Decentralization or secession?
Escaping politics and drug gangs by building "walls."
Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Break Away
The road to this agricultural town winds through the slums and cartel-controlled territory of Michoacán, ground zero for Mexico’s drug war, before arriving at a sight so strange it can seem like a mirage…
Local orchard owners, who export over $1 million in avocados per day, mostly to the United States, underwrite what has effectively become an independent city-state. Self-policing and self-governing, it is a sanctuary from drug cartels as well as from the Mexican state.
But beneath the calm is a town under tightfisted control, enforced by militias accountable only to their paymasters. Drug addiction and suicide are soaring, locals say, as the social contract strains…
Tancítaro represents a quiet but telling trend in Mexico, where a handful of towns and cities are effectively seceding, partly or in whole. These are acts of desperation, revealing the degree to which Mexico’s police and politicians are seen as part of the threat…
Each is a haven of relative safety amid violence, suggesting that their diagnosis of the problem was correct. But their gains are fragile and have come at significant cost.
They are exceptions that prove the rule: Mexico’s crisis manifests as violence, but it is rooted in the corruption and weakness of the state...
Tancítaro: Nearly four years in, long after other militia-run towns in Michoacán collapsed into violence, the streets remain safe and tidy. But in sweeping away the institutions that enabled crime to flourish, Tancítaro created a system that in many ways resembles cartel control…
Cinthia Garcia Nieves, a young community organizer… set up citizens’ councils as a way for local families to get involved. But militia rule has accustomed many to the idea that power belongs to whomever has the guns…
Officially, Tancítaro is run by a mayor so popular that he was nominated by the unanimous consent of every major political party and won in a landslide. Unofficially, the mayor reports to the farm owners, who predetermined his election by ensuring he was the only viable candidate…
The citizens’ councils, designed as visions of democratic utopianism, hold little power. Social services have faltered.
Though the new order is popular, it offers few avenues for appeal or dissent…
Monterrey: Rather than ejecting institutions, Monterrey’s business elite quietly took them over — all with the blessing of their friends and golf partners in public office.
But their once-remarkable progress is now collapsing…
Monterrey’s experience offered still more evidence that in Mexico, violence is only a symptom; the real disease is in government…
Mexico’s weak institutions, Jorge Tello, a security consultant, [said], make any local fix subject to the whims of political leaders. Countries like the United States, he said, “have this structure that we don’t have. That’s what’s so dangerous.”
Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a million-resident sprawl outside Mexico City, was once known for poverty, gang violence and police corruption so widespread that officers sometimes mugged citizens.
Today, though still rough, it is far safer. Its police officers are considered “a really promising model,” John Bailey, a Georgetown University professor said, in a part of the country where most are seen as threats.
Neza inverted Monterrey’s model: Rather than establishing an independent police force and co-opting the political system, Neza established an independent political system and co-opted the police.
Mexico’s establishment parties are more than parties. They are the state. Loyalists, not civil servants, run institutions. Officials have little freedom to stretch and little incentive to investigate corruption that might implicate fellow party members. Most are shuffled between offices every few years, cutting any successes short.
Neza, run by a third party, the left-wing P.R.D., exists outside of this system. Its leaders are free to gut local institutions and cut out the state authorities…
But Neza’s gains could evaporate, Mr. Amador said, if crime in neighboring areas continued to rise or if the mayor’s office changed party…
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Labels: corruption, devolution, Mexico, political parties, reform
PLA reform
In China, the PLA has served many roles: employment of last resort during recessions, workforce during natural disasters, entrepreneurs, enrichment opportunity for corrupt officers, and police to prevent protests. Oh, yes, and a defensive military force.
After the Cultural Revolution, the government began offering the generals modern weaponry, a role on China's space program, and opportunities for respect as a modern military in exchange for accepting civilian control.
That transition continues.
China congress: Military facelift a sign of bigger changes
Of the many noteworthy developments that have characterised Chinese President Xi Jinping's first five-year term, none stands out as much as military reform, and this reveals a great deal about the coming political trajectory in China, writes political analyst Cheng Li.
Xi Jinping did not shy from the bold and broad undertaking of military reform and it has resulted in profound changes to the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Even beyond the monumental purges of top generals, whose shameless corruption extended to practices like selling military titles, Mr Xi has worked with single-minded purpose to organise and modernise China's military…
He… transformed China's military operations from a Russian-style, army-centric system toward what analysts call a "Western-style joint command"; and swiftly promoted "young guards" to top positions in the officer corps…
Judging from the list of military and police delegates to the forthcoming congress where China's future leaders are to be unveiled, the largest turnover of senior officers in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is set to occur.
An extraordinary 90% of the 300 military delegates will be first-time attendees.
At most, only 17% (seven of 41) of the military representatives with full membership on the 18th Central Committee will retain their seats…
 |
| Gen Li Zuocheng |
The new top military leadership will most likely consist of Mr Xi's long-time friends Gen Zhang Youxia, Gen Li Zuocheng, and Adm Miao Hua, along with the newly promoted commanders of the PLA army, navy, air force, and strategic support force.
