AHS Comparative Government

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization comprised of 155 countries.  Counties that join the WTO agree to limit the tariffs they impose on the goods they import from other WTO member states; they also agree to submit any trade disputes they have with other WTO members to arbitration by WTO experts in Geneva.

Russia is not currently a member of the WTO.  Last Tuesday, the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly) voted to approve Russia's membership in the WTO, culminating 18 years of negotiations between Russia and the WTO over the terms of Russian membership.  The vote in the State Duma was close: all of the deputies from United Russia (the political party founded to advance the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin) voted in favor of WTO accession while the deputies from the opposition parties -- the Communists, the Liberal-Democrats (a neo-fascist party) and Just Russia (a previously pro-Putin party that has become increasingly critical of Putin in recent years) -- voted against.  The fact that United Russia owes its majority in the State Duma to massive electoral fraud in last December's State Duma elections may affect how ordinary Russians view their country's WTO membership.  (Then again, if United Russia had not enjoyed a majority in the State Duma, some of the deputies from the other parties might have voted in favor of Russian accession to the WTO; as it happened, the opposition deputies could take a politically popular stand against WTO membership knowing that their votes would have no effect on Russian government policy).

The likely effect of WTO membership on the Russian economy is controversial:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/business/global/parliament-approves-russia-joining-wto.html

When Russia formally joins the WTO in August, the only country that we study in AP Comparative Government that will not be a member of the WTO is Iran.  Iran has applied for WTO membership and has held preliminary accession negotiations with the WTO.  Those negotiations have been stalled by Iran's apparent intention to develop nuclear weapons (the US, Britain and France, among other countries, will not allow Iran to join the WTO so long as it appears to be developing such weapons).

On Tuesday, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that governs the United Kingdom was forced to cancel the vote it had scheduled in the House of Commons (the lower house of the British Parliament) on reforming the House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament).  Opposition to the bill among Conservative backbench Members of Parliament (Conservative MPs who are not cabinet ministers or junior ministers) threatened the coalition government with a humiliating (and potentially fatal) defeat on a piece of constitutional legislation.

The last-minute cancellation of the vote revealed the growing friction between the two parties -- Cameron's Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nicholas Clegg -- that together govern Britain.  Neither party, however, is likely to pull out of the coalition, triggering a general election; polls suggest that the opposition Labour Party would win such an election.

The coalition government will likely craft a less sweeping bill to reform the House of Lords, which it will submit to the House of Commons this fall.  While a more modest reform bill would be a disappointment to the Liberal Democrats (many of whom believe that their party has very little to show for its support of unpopular Conservative economic policies), the Liberal Democrats have no leverage.  While the Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote in the 2010 general election, the party's current level of support is down to about 10%.  (Liberal Democrat voters, who tend to be left of center, are far angrier than Conservative voters about the coalition government's austerity policies).  Accordingly, the Liberal Democrats cannot credibly threaten to leave the coalition and force the Conservatives to face the voters:

http://www.economist.com/node/21558582

The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, has approved a bill introduced only a week ago that would allow the Russian government to shut down certain offensive websites, or to require Russian internet service providers to block such websites.  As originally introduced, the bill would have allowed the government to shut down or block any website that contained "harmful information."  Following criticism of the bill by Russian search engine companies, as well as Russian language Wikipedia, the bill was amended to allow the government to shut down or block websites that offer specified types of offensive content, including material encouraging the use of drugs, information about how to commit suicide, and child pornography.  Critics of the bill, however, are concerned that, once the bill goes into effect, the government may seek court orders extending the scope of the bill.  (For example, it is not hard to imagine the Russian government seeking a court order shutting down or blocking a website that calls for unauthorized demonstrations; under legislation recently adopted by the Federal Assembly, there are severe penalties for organizing or participating in such demonstrations).

The bill will go to the upper house of the Federal Assembly, the Federation Council, for consideration.  If, as expected, the bill is approved by the Federation Council, it will be submitted to Russian President Vladimir Putin for signature:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18805039

Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of Mexico City today to protest the official results of last Sunday's Mexican presidential election.  Those results, announced following a recount of more than half the votes cast, had Enrique Peña Nieto of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) winning the election with 38.2% of the vote; Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) came in second with 31.6% of the vote.  López Obrador announced Friday that he would file a legal challenge to the official results; the apparent widespread use of supermarket gift cards to bribe Mexicans to vote for the PRI reportedly will form the basis of the challenge:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18758321

Last December, massive demonstrations broke out across Russia following blatant and widespread vote-rigging in Russia's parliamentary elections.  The election fraud benefited the United Russia party of Vladimir Putin (who has served off and on as Russia's president since 1999).  In March, Putin was elected to his third presidential term.  (Although Putin's share of the vote was inflated, he would have won the election had it been completely honest: Western media exit polls showed Putin winning a clear majority of the vote).

