AHS Comparative Government

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery, may be hanged instead. According to the Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, Iran's Chief Judge, Iran does not have the necessary facility for stoning; accordingly, Ashtiani should be hanged. (The Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani is the brother of Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Iranian Majlis. Ali Larijani was previously Iran's top negotiator with the UN Security Council on Iran's nuclear program; he is frequently mentioned as a potential Iranian president). Ashtiani is currently serving a ten year sentence for being an accessory to her husband's murder. An international outcry followed her sentence to death by stoning:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/world/meast/iran-woman-stoning/index.html

On 24 December, demonstrations took place across Russia to call for new State Duma elections and to rally opposition to Prime Minister (and former President) Vladimir Putin's candidacy in March's presidential election. Almost all observers agree that the elections to the State Duma were marred by fraud, with Putin's United Russia party the beneficiary of rampant vote-rigging:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16324644

In Nigeria, a series of Boko Haram bomb attacks killed 40 people on Christmas Day. Most of the victims were killed outside churches in the center of the country; the balance were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a State Security Service convoy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16330093

Local governments in China frequently cancel farm leases to make way for industrial development. Lease cancellations are often met with mass protests and even rioting; the recent death in police custody of a protest negotiator in Wukan, a village in Gunagdong province, led villagers to "[chase] out Communist Party officials, [repel] an assault by police officers and [barricade] all roads leading into" the village:

Wong, Edward. "Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s Muzzle." The New York Times, 23 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Dec. 2011.

A recent BBC article examines the reasons for farmer protests in China and estimates the annual number of such protests:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16193089

Chen Wei, a Chinese pro-democracy activist, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power." Chen previously served a one-year jail sentence for helping lead student pro-democracy protests in 1989 and a five-year jail sentence for attempting to organize a political party in 1991:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16312065

Between 100,000 and 150,000 Russians emigrate each year. Some leave Russia for political reasons; others leave to pursue better economic opportunities abroad. Those who emigrate tend to be well-educated and ambitious -- the sort of people who, if they stayed, could help modernize Russia.

Russian emigration has political consequences; most of the people who leave oppose the Putin regime. Russian emigration also has significant social consequences, given that the death rate in Russia is already higher than the birth rate. One study suggests that, by 2030, Russia will have 15 million fewer people than it does now:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russia-emigration-20111115,0,762445.story

I am grateful to AHS alumnus Daniel Berger for calling this article to my attention.

Mikhail Prokhorov, one of the wealthiest men in Russia, announced today that he would run for president against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Prokhorov is best known to Americans for starting Right Cause, a liberal political party, earlier this year. At the time, Prokhorov said that Right Cause would not become a focus of opposition to Putin or to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. While Prokhorov apparently secured Kremlin approval before starting his party, the Kremlin eventually decided that Right Cause threatened to draw too much support from the United Russia party of Putin and Medvedev; in September, hundreds of Putin loyalists took control of a Right Cause party convention and voted to remove Prokhorov as head of the party.

Prokhorov's announcement of his candidacy for president was greeted with suspicion in Russia. Many Putin opponents see Prokhorov's candidacy as a Kremlin-sponsored tactic to draw support from ongoing demonstrations protesting widespread fraud in the 4 December State Duma elections:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/12/mikhail-prokhorov-russia-challenge-putin

50,000 Russians took to the streets of Moscow today to protest last Sunday's rigged elections for the State Duma. The protesters called for the elections to be conducted again, echoing a demand made by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR. Today's protests were the largest protests to be held in Moscow since the end of the Soviet era:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16122524

Officially, the United Russia Party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev won just under 50% of the vote in last Sunday's elections. Independent election monitors, however, estimate that United Russia would have won only 30% to 35% of the vote were it not for widespread election fraud. (Indeed, exit polls showed United Russia winning less than 30% of the vote in Moscow; United Russia's official tally in Moscow was 46.5% of the vote). The extent to which the election was rigged, and the harshness of the Putin regime's attempts to silence the protests that broke out after election results were announced, is detailed in an article in this week's issue of The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/21541455