In addition to their perceived loyalty to Xi Jinping, these generals are known for their extended military service, combat experience, and professional knowledge of modern warfare…
With firm control over the military, Mr Xi has set the stage for a massive turnover in the party leadership at the 19th Party Congress…
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Resistance to reform
Sometimes changes that leaders assume to be popular hit reefs of unexpected resistance.
Reform’s big taboo
Some 250m people have moved from the countryside to cities, the greatest migration in history. Millions live in dormitories or doss down where they can. Most have no formal contracts with their employers, and are denied access to urban public services such as subsidised education and health care. As the country’s growth slows, the Communist Party hopes migrants will play an even bigger role in boosting the economy, not just by toiling in factories, but by joining the middle class and spending their new wealth. So it is looking for ways to improve their lot.
For several years, Chongqing’s efforts to achieve this have gone further than anywhere else in the country… As elsewhere in China, the urban population has been growing fast thanks to a rapid influx of migrants. To manage this better, Chongqing persuaded the central government nine years ago to let it test out new ways of handling the newcomers and of making good use of the land they leave behind…
 |
| Chongqing |
[T]he municipality’s government touted what admirers called the “Chongqing model”. This involved three main initiatives. First, the government said it would build 40m square metres of housing in the decade to 2020 for rent to the urban poor…
Next, the government said it would give full urban status to 10m migrants, meaning they would get access to subsidised urban health care and education (typically, these services are available only in the place of one’s household registration, or hukou—usually the place of birth of one’s mother or father). Third, the government announced changes to the urban-planning system to allow land left behind by migrants to be traded for use in building new houses and offices. That was a breakthrough in a country that still officially disapproves of selling farmers’ property…
But the municipality has not fulfilled its promises. Only about 15m square metres of public housing have been built…
Another problem has been that many migrants still feel a strong sense of attachment to their rural land, even after they move into the cities. This is because of the entitlement they enjoy by law, as people from the countryside, to farm a family plot and to use a piece of land for their housing. Most farmers jealously guard that right: they see it as a form of insurance should they fail to make ends meet in the cities. Many farmers are reluctant to apply for urban hukou because they fear it would mean having to give up these rights.
Through no fault of Chongqing’s, distribution of urban hukou has thus fallen far short of the target of 10m…
Recently, there has been a bit of belated encouragement from on high. In January… President Xi… paid a visit to Chongqing… It was the first by a Chinese president since the municipality’s reforms began, and was widely interpreted as a sign of his endorsement of Chongqing’s effort... [Xi did not] express full-throated support for the reforms. Mr Xi likely fears that promoting them may impose crippling financial burdens on local governments and unleash yet more uncontrollable social forces. He may be a leader of enormous power, but he is afraid to use it to make the changes China most needs.
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The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
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Labels: China, economics, leadership, political culture, reform
Iran recovery from sanctions
The power struggle in Iran has major implications for what happens as sanctions are removed. Here's an optimistic report from
The Economist.
Heavy lifting required: The removal of sanctions will be good for Iran, but also disruptive
ADHERING so far to the terms of its nuclear deal, Iran is now busy taking most of its uranium centrifuges out of operation. That is… the only way to escape economic sanctions. Optimists hope that if Iran can trade more freely with the outside world, living standards will rise; investors hope for fat profits…
No one doubts that Iran has potential. With almost 80m people, it is the world’s 17th-most-populous market; and many Iranians lack even basic goods. The country has competent farmers, carmakers, drug firms and a fairly sophisticated service sector, making it less dependent on oil… than other big producers such as Iraq and the Gulf states…
But by itself, sanctions relief will not transform the ailing economy. There are deep underlying problems, says Mohammad Khoshchehreh, a professor at Tehran University… “Sanctions are just part of it; there is a history of mismanagement, too,” he says.
Today Iran’s most pressing problems include double-digit inflation, slow growth, low productivity and a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 10.6%… Hassan Rohani, the president, inherited these problems from his predecessor, Mr Ahmadinejad, and has improved things somewhat…
Growth rebounded to 4.3% in 2014, a big improvement on the 6.6% contraction in 2012… Inflation has duly fallen from around 40% to under 20%…
Are the right reforms likely to happen? Few doubt that reformists within the regime would like to open up. The government is working on new contracts for oil investors which insiders say look appealing. But other areas, such as the hotel business, are murkier. “In Iran economics is inseparable from politics,” says Saeed Laylaz, an economist and reformist former MP. Some hardliners are scared that competition will undermine their own rent-seeking businesses. Currently they make easy fortunes from construction (power helps when you want a building permit) and smuggling goods that are subject to sanctions…
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, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
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Labels: economics, Iran, politics, reform
Buhari's to-do list
Matthew Page, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, offered this to-do list for Nigeria's President Buhari in the "Monkey Cage" newsletter in the
Washington Post.
