Is
guanxi any different from the links between members of political elites elsewhere?
Beijing names new internet watchdog as China keeps door closed to global tech giants
China has officially named Zhuang Rongwen as the new chief of the agency supervising China’s internet.
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| Zhuang Rongwen |
The announcement that Zhuang would replace Xu Lin as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China confirms a report by the South China Morning Post last week, which also said that President Xi Jinping was seeking to shake up the country’s propaganda and censorship wings.
Xu, a former aide to Xi in Shanghai, is expected to become the party’s new international propaganda chief, sources told the Post last week…
Zhuang, in his new role as China’s cyberspace tsar, will be a key figure for global technology giants trying to get a foothold in the market of about 800 million online users…
China still bans a long list of social media platforms and websites from accessing the China market, including Twitter, Google, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook…
Zhuang, 57, who earlier worked under Xi in the province of Fujian, is rising quickly in the official hierarchy…
Zhuang’s career path had little to do with ideology control before his promotion to the cyberspace administration in 2015 as a deputy director…
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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,
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Labels: censorship, China, guanxi
Absence of blog posts
If you've noticed the absence of posts here during the past week, think about what has dominated the news. Events relating to comparative politics in Mexico, Nigeria, and China just haven't made the editorial cut recently. While Russia and the UK have been in the news, it hasn't been for things that are relevant to comparative politics (in major ways).
Well, and I've been on an informal vacation and lost in the throes of moving from one house to another.
Things will pick up. And meanwhile, search the index.
Unrest in Iranian cities
Things are not going well at the grassroots in Iran. BTW, when there are protests in South Tehran, the less affluent area of the city, unrest has spread beyond the wealthy, educated people.
Iran protests resume for 6th day amid violent clashes with security forces
Protests renewed in Tehran and several Iranian cities on Sunday evening, marking the sixth consecutive day of protests against the regime’s policies while some violent clashes erupted between protestors and security forces in some cities.
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| Scene in Tehran, August 5. |
According to videos published by activists, there were protests in the neighborhood of Ekbatan, northwest of Tehran, in other areas like Daneshjoo Park in the center of Tehran, and in the streets of Karagar and Amir Abad in South Tehran.
Protestors in Enghelab Street, in the center of Tehran, were chanting “Death to the Dictator.” A video showed security forces attack protestors while some young men burnt trash bins to obstruct the security forces’ advance.
Violent clashes also erupted between protestors and riot police in the park of Tehran’s theatre, and according to some reports, there were violent clashes between protestors and riot police in Qom and Karaj.
Activists said the government shut down cellular services and cut off the internet in both cities, Qom and Karaj, to prevent citizens from publishing photos of protests and clashes.
Meanwhile, in Kazerun, in the Fars Province, hundreds of people protested in the center of city and chanted anti-regime slogans.
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Labels: economics, Iran, protests
