AHS Comparative Government

This week's issue of The Economist includes an excellent piece on Boko Haram, a Muslim extremist group that has launched an anti-government insurgency in northern Nigeria. The article examines the poverty and corruption in Nigeria's Borno state (Nigeria is a federal republic) that spawned Boko Haram, and the brutality of the Borno government that transformed an apolitical religious movement into a terrorist organization.  The article concludes that efforts to defeat Boko Haram militarily are not succeeding; negotiations with relatively moderate elements within Boko Haram, and wholesale reform in northern Nigeria, may be necessary for the region to be spared years of turmoil:

http://www.economist.com/node/21563751

Bo Xilai, the former Chinese Communist Party Secretary in Chongqing, has been expelled from the Party and will face criminal prosecution for, among other things, bribery and sexual misconduct.  Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was found guilty in August of murdering a British businessman with whom the Bo family had a long-standing financial relationship; while Gu was sentenced to death, imposition of the sentence was suspended.  (See blog post of 25 August).  Bo was once a rising star in the Party.  The son of a revolutionary hero, Bo was a leader of the Party's neo-Maoist wing and, until last April, a member of the Party's Political Bureau (Politburo) -- the 24 men who make the key policy decisions in China.  Indeed, prior to his suspension from the Politburo, Bo was widely expected to be named to the Standing Committee of the Politburo (the group of nine men who run China on a day-to-day basis) at this fall's Party Congress:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-28/bo-xilai-is-expelled-from-communist-party-referred-to-judiciary#p1

According to The Economist, it is possible for a farmer in a small Chinese village to fight city hall:

http://www.economist.com/node/21563780

Earlier this month, the Russian State Duma (the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, or parliament) vote to expel Gennady Gudkov from the Duma.  Gudkov, a former KGB colonel (the KGB was the secret police bureau of the USSR), was a member of the Duma for the opposition A Just Russia party; in recent years, he has become an increasingly vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Gudkov may have been punished for what many in the Putin regime likely consider his betrayal of the regime.  Putin and many of those in top positions in his government served in the KGB; A Just Russia, moreover, was originally a "phony" opposition party (a party created by Putin insiders to attract votes from citizens with more left-wing views than those espoused by Putin's party, United Russia, but which would invariably support Putin).

Gudkov was expelled from the Duma for profiting from business activities while serving as a member of the Duma.  While Duma members are not allowed to profit from business activities, most do so; Gudkkov appears to have been singled out for removal in retaliation for his support for the protest demonstrations that have taken place in Russia since last December's Duma elections (believed by many Russians to have been rigged to favor United Russia):

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/duma-kicks-out-kremlin-critic/468176.html

While Gudkov was expelled from the State Duma, Andrei Lugovoi of the (neo-fascist) Liberal Democratic Party remains a State Duma member.  Lugovoi, a former KGB agent, is wanted in Britain for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.  (Litvinenko, a former KGB officer living in exile in London, was a strong critic of the Putin regime.  Lugovoi allegedly poisoned him with a radioactive isotope, polonium-210).

An article in this week's issue of The Economist maintains that the Chinese authorities encourage and manipulate public nationalistic sentiment in order to divert demands for political reform.  The article also suggests that supporters of Chinese President Hu Jintao may have stoked the recent anti-Japanese protests in China in order to prevent Xi Jinping, who is likely to succeed Hu as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party later this fall and as President of the People's Republic of China in the spring, from also replacing Hu as head of China's Central Military Commission (i.e., as commander-in-chief of China's military):

http://www.economist.com/node/21563301

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the leader of Britain's Liberal-Democrat Party, spoke yesterday at the Party's annual conference.  The Party's rank-and-file are unhappy: Clegg and many other Liberal-Democrat MPs supported the coalition government's bill increasing tuition at English universities (despite promising during the last election campaign to oppose tuition hikes).  Moreover, the coalition government's plans to reform the House of Lords have been withdrawn in the face of backbench Conservative opposition; House of Lords reform is a key goal of the Liberal-Democrats.

In his speech, Clegg reaffirmed his commitment that the Liberal-Democrats would remain in coalition with the Conservatives for the five-year life of the Parliament, but hinted that the Party would be willing to join a Labour-led coalition government if the Labour Party secured a plurality but not a majority of seats in the House of Commons at the next general election.  Clegg also warned his Conservative partners that the Liberal-Democrats would refuse to support further public spending cuts unless the House of Commons enacted a Liberal-Democrat proposal for a tax on wealth (a 1% annual tax on houses worth more than £2 million):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19676263

For one half hour every Wednesday, the Prime Minister of the UK answers questions put to him by other Members of Parliament. The Leader of the Opposition is usually the only MP allowed to ask follow-up questions.  In this session last January, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron was in fine form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x1oUCFF7UQ

An article in this week's issue of The Economist examines the persistent and growing gulf between the south and north of England.  The south is more affluent than the north, and enjoys lower rates of unemployment; much of the north has never recovered from the loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 1980s.  The north is more dependent on public sector employment and on social services than the south; the British Government's cuts in spending, therefore, have had a far harsher effect on economic conditions in northern England than in southern England.  This, of course, has significant implications for British politics:

http://www.economist.com/node/21562938

Tens of thousands of Muscovites demonstrated yesterday against the Russian government's heavy-handed efforts to silence protests; these efforts include the adoption of new laws imposing tough sanctions on unauthorized demonstrations, the prosecution of protest leaders on what appear to be trumped-up charges and the sentencing of three feminist punk musicians to two-year jail terms for disrupting services at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior.  The demonstration was the first sizable protest in Moscow in three months; for the first time since large-scale anti-regime protests broke out last December (following the announcement of apparently fraudulent State Duma election results), large numbers of Communists participated in an anti-government demonstration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/world/europe/anti-putin-protesters-march-in-moscow-russia.html?ref=europe

