AHS Comparative Government

This evening, the British House of Commons handed Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg a stinging defeat, rejecting the coalition government's motion to authorize military action against Syria.  Thirty Conservative and nine Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament joined opposition Labour MPs to vote against intervention in Syria; another 31 Conservative and 14 Liberal Democrat MPs did not vote.  The refusal of dozens of Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to support their party leaders on a critical foreign policy issue leaves Cameron and Clegg severely weakened:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/29/cameron-british-attack-syria-mps

Forty years ago, a Prime Minister who lost a crucial vote -- one with far-reaching implications for Britain's relationship with its closest ally, the United States -- would have faced calls from his own party to resign.  Following tonight's vote, however, Conservative Party leaders were quick to claim that the Prime Minister -- technically speaking -- had lost only a consultative vote and, therefore, was not duty-bound to resign:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/30/syria-vote-david-cameron

Concerted action by teachers' organizations has forced the Mexican government to weaken a landmark education reform bill pending in the Mexican Congress.  Lawmakers have removed provisions in the legislation authorizing the federal Secretariat of Public Education to conduct regular performance evaluations of teachers and to dismiss underperforming teachers (or transfer them to administrative posts). 

The hiring and evaluation of teachers in Mexico is currently conducted by teachers' union officials.  In practice, this makes it very difficult to dismiss bad teachers in Mexico -- even in cases of chronic absenteeism or suspected substance abuse.  Indeed, competence is often not a consideration even in the hiring of teachers: aspiring teachers frequently inherit their positions from relatives or purchase their positions.

On the other hand, Mexico has a long tradition of filling public positions through political patronage.  Mexican teachers are likely concerned that, if tenure protections are weakened, they will be subject to dismissal every time an election changes the political party that controls the Secretariat of Public Education:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/americas/fighting-education-overhaul-thousands-of-teachers-disrupt-mexico-city.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

The Guardian is one of Britain’s most respected newspapers.  In June, it received and published materials leaked by Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, about the nature and extent of the surveillance conducted by the US and British governments on the private communications of people living in North America, Britain, continental Europe and Asia.

Yesterday, the editor-in-chief of The Guardian revealed that the British Government gave him a choice following the newspaper's publication of materials leaked by Snowden: surrender the leaked classified materials to the British government, destroy hard drives located in the UK containing the data, or face legal action banning further reporting of information concerning the surveillance activities of US and British government agencies.  (Such legal action would not be possible in the United States.  While people who leak classified information to the press may be prosecuted criminally, and while it is theoretically possible to prosecute newspapers for publishing classified material after the fact, government action to prevent the publication of material before the fact is generally precluded by the First Amendment).

The editors of The Guardian chose to destroy hard drives located in the United Kingdom containing data leaked by Snowden, while pointing out to the British government that other news media, outside the UK, have the same material; indeed, The Guardian itself has the same material in locations outside the UK. 

The New York Times reports this morning that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating JPMorgan Chase & Co., the financial services behemoth, for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  JPMorgan apparently won a number of highly lucrative contracts to provide services to Chinese state-owned enterprises after hiring the children of enterprise officials.

The Times also reports that Chinese author and publisher Yang Maodong, who writes under the name Guo Feixiong, has been arrested.  Yang, a well-known human rights campaigner, played an important role in the protests that broke out in January outside the offices of the Guangzhou newspaper, Southern Weekend (see blog post of 11 January 2013).  Those protests began when local Communist Party officials censored a Southern Weekend editorial; local officials managed to quiet the protests by agreeing not to censor Southern Weekend so long as its reporters and editors censored themselves in accordance with the unpublished but well-understood rules that govern the Chinese press.  Yang's arrest on potentially serious charges months after the protests ended is further evidence that the new administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping is aggressively cracking down on dissent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/world/asia/well-known-dissident-is-detained-in-southern-china.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

In Iran, Muslims (who comprise 99% of the population) are prohibited from manufacturing, selling and drinking alcohol.  Iranian Muslims who use alcohol are punished severely.  An Iranian convicted for the first time of drinking alcohol will typically receive 70 to 80 lashes; persistent offenders (three or more convictions for drinking alcohol) are sometimes hanged.

At the same time, Iran has remarkably progressive policies on hard drugs.  (Iran has a long border with Afghanistan and has the world's highest rate of heroin addiction; it also has a growing problem with crystal methamphetamine addiction).  While drug traffickers are hanged, heroin addicts have access to needle-exchange programs (to prevent HIV transmission) and to world-class treatment facilities:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21583717-why-so-many-young-iranians-are-hooked-hard-drugs-other-religion

On Monday, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed amending the Mexican Constitution to permit foreign companies to participate in Mexico's oil and electric power industries.  President Peña Nieto's proposal was short on specifics: the precise terms on which foreign multinationals would be able to participate in those sectors would be left to enabling legislation to be enacted later by the Mexican Congress.