Since March, Putin has sought to silence his opponents.  The Russian Federal Assembly (the national legislature) has adopted harsh penalties for unauthorized demonstrations, and the apartments of opposition leaders have been raided.  Members of the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly) from Just Russia, a political party that was once strongly pro-Putin but which has grown increasingly critical of the regime, have been harassed:

http://www.economist.com/node/21558295

On Friday, the State Duma gave preliminary approval to a bill that would dramatically restrict the activities of non-governmental organizations that receive funds from other countries.  The bill is aimed at anti-election fraud and civil rights groups:

http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Russian-bill-curbing-foreign-funded-NGOs-advances-3689610.php

According to preliminary results released by Mexico's Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), Enrique Peña Nieto of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) won last Sunday's presidential election with approximately 38% of the vote; Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the progressive Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) came in second with roughly 32% of the vote.  Josefina Vázquez Mota of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) came in third with 25% of the vote -- a stinging defeat for the incumbent PAN president, Felipe Calderón.  The PRI, however, will not have a majority in either house of Mexico's Congress, and will have to rely on support from PAN legislators to enact its legislative agenda:

http://www.economist.com/node/21558285

There were widespread reports of vote buying and other irregularities during the election.  Indeed, 28% of the voters interviewed by one organization stated that they had been exposed to election bribery or coercion:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/04/mexico-elections-shadow-pena-nieto

Due to these irregularities, López Obrador has refused to concede defeat and has asked the IFE to conduct a complete ballot recount.  Yesterday, the IFE announced that it would recount 54% of the ballots cast in the election.

In 2006, the preliminary count had Calderón defeating López Obrador (then as now the candidate of the PRD) by only 0.3% of the vote; López Obrador asked for a complete recount (among other things, marked ballots were discovered in garbage dumps after the election). The IFE recounted about 9% of the ballots.  The IFE found irregularities in the balloting, but concluded (by extrapolating from the changes made as a result of its partial recount) that these irregularities did not change the overall result and declared Calderón the victor.  (The IFE's final count had Calderón defeating López Obrador by 0.58% of the vote). During and after the recount, López Obrador led massive street protests in Mexico City, while hundreds of thousands of his supporters occupied the City's central square and major arteries; these protests lasted for nearly two months. López Obrador has consistently maintained that he was robbed of victory in 2006, a view shared by most PRD loyalists (about one third of the Mexican electorate). While most international observers found the 2006 election free and fair (if not entirely clean), the view that the 2006 election was "stolen" is supported by the near-universal belief (both in Mexico and outside the country) that the PRI stole the 1988 presidential election from the PRD.

For the past decade, China has dramatically increased the resources available to its domestic security forces, and the power of its internal security chiefs.  China's budget for domestic security exceeds $110 billion -- more than what China acknowledges spending on national defense.  The head of China's internal security forces, Zhou Yongkang, enjoys a seat on the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Chinese Communist Party -- the nine-member body that establishes Chinese government policy on a day-to-day basis.  China's provincial police chiefs have also enjoyed significant power within the Chinese Communist Party.  Recent developments, however, suggest that the Party is beginning to rein in China's domestic security chiefs:

http://www.economist.com/node/21557760

In Britain (as in other countries with a parliamentary system of government), the Prime Minister and the members of his or her Cabinet (the Foreign Secretary, the Minister of Defence, etc.) are members of the national legislature (in Britain's case, they are members of the House of Commons, the elected lower house of Parliament).  The Prime Minister and the members of his or her Cabinet may only remain in office so long as they have the support of a majority of the members of the House of Commons.  Since World War II, one of Britain's two largest parties, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, has usually had a majority of the seats in the House of Commons; the Prime Minister has usually been the leader of the party with a majority of the seats in the House.  For this reason, most postwar prime ministers have not had to worry very much about suffering defeats on major pieces of legislation; they certainly have not had to negotiate with politicians from other parties about legislative initiatives (in a way that was once fairly routine in the United States).

No party currently has a majority of the seats in the House of Commons.  As a result, the party with the most seats, the Conservatives, has formed a coalition government with Britain's third-largest party, the Liberal-Democrats.  The leader of the Conservatives, David Cameron, is the Prime Minister; the leader of the Liberal-Democrats, Nicholas Clegg, is the Deputy Prime Minister.  Most of the other Cabinet positions are held by Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs), though a few are held by Liberal-Democrat MPs.  The Liberal-Democrats thus have an effective veto over the actions of the British Government; if they were to vote with the opposition Labour Party to defeat an important bill in the House of Commons (or simply to express their lack of confidence in Prime Minister Cameron), Cameron would have no choice but to resign, and ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and to conduct elections for a new House of Commons.  The Liberal-Democrats are understandably hesitant to do this at the moment, however; opinion polls suggest that they would lose most of their seats in the House of Commons if elections were held in the near future.

Disagreements between the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats have grown since the parties formed their coalition government two years ago.  One of their biggest disagreements is over reforming the House of Lords, the entirely unelected upper house of Parliament.  (Most of the current members of the House of Lords were appointed for life by the Queen, on the "advice" of whoever was the Prime Minister at the time; slightly more than 10% of the current members of the House of Lords inherited their positions).  The House of Lords has little political power; it has the power to delay but not to defeat most legislation, and its approval is not needed for most tax and spending bills.  But the persistence of an unelected legislative chamber (one that includes members who inherited their positions) is anomalous in a modern democracy.

Under a House of Lords reform proposal recently previewed by the coalition government, 80% of the members would be elected and 20% would be appointed.  An elected member of the new body would be limited to a single 15-year term.  The system by which members of the reformed body would be elected, moreover, would be likely to produce a house in which no party had a majority.  This has led to concerns within both the Conservative and Labour parties that, if a reformed House of Lords ever gained the power to block bills, the Liberal-Democrats would enjoy decisive power in British government:

http://www.economist.com/node/21557790