Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, July 14, 2017

Threatened journalists and information

Information and a free press are usually seen as vital to the existence of a free state. What happens if the press is discredited or if journalists are killed off? Is controlling the press necessary for an authoritarian system?

Is this a case of limited state capacity? Or is the state actively suppressing journalism? Maybe the title question should be "Does Mexico want to save its journalists?"

Can Mexico save its journalists?
Journalists are being murdered in Mexico and this is nothing new. This is one of the most dangerous countries for reporters, rights groups say, and more die here than in any other nation at peace.

But even for a place so used to drugs-related violence and organised crime, the recent bloodshed has been shocking.

Seven journalists have been killed in the country so far this year, most shot by gunmen in broad daylight. Yet virtually all cases of attacks on the press end up unsolved and, in many, corrupt officials are suspected of partnering with criminals…

Since 2000, at least 106 journalists have been killed across Mexico, according to rights group Article 19. Exact numbers are hard to come by as investigations often get nowhere and different studies apply different criteria in counting the dead…

In 2010, pressure from campaigners led to the creation of a special office of the federal prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression, known as the Feadle, which investigates attacks on journalists.

But the authorities have often ruled that the victims themselves are not journalists or that the incidents have no connection to their work, according to critics.

Like last month. When the charred remains of Salvador Adame, the head of a TV station in the western state of Michoacán, were found, state prosecutors said that the case had to do with personal disputes, possibly a love affair, angering relatives and campaigners…

[Journalist Ismael Bolorquez said,] "The [Feadle] doesn't have resources or teams to investigate. Our system of protection of journalists doesn't work... The government's policies to protect us are a failure."

The result is that journalism itself has become a victim. "Investigative journalism in many places in Mexico is just impossible to be exercised," said Carlos Luria, CPJ's senior programme co-ordinator for the Americas.

"There are no guarantees, no condition, no protection, there is an absence of the state. This is decimating journalism in Mexico."…

Ana Cristina Ruelas, Article 19's director for Mexico and Central America [asserted that]… Corruption is rife in Mexico, and rogue police and politicians were the suspects in more than half of the incidents against the media in the last six years… And most cases were never looked into.

"The state doesn't investigate itself. There is a direct link between the level of impunity and corruption," Ms Ruelas said. "This impunity allows the aggressors to continue attacking the press in broad daylight."…

Distrust grew even further last month, after the New York Times accused the Mexican government of spying on several top journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders by hacking their phones with spyware meant to be used against criminals and terrorists - a claim the Mexican presidency denied.
No silence

"It's very hard to connect the words of the presidency with actions because until now we haven't found a clear reflection of these words in actions that provide results," said Ms Ruelas, from Article 19.

Reporters, however, say the latest killings prove that their work is more urgent than ever: "No to silence".
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Friday, January 20, 2017

Optimal number of parties

What is the optimal number of parties for representative government? Should there be minimum thresholds? What should they be? Is party competition necessary for representative government?

Too many parties can spoil politics
TO ENTER parliament, a Dutch political party need only win enough votes for one seat. With no minimum threshold, there are lots of parties. Eleven succeeded in 2012, including two liberal parties, three Christian ones and one that cares about animal rights. In the next election, this March, polls suggest the total could rise to 13, with the addition of a pro-immigrant party and an anti-immigrant one…

As with the Netherlands, so with Europe. The ideologies that held together the big political groupings of the 20th century are fraying, and the internet has lowered the barriers to forming new groups. So parties are multiplying. Some see this as cause for celebration. A longer menu means that citizens can vote for parties that more closely match their beliefs. This is good in itself and also increases political engagement. Countries with proportional-representation systems, which tend to have more parties, have higher voter turnout than first-past-the-post countries like America and Britain.

Yet excessive fragmentation has drawbacks. As parties subdivide, countries become harder to govern. A coalition of small parties is not obviously more representative than one big-tent party. Big parties are also coalitions of interests and ideologies, but they are usually more disciplined than looser groups, and so more likely to get things done.

Having too many parties is often unwieldy. Coalitions become harder to form and often include strange bedfellows… [I]n Denmark the centre-right government needs the support of the Liberal Alliance, which wants to cut social spending, and the Danish People’s Party, which wants to raise it… Spain’s recent shift from two major parties to four produced a stand-off that left it without a government for most of last year. Its citizens had more choices when they voted, but then spent ten months under the rule of unelected caretakers—not a clear gain in democracy…

Far from increasing real choice, multiplying parties can allow politicians to hide the fact that what matters is patronage…

Sometimes, new policies need new parties to champion them. For all their flaws, the left-wing Podemos party in Spain and the populist, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats represent voters whose voices were not being heard. But some politicians form new parties for selfish reasons. Candidates… hunger for the subsidies and free broadcasting time that many countries grant to each party…

Parties are middlemen between government and voters, organising a multiplicity of policies into a simpler menu of options. That menu can be too short (as in China). But it can also be so long and confusing that voters can’t tell what they are ordering—and probably won’t get it.
See also: Europeans are splitting their votes among ever more parties
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posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments