AHS Comparative Government

On Sunday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan took the oath of office for his first full term as president. (Jonathan first became president on the death of his predecessor, Umaru Yar'Adua, in May 2010).

Jonathan faces a number of serious challenges. Most Nigerians are desperately poor; historically, the country's oil wealth has benefited a very small number of people. Nigeria is divided ethnically (more than 250 languages are spoken in Nigeria) and religiously. Jonathan won a majority of the vote in the states of the predominantly Christian, more economically developed, south of the country; he failed to win a majority in any of the states in predominantly Muslim, less economically developed, northern Nigeria. Indeed, though Jonathan was elected in one of the cleanest elections in Nigeria's history (admittedly, a pretty low standard), his election was greeted with rioting in the north of the country and communal violence in central Nigeria.

Moreover, armed militant groups and organized criminal gangs operate in southern Nigeria's Niger Delta, the country's oil-producing region. Muslim extremists carry out terrorist attacks in northern and central Nigeria. Finally, corruption in business and government is severe and pervasive throughout the country:

http://www.economist.com/node/18741606?story_id=18741606&CFID=171387249&CFTOKEN=88644371

Russia maintains ten special prisons for former policemen and law enforcement officials. The number of inmates in those prisons has grown by more than 10% in the past three years, reflecting Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's efforts to curb corruption and abuse in the Russian system of criminal justice. (Medvedev, a lawyer by training, once described Russia's system of criminal and civil justice as "legal nihilism." Medvedev's critics, however, argue that his anti-corruption campaign is strictly for show).

The policemen, prosecutors and judges serving sentences in the special prisons, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption is endemic throughout Russian officialdom. Moreover, the most serious abuses remain unpunished. Journalists and human rights campaigners are attacked and assassinated in Russia with impunity -- often by men with ties to the Federal Security Service (the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, now known as the FSB) or to Russia's governing United Russia party. Moreover, no one has ever been charged in connection with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison while awaiting trial on trumped-up charges (see blog post of 22 November 2009):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/world/europe/29prisons.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=russia%20prion%20police&st=cse

The Mexico City metropolitan area is divided politically: Mexico City proper lies in the Federal District, but a slight majority of the residents of the region live in Mexico State. The Federal District's Head of Government, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, is a leading contender to be the candidate of the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) in next year's presidential election. The Governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, is likely to be the 2012 presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the party that dominated Mexican government at all levels for most of the 20th century. (Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, is constitutionally barred from seeking a second 6-year term; to date, seven PAN leaders have expressed interest in running for president).

The Federal District has been more successful in curbing violent crime than Mexico State, though both jurisdictions are safer than many other Mexican cities. According to The Economist, that success may not result from different law enforcement policies, but from the fact that the Federal District has only one police force while Mexico State has 125 different municipal police forces:

http://www.economist.com/node/18744547

On 6 May 2010, the United Kingdom held a general election. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, gained the most votes, and won 306 seats in Parliament -- the most of any political party but 20 seats short of an outright majority. The Conservatives then negotiated a formal coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third-largest political party, creating the UK's first coalition government since the end of World War II. The coalition has a sizable parliamentary majority; the Liberal Democrats won 57 seats in the general election. (The two parties' combined share of the vote was a healthy 59.1%).

As the leader of the largest party in the coalition (and the largest party in Parliament), Cameron serves as Prime Minister. Most of the seats in the cabinet are filled by other Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs); there is no separation of powers between executive and legislative branches in British government. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, serves as Deputy Prime Minister; four other senior Liberal Democrat MPs hold cabinet positions in the new government.

Since the election, the coalition government has undertaken sweeping measures to erase the British government's sizable budget deficit. The government has increased taxes modestly and slashed spending. (The budget cuts will eliminate an estimated 500,000 positions in government and an estimated 500,000 jobs in the private sector). One of the government's most controversial decisions has been to increase the amount of tuition that universities in England and Wales may charge students, from £3,000 (roughly $5000) to £9,000 (roughly $15,000). The tuition increase, which required Parliamentary approval, only passed with Liberal Democrat support (though some Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the proposal) -- despite the fact that, in 2010, every Liberal Democrat candidate for Parliament signed a pledge promising to vote against any tuition increase.

A year on, Conservative voters continue to support the coalition government and its austerity measures. Liberal Democrat voters (who tend to be middle class, well educated and left of center), however, are increasingly critical of the government and of the continuing role of the Liberal Democrat Party in that government. The voters that the Liberal Democrats picked up in 2010 from the left-wing Labour Party appear to be returning to Labour (see blog post of 7 May). The continuing strength of the Conservatives, and the erosion of the Liberal Democrats' base of support, however, is changing the power dynamic within the coalition government:

http://www.economist.com/node/18681847

An article in the 14 May issue of The Economist examines the Mexican government's efforts to improve public education:

http://www.economist.com/node/18682699

China's Three Gorges Dam, built between 1992 and 2006, stretches one-and-a-half miles across the Yangtze river. Construction of the dam required 16 million tons of concrete, and resulted in the flooding of hundreds of towns and villages and the relocation of 1.4 million people.