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become leader of the Chinese Communist Party later this fall and President of the People's Republic of China this spring, appeared in public yesterday for the first time in several weeks.   Xi's unexplained absence, and China's harder line in its  diplomatic dispute with Japan over the uninhabited Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands (believed to be located near submarine oil reserves), have led observers to speculate that a behind the scenes power struggle may be taking place within the Party:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/world/asia/xi-jinping-returns-amid-tumult-in-china.html?_r=1&ref=world

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping is widely expected to succeed Hu Jintao as the Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party at a Party Congress this autumn; he is also expected to succeed Hu as President of the People's Republic of China this spring at a meeting of the National People's Congress.  Xi, however, has not been seen in public in over a week, and has cancelled meetings with foreign dignitaries, including US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.  In a year marked by Party infighting and a series of embarrassing Party scandals, Xi's absence has caused a stir:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/world/asia/xi-jinping-chinas-presumptive-new-leader-mysteriously-absent.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world

The Chinese government is believed to employ as many as 50,000 people to censor the internet.  Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are permanently blocked; on various occasions, the Chinese government has also blocked access to Google and to the websites of The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and PBS. The Chinese government, moreover, has long sought to identify and punish Chinese citizens it believes to be "inciting subversion" online.  In January 2010, Google discovered that hackers based in China had hacked the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists; while Google stopped short of accusing the Chinese government of the hacking, Google's response -- announcing that it would no longer cooperate with the Chinese government in censoring Google search results -- suggested that Google held the Chinese authorities responsible.

Over the years, however, American companies have voluntarily cooperated with the Chinese government in its efforts to censor the internet and to identify and punish online dissidents.  American companies have identified pro-democracy internet forum organizers and turned over the email messages of dissidents (Yahoo), designed technology for the Chinese government that allowed it to censor the internet and to keep tabs on members of the banned Falun Gong religious sect (Cisco), shut down a pro-democracy blog (Microsoft) and censored search engine results (Google).  As American companies have become increasingly reluctant to do these things, Chinese companies have taken their place:

http://www.economist.com/node/21562247

Production of electricity in Nigeria has long lagged behind both the rapid growth in the country's electricity needs and the growth in power production in other less developed countries.  In his 2011 reelection campaign, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan proposed privatizing most of the Nigerian power industry (i.e., selling off state-owned electricity generation and electricity distribution companies to private investors); Jonathan argued that only private investors had the billions of dollars in investment capital needed to expand Nigerian electricity production rapidly.  Jonathan's plans, however, have hit a number of snags; this week, The Economist explains why privatization of the Nigerian power industry has foundered:

http://www.economist.com/node/21562246

The Chinese Communist Party runs a network of prisons that are used to punish Party members for corruption (or for disagreeing too vehemently or too publicly with Party policy).  Party members who run afoul of the Party's Central Discipline Inspection Commission may be held at one of the Party's prisons without being charged with a crime or put on trial; this saves the Party the embarrassment of publicly accusing one of its own of misconduct:

http://www.economist.com/node/21561895

China also continues to operate "re-education" (i.e., labor) camps.  In China, the police may order someone detained for up to four years in a labor camp without trial.  As a result, tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who have never been convicted of criminal activity toil in such camps:

http://www.economist.com/node/21561937

Ernesto Zedillo was the President of Mexico from 1994 to 2000.  Although he was a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Zedillo instituted political reforms that helped to end the PRI's 71 years of one-party rule.  Zedillo now teaches at Yale University.  He has been sued in Connecticut by lawyers claiming to represent survivors of a 1997 massacre of indigenous villagers in Chiapas, the southernmost and poorest state in Mexico. The lawsuit alleges that Zedillo was responsible for the massacre.

There are a number of curious features of the litigation.  One of the most peculiar is that the lawyers suing Zedillo are not human rights lawyers but commercial litigators with ties to Carlos Salinas, Zedillo's predecessor as President of Mexico.  Salinas is from a different faction of the PRI -- one that has never completely reconciled itself to Zedillo's reforms.  (Mexican President-Elect Enrique Peña Nieto has close ties to the Salinas faction of the PRI).   In Mexico, Salinas is universally believed to have stolen the 1988 election that made him president; he is also widely regarded as financially corrupt.  This week's issue of The Economist includes an article that argues that the lawsuit against Zedillo has been brought by the Salinas faction of the PRI, to pay Zedillo back both for agreeing to reforms that helped to end the PRI's control of Mexico and for prosecuting Carlos Salinas's brother on corruption charges:

http://www.economist.com/node/21561904

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long enjoyed the support of many Russians with strongly nationalist views, especially those affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.  But many Russian ultra-nationalists -- especially those with strongly racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attitudes -- dislike Putin; they believe that he has allowed unlimited immigration to Russia from such former Soviet republics as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  Politically, these ultra-nationalists tend to support the Liberal-Democratic Party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky.  (Despite its name, the Russian Liberal-Democratic Party is an neo-fascist party.)  Many of the ultra-nationalists are also dangerously violent:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19434795