5 things that the president of Nigeria can do to get his country back on track
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was inaugurated May 29, is the antithesis of the stereotypical Nigerian politician: incorruptible, soft-spoken, self-effacing and deliberate…
[T]he challenges facing Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy continue to grow… Nigerians nevertheless expect their new president’s reform agenda to show tangible results, and soon. Given these imperatives, here are five things Buhari can do to get the ball rolling:
- Carefully clean house. Buhari’s reform agenda probably faces its greatest threat from corrupt, old-school politicians within his own All Progressives Congress (APC) party...
- Pare down the parastatals. Buhari has an opportunity to realize immediate savings by eliminating or merging some of Nigeria’s more than 500 federal parastatals and boards… These institutions, which range from the lucrative to the modest to the moribund, have long been a cornerstone of corruption in Nigeria...
- Tame the white elephants. Buhari’s apparent determination to revive two “white elephant” economic sectors — domestic oil refineries and steel mills — worry industry experts. Nigeria is replete with these kinds of investment projects where state-owned enterprises are funded for long periods even if they incur huge losses…
- Rein in subnational debt. As Buhari tries to put Nigeria’s public finances back in order, the balance sheets of the country’s 36 states are sinking deeper into the red…
- Legislate for the long run. Nigeria will need to feel the “Buhari Effect” (the sense, evident in a recent New York Times article, that there is a new sheriff in town) long after the president’s tenure is over. The best way for him to protect his legacy is to partner with the National Assembly to enact legislation enshrining key reforms. With few other politicians like him on the horizon, Buhari should put his legacy in writing…
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Labels: leadership, Nigeria, politics, reform
Will victory equal reform?
Promises during the campaign won votes. Will voters wait patiently for results in Nigeria?
Please don’t expect miracles: The president-elect faces enormous tasks, starting with halting corruption
MUHAMMADU BUHARI… promised frustrated Nigerians that he would bring change once he is inaugurated on May 29th. Many will take him at his word. “Most people are expecting a new Nigeria,” says Ahmad Lamido, a civil servant in the northern city of Kano…
Mr Buhari will start by trying to deal with mismanagement in the army. Embezzlement by generals is one reason why, despite a huge budget, the army lacks the equipment to defeat the jihadists of Boko Haram…
Mr Buhari’s new lot will look into the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Investigation into opaque operating contracts is the starting place, reckons Thomas Hansen of Control Risks, a London-based consultancy. The state-owned oil giant signed operating contracts worth billions of dollars without bidding during Mr Jonathan’s presidency. Such “strategic partnership agreements” have been a way to steal cash from federal coffers, says Lamido Sanusi, a former central-bank governor sacked by Mr Jonathan for alleging that $20 billion in oil revenue had vanished…
Mr Buhari must keep the current fragile peace in the oil-producing Niger delta. He is expected to axe an expensive deal which, since 2009, has paid former militants to stop them blowing up oil installations and kidnapping workers… The new government may come up with another deal instead…
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Labels: corruption, leadership, Nigeria, politics, reform
More new states?
In March 2014, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan created a National Conference. This was, in part, a reaction to claims that the present-day constitution of Nigeria was not legitimate. The main basis for this claim was that the constitution was promulgated by a military government and never approved by the people. Many people, especially in the north, opposed the creation of a new constitution, fearing that they would be disadvantaged by it.
The Conference was not intended to write a constitution, but to make proposals for improving the governance of the country. Committee reports from the Conference are beginning to revealed. Not everyone is happy. Some northern delegates have walked out of the conference. Some southerners have protested proposals for a new state in the south.
Should we expect opposition like that to changes in the status quo? Can you come up with good reasons for the proposed changes? How about good reasons to oppose the proposals?
Delegates Approve Power Rotation, Reject Single Six-Year Term for President
Delegates to the National Conference yesterday… recommended that there shall be rotational presidency among the six geo-political zones of the federation.
They also recommended that upon the death of the president, the vice-president shall only act for 90 days, following which an election would be held to chose the substantive president. The delegates also recommended the creation of additional 18 states and that there shall be a parity of states within the zones…
The conference also… rejected the adoption of a parliamentary system of government and a bicameral legislature. It also rejected adoption of the French system of government which has both prime minister and president…
National Conference in Disarray As North Walks Out of Consensus Building Group
A major crack that may truncate the ongoing national conference has emerged, with delegates from the Northern part of the country alleging betrayal, rejecting some decisions reached at plenary and walking out of the consensus-building arrangement instituted by leaders of geo-political zones…
The National Consensus Building Group, which had three members each from each of the six geopolitical zones, was formed to reduce bickering and rally members across regions to support popular recommendations of the Conference…
But an influential northern delegate, Auwalu Yadudu… accused other members of sidelining the north in drawing up the consensus…
Mr. Yadudu wrote… "It is a well-known fact that the document circulated and the 'agreements,' 'conclusions,' reached have been drawn up and vigorously canvassed by some zones in concert to the exclusion of delegations from our states and other vital stakeholders… "
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Labels: Nigeria, politics, reform, regime
Is reform the same as progress?
Sometimes reform doesn't look so good when you look at the details. Is this reform or a way to enthrone the PRI?
Critics check fine print in plan to break up Mexican monopolies
The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto says a proposed new telecommunications law would finally break up Mexico's powerful and much-criticized TV and telephone monopolies.