Today, the Chinese State Council (China's cabinet) acknowledged that the dam has created significant environmental and social problems. Chinese critics of the project have long linked construction of the dam to increased landslides, soil erosion, algae blooms, pollution, drought and earthquakes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/20/three-gorges-dam-china-warning

Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, is one of the largest cities in Africa -- and one of the fastest growing cities in the world. It is a famously difficult place to live, but Babatunde Fashola, who was recently reelected governor of the Nigerian state of Lagos, is trying to improve the quality of life in the city:

http://www.economist.com/node/18652563

Since 1980, China has had a one-child policy. As that policy is currently enforced, most couples are allowed to have only one child. (Couples comprised of two only children, and some rural residents, may have two children; members of ethnic minority groups are not subject to limits on the number of children they may have). Couples who have more than the permitted number of children are subject to very tough fines.

One infamous consequence of the policy has been a pronounced and growing gender imbalance in the Chinese population. Chinese parents have a strong preference for sons, and many couples limited to one child will terminate a pregnancy if they learn that the child they are expecting is a girl. This gender imbalance threatens to create a substantial degree of social instability over the next few decades.

The Chinese government claims that, without the one-child policy, there would be 400 million more Chinese people than there are today; according to this analysis, the tremendous rise in living standards of the past 30 years would never have occurred absent the policy. Recent demographic research casts doubt on this claim and suggests that, if anything, China's birthrate is too low; not enough children are being born to support China's growing number of elderly citizens:

http://www.economist.com/node/18651512

On Thursday, British voters overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to reform the the country's electoral system. Under the proposal, the United Kingdom's traditional first-past-the-post system of electing members of the House of Commons would have been replaced by a form of rank order voting known as Alternative Vote. Had the proposal been adopted, future British parliaments would likely have included fewer members from Britain's two major parties, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, and more members from Britain's smaller parties, including the Liberal-Democrat Party. (The Liberal-Democrats, the junior partner in Britain's governing coalition, made the conduct of a referendum on electoral reform a key condition of joining the Conservatives in a coalition government). Adoption of the reform would thus have increased the odds of future coalition governments -- with the Liberal-Democrats (who are more progressive than the Tories and more conservative than Labour) as the indispensable coalition partners of both major parties.

The referendum on electoral reform was held on the same day as local and regional elections throughout the country; the defeat of the proposal reflected a strong trend away from the Liberal-Democrats. The Liberal-Democrats typically draw their support from well-educated, middle-class, left-of-center voters; in the 2010 General Election, these voters deserted the foundering Labour Party in droves. On Thursday, these voters abandoned the Liberal-Democrats, signalling their displeasure with the participation of the Liberal-Democrats in a Conservative-led coalition government that has raised taxes and slashed public spending. (By contrast, the Conservative Party's share of the vote held up, indicating that its supporters agree with Prime Minister Cameron's determination to reduce not just Britain's huge budgetary deficit but the role of the state in British society as well). The Liberal-Democrats lost more than 500 seats on city councils throughout England and 12 seats (out of 129 total seats) in the devolved Scottish Parliament.

Indeed, the collapse of the Liberal-Democrat vote in Scotland set the stage for the most dramatic result of Thursday's vote: the election of a Scottish Parliament in which the Scottish National Party (SNP) has a majority of the seats. The SNP, which favors Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, previously led a minority government in Scotland; it has never before held a majority of the seats in the Scottish Parliament. Flush with victory, Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland and the head of the SNP, announced that his government would hold a referendum on Scottish independence:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/06/no-to-av-constitutional-conflict

Iran's Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has countermanded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of Iran's Intelligence Minister, the Hojjat-al-Islam Heydar Moleshi. Ahmadinejad apparently dismissed Moleshi after he learned that Intelligence Ministry and Revolutionary Guard spies had bugged the office of Ahmadinejad's closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/02/MN0V1JAGNU.DTL

Rahim Mashaei, whose daughter is married to Ahmadinejad's son, is distrusted by Iran's conservative religious establishment. As head of the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Office, he raised eyebrows by attending a Turkish belly dance performance while participating in a tourism conference in Istanbul. He later offended Iran's religious establishment by saying that Iranians are “friends of all people in the world - even Israelis,” and by claiming that any conflict Iran has with Israel is only with the Israeli government.

Rahim Mashaei's comments about Israel cost him his brief career as Iran's First Vice-President. Ahmadinejad appointed Rahim Mashaei First Vice-President shortly after Ahmadinejad was reelected President of Iran (in an election that remains highly controversial). The Ayatollah Khamenei ordered Rahim Mashaei to resign as First Vice-President the following day.

Following Moleshi's reinstatement as Intelligence Minister, Ahmadinejad briefly stopped attending cabinet meetings in protest. He began to attend cabinet meetings again once the world press began to report of a widening rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.