Mysterious election-day cyber attacks shut down the websites of a Moscow radio station and an organization monitoring the election. Since then, the phone lines of the Yabloko Party and of Novaya Gazeta, Russia's leading opposition newspaper, were tied up for hours by bizarre recorded messages. To further stifle protest, the Moscow Education Department announced special mandatory examinations for high school students that coincided with the scheduled times of mass protests:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/world/europe/russia-allows-rally-but-discourages-attendance.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

An excellent analytical piece puts these developments in historical perspective, arguing that the habits of mind of the old Soviet Union still dominate Russian society:

http://www.economist.com/node/21541444

At the European Union (EU) summit meeting that ended this morning, leaders of 23 of the EU's 27 member states agreed to a new treaty that will impose far greater central control on their national budgets. This agreement was reached in an effort to defuse the financial crisis that threatens to force Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy to withdraw from the Euro and to default on their debts, and which also threatens to prompt a meltdown of Europe's banks.

The United Kingdom, which is not part of the Euro, has elected not to sign this treaty; Prime Minister Cameron made this decision for two reasons. First, the British Government objects in principle to surrendering some of its sovereign power -- its power to set its own budget. (EU governments bound by the new treaty will be required to submit their budgets for review by EU bureaucrats before submitting them for approval to their parliaments, and will be subject to automatic sanctions if they run budget deficits that exceed 3% of GDP). Second, the British Government fears that a more powerful and politically united EU will eventually establish tighter rules on financial markets, threatening London's status as the world's financial center. But the British Government runs the risk that, by putting the UK at the margins of the EU, the financial services now provided by British institutions to businesses in other EU countries may soon be provided in such continental European financial centers as Frankfurt and Paris.

An article in The New York Times examines how domestic political considerations influenced Prime Minister Cameron's decision, and how his decision is likely to affect the governing coalition that includes his Conservative Party (largely hostile to the EU) and the Liberal Democrats (generally pro-EU):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/world/europe/britain-isolated-after-vetoing-euro-zone-pact.html?hp

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has removed Farida Waziri as head of the country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). While many Nigerians had criticized Ms. Waziri as ineffectual, The Economist argues that the fight against corruption in Nigerian government requires institutional reform and not merely a change in personnel:

http://www.economist.com/node/21541042

According to the Russian Electoral Commission, the ruling United Russia Party won just under half the votes in Sunday's elections for the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly. This should give United Russia 238 of the 450 seats in the State Duma -- a narrow majority. (Two of the "opposition" parties, A Just Russia and the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, typically vote with United Russia so there is little likelihood that United Russia will soon suffer legislative defeat in the State Duma).

International observers, including observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, criticized the elections as heavily slanted in favor of United Russia. This evening, thousands of Muscovites demonstrated against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, calling for fair elections; more than 300 demonstrators were arrested:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16042797

Elections for the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, were held today in Russia. Early exit polls suggested that the United Russia Party of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would gain neither an outright a majority of the votes nor a majority of the seats in the new Duma. The again, the official results may differ from the results of the exit polls: electoral fraud was widely reported. Ballot boxes arrived at polling stations partially filled with pre-marked ballots, groups of voters were put on buses and driven to multiple polling places, and pens in some polling places were filed with invisible ink. Hackers, moreover, attacked the websites of opposition news media and poll monitoring organizations:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/04/vladimir-putin-majority-complaints-violations

A recent article in The Economist contrasts provincial government in two parts of China. The government of Chongqing, led by Bo Xilai, is neo-Maoist while the government of Guangdong, led by Wang Yang, is relatively liberal (though the Chinese Communist Party remains firmly in control). Both Bo and Wang are members of the Party's Political Bureau (Politburo), and are thus among the 24 men who set Party (and Chinese government) policy. Both men, moreover, may be named in 2012 to the Politburo's Standing Committee -- the nine Politburo members who run China on a day-to-day basis:

http://www.economist.com/node/21540285