The proposal and other reforms have generated considerable praise abroad for Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country for seven decades…
But a growing number of domestic critics are reading the fine print of the telecommunications plan and finding many things to worry about.
For one, the increasingly powerful Interior Ministry would be charged with monitoring the content of television and radio broadcasts to be sure they conform to fairness and other regulations. Some Mexicans fear that would open the door to the kind of censorship that existed when the PRI ruled before, unfettered by little or weak opposition.
For years, most of Mexican television has been dominated by a single company, Televisa, the largest broadcaster in the Spanish-speaking world. (Most of the rest is controlled by another single company, TV Azteca.) That means that television in Mexico is heavy on low-brow soap operas and flashy celebrities, and there is a certain conformity to most TV news broadcasts, written and produced by a handful of people.
Meanwhile, telephone service, both land-line and cellular, is dominated by companies owned by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, who has grown his businesses throughout Latin America. That means Mexicans pay some of the world's highest prices for some of the spottiest phone service.
Breaking up these near-monopolies is a welcome goal for many Mexicans. But it is unclear whether Peña Nieto's proposal will accomplish that, or, if so, at what other costs…
The problem with this reform — as with many — is that many Mexicans don't trust the PRI to execute it. It was the PRI's supposed attempts at freeing up television and phone service in the 1990s that led to today's monopolies because of the unfair advantages given powerful supporters.
But reaction has been mixed.
Javier Lozano, another PAN senator and head of the telecommunications committee in Congress, said he believed that the proposed law would promote much-needed competition and that it should come up for vote by the end of the month.
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Labels: Mexico, politics, reform
Is there a political solution?
Broadly speaking any solution will have to be political. But, can the politicians in Iran come up with a solution that is not revolutionary? Can the politically involved religious leaders come up with a solution that maintains their power?
In Iran, Hopes Fade for Surge in the Economy
Suffering in an economy dragged down by years of mismanagement and the effects of international sanctions, Iran’s increasingly impoverished middle class voted in huge numbers last summer for President Hassan Rouhani, who promised to reignite growth by restoring ties with the rest of the world.
 |
| Rouhani |
But more than six months after Mr. Rouhani took office, hopes of a quick economic recovery are fading…
Although Mr. Rouhani has managed to stabilize the national currency, halt inflation and forge a temporary nuclear deal that provides some relief from sanctions, delivering on his promises of economic growth has proved far more difficult…. Now, with a lack of petrodollars and declining tax revenues, Mr. Rouhani has little option but to take steps that in the short-run will only increase the pain for the voters who put him into office.
With the start of the Iranian new year, on Friday, the government will begin phasing out subsidies on energy, the start of a process that will send the prices of gasoline and electricity, and other utilities, soaring by nearly 90 percent, economists say.
The shortage of funds is also forcing the government to wind down a system of $12 monthly payments to nearly 60 million Iranians…
Iran’s stock market, which rode high on optimism injected by the new government and the temporary nuclear deal, has been in decline, losing 14 percent since its peak in December. The national currency, the rial, after months of stability, has dropped about 4 percent against the dollar…
[T]he markets are losing faith in the government’s ability to get the economy going. “We are once again witnessing investors taking their money out of stocks and instead speculating on gold and foreign currency,” one stock market expert, Hamid Mirmouni, told the Fararu website recently. “The government continues to waste time and money, investors are losing hope.”…
Even those close to the Rouhani administration are saying they are hoping for a “miracle” to avoid the political damage from the cuts…
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoed such worries in a speech Tuesday to dozens of the country’s most influential leaders, politicians, clerics and military commanders. He urged the government to pay attention to the poor, calling for social justice, meaning an equal distribution of wealth…
One Tehran-based analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the economic problems openly, said that over the past decades many different governments had tried to fix the economy, but all had found it politically difficult, if not impossible.
“Many of our problems are systemic,” he said. “There is no real solution other than muddling on.”…
Khamenei says only a strong Iran can avoid ‘oppression’
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that only a strong nation could avoid being oppressed by foreign powers, as he called for economic and cultural independence...
 |
| Khamenei |
Hopes for an economic recovery were rekindled after President Hassan Rouhani took office in August with a promise to repair relations with the world. In November he clinched an interim nuclear deal with world powers that brought modest sanctions relief.
But Khamenei, who has the final say on the nuclear issue, said Iran should not pin its hopes on “when the enemy will lift the sanctions,” alluding to nuclear talks with world powers aimed at reaching an ambitious final accord by July 20...
Khamenei, who has backed the nuclear talks but expressed skepticism over Western intentions, called for greater economic self-reliance through boosting productivity and pursuing a buy-Iran campaign under the title “economy of resistance.”
Khamenei added that culture is “even more important than the economy.”
“It is the air you breathe. If it is clean it has one effect, and another if it is dirty,” said Khamenei, who has long warned of a so-called soft war by the West against Iran’s Islamic ideals and values.
“The focus of the enemy is on the culture more than anything else,” Khamenei said.
