AHS Comparative Government

In China, it is illegal to force a woman to have an abortion.  Local family-planning officials, however, are evaluated on the basis of their effectiveness at keeping birth rates low, and not on their compliance with the law.  As a result, forced abortions -- though less common than they once were -- are far from rare.

In a recent incident in Shaanxi province, family planning officials forcibly injected a woman who was seven months pregnant with a poison that killed her child; the woman was then forced to deliver her dead baby.  In an unusual step, however, relatives posted pictures of the woman and her dead child on the internet; millions of people across China soon saw the photographs.  The ensuing scandal has led not only to public criticism of what is, at least officially, an illegal act; it has led to an unusual degree of public criticism of a significant government policy -- in this case, China's one-child policy:

http://www.economist.com/node/21557369

Next Sunday, there will be a general election in Mexico.  Voters will choose a new president; they will also elect all 500 members of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Mexican Congress) and all 128 Mexican Senators.  Mexico has three major political parties: the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) of outgoing president Felipe Calderón, the centrist Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).  The PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, is expected to win the presidency; the PRI may also win a majority of the seats in the Mexican Senate.

The prospect of a PRI president supported by an outright PRI Senate majority alarms many supporters of Mexican democracy, both inside and outside the country.  The PRI ran Mexico for more than 70 years "with the help of a mixture of authoritarianism, corruption and election tampering" (Tuckman, Jo. "Mexican Democracy's Lost Years." The New York Times 24 June 2012: SR4. Print). The PRI lost control of the Chamber of Deputies only in 1997; the first non-PRI president since the 1920s was elected only in 2000.  The reasons for the resurgence of the PRI, and the prospects for both democracy and continued economic growth in Mexico, are analyzed in this week's issue of The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/21557337

Communal violence claimed nearly one hundred lives in northern Nigeria this week.  Boko Haram, a violent sect that shuns Western education and seeks establishment of a legal system throughout Nigeria based on Shari'a (Muslim religious law), carried out suicide bomb attacks on three churches in and near Kaduna last Sunday.  Mobs of young Christians then attacked Muslims and set fire to mosques in Kaduna, prompting authorities to impose strict curfews in several northern cities:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/africa/curfews-fail-to-curb-religious-violence-in-nigeria.html

In response to the deteriorating security situation in northern Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan today fired his National Security Adviser, replacing him with a prominent northerner with family ties to Nigeria's Muslim religious establishment.  President Jonathan also fired his Defence Minister; no new Defence Minister has yet been named:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/06/20126230113480689.html

China is currently preparing for a change in leadership. This fall, Hu Jintao will step down as General Secretary of the CCP; he is expected to be replaced by China's Vice-President, Xi Jinping.  Next spring, Hu's second term as President of China will end; Xi is expected to succeed him.  The CCP has already been roiled this year by the suspension of Bo Xilai, an important leader of one faction of the Party (to follow this story, see the blog posts of 16 March, 27 March and 16 April).  In this strained atmosphere, the CCP has begun to silence advocates of further economic liberalization:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/world/asia/in-shift-china-stifles-debate-on-economic-change.html?_r=1&ref=world

The British Government has announced new regulations that will make it considerably more difficult for Britons to bring foreign-born family members into the United Kingdom.  A British resident, for example, will have to prove that he or she has an annual income of nearly $30,000 before he or she may bring a spouse into the country.  The requirement will preclude nearly half of employed Britons, and 58% of Britons aged 20 to 30, from bringing a family member into the United Kingdom.

The British Government has introduced the new requirement by regulation (an act of the Home Secretary, Theresa May) and not by legislation (an act of Parliament).  This is perhaps because a bill embodying the new requirements might split the governing coalition: while the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Cameron (and Home Secretary May) supports tougher immigration restrictions, its junior coalition partner, the Liberal-Democrat Party, does not.  On the other hand, introduction of the new restrictions by regulation makes them far more susceptible to judicial interference.  While British courts have no general power of judicial review (Britain has no written constitution, so British courts cannot refuse to enforce an act of Parliament because it is inconsistent with the constitution), British courts can (and frequently do) rule that regulations adopted by British cabinet officers are inconsistent with laws and treaties approved by Parliament:

http://www.economist.com/node/21556926

The adoption of severe penalties for unauthorized demonstrations and raids on the apartments of opposition leaders brought tens of thousands of Muscovites into the streets on Tuesday:

http://www.economist.com/node/21556975

This morning, Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group, attacked two Nigerian churches during Christian religious services.  One attack came in Borno state, the northeastern Nigerian state where the group was founded a decade ago.  The second attack was in the central city of Jos, frequently the center of violence between long-time residents (who tend to be Christian farmers from the Berom ethnic group) and more recent arrivals (who tend to be Muslim herdsmen from the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group).  One person was killed and dozens were injured in the Boko Haram attacks.  The Boko Haram attacks set off murderous attacks on Muslims by Christians in Jos; those attacks killed six more people:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18386156

Boko Haram has emerged in recent years as one of the most serious challenges to the authority of the Nigerian federal government. The group seeks adoption of a shari'a (Muslim religious law) based legal system throughout Nigeria, including predominantly non-Muslim parts of the country.  (The shari'a movement in Nigeria began some twenty years ago in response to the lawlessness of the country's long series of military governments and the perceived corruption of Nigeria's secular court system).  Shari'a-based civil and criminal legal codes, interpreted and enforced by religious courts, have already been adopted in 12 predominantly Muslim states in northern Nigeria.  (Nigeria, a federal republic, has 36 states).

Boko Haram, however, seeks far more than the establishment of a shari'a-based legal system.  Among other things, it seeks to prevent Nigerians (and, in particular, the slight majority of the Nigerian population that practices Islam) from being tainted by any Western cultural trappings, including Western education:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13809501

Under China's hukou (household registration) system, Chinese citizens in rural areas are not allowed to move into China's cities without official permission (which is difficult to obtain). Indeed, Chinese citizens who live in a particular city are not allowed to move to another city without official permission. In practice, more than 150 million people from rural China have moved into China's cities over the past 30 years; at least 10 million more rural residents arrive in China's cities ever year. Because these migrants have moved to China's cities without official permission, they lack access to many public services (including, notably, high school educations for their children). Accordingly, both the migrants and their children are second-class citizens in China's cities and face lifetimes of economic disadvantage:

http://www.economist.com/node/21556271

With Mexico's presidential election only four weeks away, the role of the broadcast media in the country's politics has come under increased scrutiny.  Most Mexicans get their news from broadcast television; Mexican television is dominated by two networks, Televisa and TV Azteca.  Televisa is closely tied to Mexico's historically dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI); in 2006, with the PRI's presidential candidate in third place in the polls, Televisa openly supported the presidential ambitions of Felipe Calderón, the candidate of the right-wing National Action Party (the Partido Acción Nacional or PAN).  While TV Azteca does not openly support political candidates, it too tends to support conservative policies.  Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (the Instituto Federal Electoral or IFE) has tried to regulate the duopoly, seeking both to reduce the influence of the broadcast media in Mexican politics and to respect the freedom of the press; the IFE's efforts have achieved mixed results:

http://www.economist.com/node/21556274

A surprisingly large number of Chinese officials send their fortunes and families overseas.  Many of the officials are corrupt, and are eager to move their assets out of China before they can be seized by the state.  Other officials are simply concerned that they may suffer reversals of political fortune.  The phenomenon thus reflects poorly on China; it suggests that corruption is widespread in Chinese government, and that Chinese officials lack confidence in the country's medium-term political stability:

http://www.economist.com/node/21555961