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Labels: economics, Iran, politics, reform
Listen up
There are times when the media deliver to you lots of good information, some of it teachable.
Beginning Saturday, China's top leaders are meeting in Beijing. Decisions made there will guide policy for the next few years. Some Western journalists will hang out in Beijing and others will pour over every word that comes out of China about the meeting.
Watch for the results.
The long weekend: China’s leaders will soon reveal their ambitions for economic reform
RUNNING the world’s biggest country requires sacrifice. For the Communist Party’s top 376 officials on its central committee, the sacrifice includes the occasional weekend. From Saturday November 9th until the following Tuesday, they will gather in Beijing for the third time since Xi Jinping became head of the party nearly a year ago. The “third plenum”, as this meeting will be called, is the new leadership’s chance to lay out its stall on economic reform. In the past similar gatherings have shaken the world…
 |
| Central Committee on display |
In recent years China’s growth has slowed significantly to under 8%—and were it not for a timely fiscal stimulus would be slower still. Some of the slowdown is inevitable…
Will Mr Xi rise to the occasion?… Perhaps, like aristocrats everywhere, he feels free to break with established practices because it was people like him who established them…
The road map Mr Xi will submit to the third plenum has been months in the making. It draws on the advice of China’s ministries and the wider network of official research institutes and think-tanks…
China’s leaders set great store by gradualism… But gradualism is not the same as inertia. It has been many years since the last big changes. If China’s leaders wait another five or ten years to renew the momentum of reform, the consequences will take more than a long weekend to fix.
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Labels: China, economics, leadership, politics, reform
Slow down in economy might slow down reforms
This might put a crimp in the president's reform agenda. Is it an external input or a domestic input into the machinery of government?
Economists dial down projections for Mexico's growth
Storms and insecurity are further eroding once-optimistic predictions for Mexico’s economic growth, analysts say.
At the start of the year, Mexico’s new government under President Enrique Peña Nieto boasted of a robust economy that would grow at a rate of more than 3.5%, better than many countries in the region. Those boasts earned positive headlines for Mexico beyond its borders, as officials here portrayed a country ready to leap into prosperity.
 |
| President Peña Nieto |
Now, however, even government economists have had to dial down the projections. Mexico’s economy contracted in the second quarter for the first time in four years. The growth rate is more likely about 1.7%, the government says, or half the prediction of just 10 months ago…
The government insists the overall economy remains healthy, will avoid recession and will pick up when wide-ranging reforms proposed by Peña Nieto are finally enacted. Those include a tax overhaul and opening the state oil monopoly to foreign investment.
“I’m confident the deceleration is temporary,” Reuters quoted Agustin Carstens, the head of the Bank of Mexico, as saying. He added that Mexico’s “solid macroeconomic pillars” should bring the country out of its slump by early next year.
The shaky economic performance comes as violence continues in many parts of the country…
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Labels: economics, Mexico, policy, politics, reform
Resistance to change
We often think of right wing politicians as conservatives. How can it be then, that the leftists in Mexico are opposing change (being conservative)?
Mexico's left wages campaign to derail Peña Nieto's agenda
They have taken to the streets by the thousands, generating headlines and dramatically disrupting the day-to-day rhythms of the hemisphere's largest city.
But do the Mexicans opposing the government's proposed reforms have any real political stroke?
That is the question dogging the forces of the Mexican left. They hope that a wave of demonstrations will derail President Enrique Peña Nieto's ambitious policy agenda, which includes what he calls "transformational" changes to the federal tax structure, the education system and the state-run oil company…
While the protesters dominate the streets, the reformers have the upper hand in government: Peña Nieto's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. The leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, controls only about 20% of each house.
As a result, while the protesting teachers commandeered the media spotlight this week, lawmakers managed to pass the teacher evaluation portion of the education reform package, which also includes measures to curtail union power…
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Labels: Mexico, politics, protest, reform
Proposing more change in Mexico
President Peña Nieto wants to build on his successes. He sounds like he wants the PRI to be a party of 21st century revolution.
Mexican president proposes sweeping social changes
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed sweeping changes to the country's social programs Sunday, laying out a plan for Mexico's first nationwide pensions, unemployment insurance and capital-gains taxes.
Some Mexican local governments, and particularly Mexico City, have experimented with small supplementary payments to the unemployed and people older than 70, but the country as a whole has not had unemployment insurance and only has a patchwork of pension plans…
The changes are part of a series of ambitious reforms that Pena Nieto hopes to push through in his first year in office. Some, like educational reforms that introduce teacher evaluations, have sailed through congress, but others face an uphill fight…
Pena Nieto did not provide specifics of the social program plans or tax changes, but said that "those who have more income will pay more."…
The proposals must be approved by both houses of congress and a majority of state legislatures because they involve constitutional changes.
Few had expected the president, whose centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party is known for its close ties to business, to go so far.
Indeed, some had expected him to push the widely unpopular idea of extending the sales tax to food and medicines. Such a tax would have likely further angered protesters who have recently demonstrated, in a country where 45 percent of the population of 112 million lives in poverty.
Pena Nieto said he didn't adopt that approach because it would hurt the poorest Mexicans, but said he would follow through with periodic increases in gasoline prices, which is aimed at phasing out fuel subsidies in Mexico…
Alternatively, the financial reporters focused on the taxations, not the social welfare reforms.
Peña Nieto waters down Mexico tax reforms
Mexico's faster-than-expected economic slowdown forced Enrique Peña Nieto, the country’s president, to dilute key tax reform plans, shying away from slapping a widely expected sales tax on food and medicine that could have intensified a wave of popular protests.
But the president said the reform package, which he unveiled on Sunday night flanked by opposition parties, nonetheless included green taxes on fuel, a fat tax on sugary drinks and a stock market gains tax. The reform package has been presented as a decisive step towards funding universal social security and making the tax system fairer and clearer…
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Reform? How?
The Economist offers some details about the extent of corruption in Nigeria's oil industry and reasons why reform is doubtful.
A desperate need for reform
IN AUGUST Nigeria announced that oil production had reached a record 2.7m barrels a day but few experts believed it. Oil is also being stolen at a record rate and traders’ figures show output at well below the government’s figures. Information about Africa’s biggest oil industry is an opaque myriad of numbers. No one knows which ones are accurate; no one knows how much oil Nigeria actually produces. If there were an authoritative figure, the truly horrifying scope of corruption would be exposed.
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| Okonjo-Iweala |
The finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a genuine reformer, has estimated that 400,000 barrels of oil a day were stolen in April. But different government ministries give conflicting figures on how much oil Nigeria is producing, suggesting that they cannot agree or they just do not know. Nigeria could measure how much it produces, say experts: it has some of the most advanced technology in the world to do so, but chooses not to.
A former senior World Banker, Oby Ezekwesili, reckons that $400 billion of Nigeria’s oil revenue has been stolen or misspent since the country’s independence in 1960…
A report in May exposed a fraud amounting to $6.8 billion over a subsidy for petrol imports. Since then, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala has brought to book several fuel marketers for overcharging the government for refined products they never delivered. Naming and shaming them has worked: some are now paying up. But so far the crackdowns have not affected fraudulent politicians…
Regulatory uncertainty, among other things, has helped make Nigeria’s oil industry stagnant… A Petroleum Industry Bill has been in the works for 15 years, intended to overhaul the industry, make it more transparent, improve regulatory institutions and fiscal policies, and bring everything up to global standards. But the law has been stuck between government and parliament for five years, holding back many billions of dollars in investment…
The bill, signed and sealed by Mr Jonathan and his cabinet, is back in parliament; the president wants it speedily passed, though its original aims have been watered down, and many oil companies say its monetary terms will deter investment…
Meanwhile, the environmental devastation in Nigeria’s oil-producing delta persists unchecked. Pipeline sabotage now accounts for more than half of the spills in the region…
Worst of all, the oil wealth that should have benefited the people has barely trickled down. More than half the country’s 160m souls still have less than $2 a day. Can Mr Jonathan or Mrs Okonjo-Iweala make a difference?…
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Tradition...
It looks like the House of Lords is safe from drastic change for now. Is the coalition safe as well?
Cracks in British Governing Coalition as House of Lords Overhaul Falls Apart
Britain’s two governing parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, announced on Monday that they had abandoned attempts to overhaul the House of Lords, a development that many on both sides of the coalition government saw as evidence of its growing fragility.
Reform of the House of Lords, by replacing its appointed and hereditary membership with a mostly elected chamber, was one of the principal aims of the Liberal Democrats in joining the coalition in May 2010…
As the perennial third party in British politics, the Liberal Democrats have long regarded an elected upper chamber as a potential steppingstone beyond the marginal role the party [has]… played in British politics since the 1930s.
By confirming that a bloc of Conservatives had scuttled the reform effort for at least this Parliament… Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ leader, threw a wrench into the already creaking machinery of the coalition. In doing so, political analysts said, he thrust the coalition deeper into impasse on broad aspects of its legislative program, and raised the prospects of a collapse even before 2015.
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| Nick Clegg |
In return for the Conservatives not fulfilling their pledge to support the House of Lords reform, Mr. Clegg said, the Liberal Democrats would no longer back the Conservatives’ push to change the electoral rules to bring parliamentary constituencies closer to a nationwide norm [reapportionment] in terms of overall voter numbers…
The overhaul ran afoul of a revolt by a group of nearly 100 Conservative backbenchers, supported quietly by at least some Conservative ministers in the coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.
Their principal objection was that an elected House of Lords would challenge the supremacy of the House of Commons, Parliament’s elected lower chamber, and that it would move the Lords away from the subsidiary role it has traditionally played, as a forum for detailed examination and revision of legislation approved by the Commons.
The abandonment of the reform package has been a deep personal blow to Mr. Clegg, exposing him ever more starkly as a man caught between a strong commitment to sustaining the coalition until the election and a gathering revolt among a powerful bloc of Liberal Democrats…
When the Conservative backbench revolt became clear in a parliamentary vote on the House of Lords bill last month, Mr. Clegg joined Mr. Cameron in pledging continuing support for the coalition…
Increasingly, though, the two leaders’ resolve has seemed to rest on personal chemistry more than any sound political foundation…
In its place is what some British commentators have likened to a failing marriage, held together by necessity rather than conviction, with both sides sensing that calling it off and forcing an early election — with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both low in the opinion polls and Labour with a substantial lead — would be disastrous.
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New generation for reform as well
Several recent reports from China have emphasized how the power and wealth of several generations of an entrenched elite are putting a lid on political change in China.
Now, Michael Wines, writing in the
New York Times, offers a glimpse of a reformist branch of that entrenched elite.
This should not be surprising since the political battles in China (within the Communist Party, of course) since 1949 have been waged between factions with differing ideas about how to create China's future. Even during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, there were factions within the Party fighting for control of the Party and the country.
As China Talks of Change, Fear Rises on the Risks
A heavyweight crowd gathered last October for a banquet in Beijing’s tallest skyscraper. The son of Mao Zedong’s immediate successor was there, as was the daughter of the country’s No. 2 military official for nearly three decades, along with the half sister of China’s president-in-waiting, and many more…
Most surprising, though, was the reason for the meeting. A small coterie of children of China’s founding elites who favor deeper political and economic change had come to debate the need for a new direction under the next generation of Communist Party leaders… Many had met the previous August, and would meet again in February.
The private gatherings are a telling indicator of how even some in the elite are worried about the course the Communist Party is charting for China’s future. And to advocates of political change, they offer hope that influential party members support the idea that tomorrow’s China should give citizens more power to choose their leaders and seek redress for grievances, two longtime complaints about the current system.
But the problem is that even as the tiny band of political reformers is attracting more influential adherents, it is splintered into factions that cannot agree on what “reform” would be, much less how to achieve it. The fundamental shifts that are crucial to their demands — a legal system beyond Communist Party control as well as elections with real rules and real choices among candidates — are seen even among the most radical as distant dreams, at best part of a second phase of reform.
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| Bo Xilai |
In addition, the political winds are not blowing in their favor. The spectacular fall this spring of Bo Xilai, the Politburo member who openly espoused a populist philosophy at odds with elite leaders, offered an object lesson in the dangers of challenging the status quo…
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| Zhang Lifan |
“Compare now to 1989; in ’89, the reformers had the upper hand,” said Zhang Lifan, a historian formerly associated with the government’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, referring to the pro-democracy student protests that enjoyed the support of a number of important party leaders but were crushed in Tiananmen Square. “Twenty years later, the reformers have grown weaker. Now there are so many vested interests that they’ll be taken out if they touch anyone else’s interests.”…
“Neither the rulers nor the ruled are happy with the current situation,” said Mr. Zhang, the historian. “The prevailing belief is that change is coming soon, but the question is how. Change is either going to come from the top leadership, or from the grass-roots level.”…
If peaceful change is to occur, Zhou Zhixing, a media executive and former official at a Communist Party research organization, and many others say, it must begin inside the Communist Party; the lesson of Tiananmen Square is that the leadership will not tolerate threats to its control. Many speak of a transformation along the lines of that in Taiwan, where authoritarian rulers peacefully gave way to direct elections in 1996, and helped spawn today’s robust democracy…
Populists want to remake the party to reflect Mao’s early vision, redistributing billions in government riches to the people… But Mao-style populism is disdained by most current leaders…
A second Communist camp wants to open the party to internal competition, abandoning the leadership’s facade of unity and letting rival factions take their ideas to the wider party for approval. Over the long run, they say, transparency will spawn competing parties under a Communist umbrella — a sort of one-party democracy. But in a China where stability is the leadership’s obsessive concern, the notion of baring divisions at the pinnacle of power seems almost farcical…
But the sheer scope of the discord leads some who call for change to wonder whether they are less a movement than a debating society — intellectuals trading theories over plates of noodles in their apartments, the second red generation trading theories over lavish hotel banquets.
“Mao used to say that ‘revolution is not a dinner party,’ ” Mr. Yang, the editor at Yanhuang Chunqiu, said sardonically. “But right now, revolution is precisely a dinner party.”
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Revolution without Chinese characteristics
The populist revolutions in the Middle East are prompting reactions in China. The reactions illustrate the fears of the authoritarians in China.
Well-Oiled Security Apparatus in China Stifles Calls for ChangeTwo months of upheaval in the Mideast have cast doubt on the staying power of all authoritarian governments. But in China calls for change are so far being met with political controls wielded by authorities who, even during a period of rising prosperity and national pride, have not taken their staying power for granted.
The nearly instantaneous deployment of the police to prevent even notional gatherings in big cities the past two weeks is just one example of what Chinese officials call “stability maintenance.” This refers to a raft of policies and practices refined after “color revolutions” abroad and, at home, tens of thousands of demonstrations by workers and peasants, ethnic unrest, and the spread of mobile communications and broadband networking.
Chinese officials charged with ensuring security, lavishly financed and permitted to operate above the law, have remained perpetually on edge, employing state-of-the-art surveillance, technologically sophisticated censorship, new crime-fighting tools, as well as proactive efforts to resolve labor and land disputes, all to prevent any organized or sustained resistance to single-party rule...
Chinese Move to Stop Reporting on ProtestsChinese police, citing newly enacted restrictions on journalists, have moved to forcefully prevent foreign reporters from covering public protests that have been largely nonexistent, establishing “no reporting” zones in Shanghai and Beijing and, in one case, beating a videographer and injuring two other reporters…
Why China Is Nervous About the Arab UprisingsAs protests swept the Arab world, toppling two regimes, the Chinese government has strengthened its elaborate security apparatus with crackdowns on human rights lawyers and activists.
On the Chinese Internet, anonymous calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" -- modeled after the pro-democracy demonstrations in the Middle East -- have been squelched by authorities. Words like "Egypt" and "Tunisia" have been blocked on some Web searches and social networking sites have been made inaccessible.
Unlike Arab countries with deteriorating economies, China has experienced rapid economic growth in the past decade. Is that keeping a lid on broad discontent in China? If that is the case, why is the Chinese government so nervous? Could popular protests of a similar scale sweep China in the near future?…
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Welfare reform in the UK
Reforming public welfare spending in the UK could save money, but not until a lot more money is spent. Doug Sanders, writing in the
Toronto Globe and Mail, offers some explanation.
Tearing apart the British welfare state: Tories impose jobs on the 'workshy'Almost a century after the modern welfare state was created by Liberal prime minister David Lloyd George, his successors in Britain’s Conservative-Liberal coalition government are hoping to tear it apart completely in a radical act of cost slashing.
In a huge and risky experiment sure to be watched closely by other countries wrestling with public debt, government budget deficits and shrinking work forces, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government Thursday announced sweeping plans to change the lives of 5 million people dependent on government payments in an effort to push hundreds of thousands of people into the work force...
Mr. Cameron... plans to force all welfare and unemployment recipients to seek work, even unpaid volunteer work, or to risk losing their payments.
The proposals will also unify more than 30 social safety net programs into a single “universal credit,” a move that was welcomed by many observers on the left. And through a “work program,” whose name evokes Britain’s Victorian efforts at reform, the perpetually dependent would be trained to do jobs, however minimal, or risk losing their cheques…
An estimated 2 million children – mostly descendents of the old industrial working class – grow up in households in which nobody has ever worked. Britain… suffers from very high levels of poverty and intergenerational welfare dependency, to an extent not seen in other European countries or in Canada.
It is a perpetual source of frustration to conservatives here that even in the midst of a serious recession there remain 450,000 job vacancies, requiring high levels of immigration to be filled, while there are 1.4 million British working-age people on long-term welfare and unemployment insurance…
[T]he root of Britain’s unique welfare-dependency problem is the large number of people classified as “NEETs” – Not in Education, Employment or Training – most of whom dropped out of secondary school at 16. Very few jobs exist for such people, and fixing this would require big expenditures in the education system, at a moment when the government is cutting it back…
Officials at the British Treasury said in briefings that aggressive welfare reforms are being pursued now because they are the one form of cost cutting whose effects are felt quickly…
But the change will not be immediate, or cheap. In fact, the changes will cost Britain an extra £2-billion over the next two years, and that does not factor in the cost of an elaborate new computer system that will be needed to unify the programs. Given that most economists do not expect the labour force to grow significantly as a result, and some fear the cuts could trigger a downturn, there is a chance that the whole exercise could end up costing the country more money.
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LibDems reform package
The proposals are not new, but they've never been so close to the government. The reforms face a huge uphill route to enactment.
No. 2 Leader Unveils Plan to Overhaul British Politics Describing Britain as “a fractured democracy,” Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg outlined a sweeping package of measures on Monday that he said would restore shattered public confidence, including a referendum on May 5 on a new voting system for Parliament.
The measures will include a bill to eliminate the prime minister’s traditional power to call a new election at any time during the five-year life of each parliament, among the prerogatives that have given British prime ministers a wide and sometimes overbearing authority in their dealings with legislators...
Speaking before the Commons, Mr. Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, partners with the Conservatives in the two-month-old government, called the changes an effort to “restore the trust in our political system that has been tested to its limits” by, among other things, last year’s scandal over abuses of parliamentary expenses…
A pledge by the Conservatives to hold a referendum on a new voting system was the price Mr. Clegg extracted for leading his party, the Liberal Democrats, into the coalition after the May election. The Liberals, Britain’s perennial third-place party, believe that the “alternative vote” system on which voters are to decide would give them a fairer share of seats than the current system…
Other proposed changes include a reduction of 50 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons; a redrawing of district boundaries to limit to 5 percent the variation between the number of voters in each district; a new recall power for voters when a lawmaker is found guilty of “serious wrongdoing”; a requirement that the House of Lords be either wholly or partly elected; and tighter rules for lobbyists, including that they enroll in a new parliamentary register.
The changes are expected to face strong opposition from powerful factions in the three major parties…
Nick Clegg's web site details his reform proposals
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