While Peña Nieto was careful to phrase his proposal in the traditional language of Mexican economic nationalism, the prospect that American oil companies might one day profit from the production and refining of Mexican oil, or the generation of electricity in Mexico, is highly controversial: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the presidential candidate of the left-of-center Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) in last year's presidential election, denounced Peña Nieto's proposal and promised to campaign against it.  Peña Nieto's proposal, moreover, faces potential opposition from nationalist members of his own centrist Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI):

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21583664-government-has-made-promising-start-it-may-struggle-bring-historic-reform

Faced with a weakening economy and a slump in public support, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to bolster his political fortunes by pandering to xenophobic and intolerant elements in Russian society.  Non-governmental organizations (e.g., human rights and environmental groups) that receive support from outside Russia must now disclose that they are "foreign agents" (a term with strong negative connotations in Russia) on all of their literature.  Americans are now prohibited from adopting Russian orphans (forcing thousands of Russian children, particularly children with disabilities, to languish in Russian orphanages).  Finally, the Putin government has launched a campaign against gay people, a group that is reviled by most Russians.

In June, the Russian Federal Assembly adopted a vaguely-worded law prohibiting "homosexual propaganda."  The law -- justified (illogically) as a measure that will help prevent Russian children from becoming gay -- effectively makes it illegal for Russians to advocate publicly for gay equality, let alone same-sex marriage.  (To this extent, the law violates the freedom of speech guarantees of the Russian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights).  The Russian State Duma (the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly) has also adopted other anti-gay legal measures, and is considering a bill that would remove children from families headed by same-gender parents.

The government's homophobic campaign has led to a marked increase in hate violence.  Gay rights supporters (both gay and straight) have been beaten in public in broad daylight; teenagers perceived to be gay have been savagely beaten by groups of adult men.

Launching a campaign against an unpopular minority for political purposes has a long and ugly history -- in Russia and in many other countries.  The current anti-gay campaign in Russia, however, is remarkable for its cynicism.  Putin, after all, has been the most powerful person in Russia for over a decade; if he truly believed that there is a "gay threat" to Russia, he'd have supported anti-gay measures from the start.  (In contrast, anti-Roma prejudice and anti-Semitism were defining elements of Nazi ideology; Germany adopted anti-Roma measures soon after Hitler became Chancellor and the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws two years later).  The anti-gay campaign in Russia is simply a squalid attempt by an increasingly unpopular regime to shore up its support:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/anti-gay-laws-russia

This week's issue of The Economist includes an analysis of the problems confronting Petróleos Mexicanos ("Pemex"), Mexico's government-owned oil and natural gas monopoly.  While The Economist has a strong ideological bias against the public ownership of industry, its analysis of Pemex is widely accepted in at least one crucial aspect.  For more than 70 years, the Mexican government has relied on Pemex revenues to finance a substantial (if declining) share of government expenditures.  This has deprived Pemex of much of the capital it now needs to locate and develop new sources of oil and natural gas, and to modernize its oil refineries.  This capital shortage has the current Mexican government considering what once would have been unthinkable -- amending Mexico's constitution to allow Pemex to form joint venture agreements with foreign multinational oil companies to explore and develop new fossil fuels sources in Mexico:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21583253-even-if-government-plucks-up-courage-reform-it-pemex-will-be-hard-fix-unfixable

The British economy is beginning to grow again, after a long period of recession and stagnation that began with the 2008 global financial crisis.  For half the population, however, living standards have fallen sharply -- and are continuing to fall:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21583307-growth-back-many-britons-it-does-not-feel-it-squeezing-hourglass

For the past 35 years, the Chinese economy has grown at an average rate of nearly 10% a year.  Living standards have improved dramatically for most Chinese citizens, and China now has the world's second largest economy.  But China's rapid industrialization and urbanization have come at a high cost: China is severely polluted.  Air pollution reduces average life expectancy in northern China by more than five years.  Northern China faces serious water shortages, and China loses one million acres of farmland each year to desertification.  Soil contamination from mining and industry is so widespread and severe that Chinese farm products are often unsafe to eat.  And China has become the world's leading greenhouse gas producer, responsible for nearly a third of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

This week, The Economist takes a close look at China's environmental problems, and the efforts being made by the Chinese government to address them:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

The Economist reports this week that "Nigeria lost revenues worth $10.9 billion to oil theft in 2009-11" (emphasis added). 

"The World This Week."  The Economist 3 Aug. 2013: 8. Print. 

Oil theft in Nigeria, a country of 162.5 million people, thus cost the country approximately $67 per person between 2009 and 2011.  That's an impressive sum: according to the World Bank, 78.5% of the population of Nigeria lived on less than (the equivalent of) $2 per day in 2011.

"Poverty Headcount Ratio at $2 a Day (PPP)."  The World Bank.  World Bank Development Research Group 2013.  Web.  4 Aug. 2013.

The Hojjat-al-Islam Hassan Rouhani was sworn in today as president of Iran.  In his inaugural address, Rouhani called upon the United States and its allies to lift the economic sanctions they have imposed against Iran and to treat Iran with the respect due a sovereign state:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23565996

Rouhani faces a number of challenges.  Iran remains economically and diplomatically isolated, a result of its unwillingness to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities.  The economy is shrinking, and is bedeviled by high unemployment and skyrocketing inflation.  The reformist opposition, though silenced, mistrusts both Rouhani and Iran's Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Rouhani's greatest challenge, however, will be to craft solutions to these problems that will be acceptable to Khamenei, who remains the most powerful man in Iran's complex political system:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22929225

The new president is a mid-level Shi'ite cleric and lawyer.  He has held a number of positions in the Iranian government since the 1979 revolution; from 2003 to 2005, he served as Iran's chief negotiator with the West over Iran's nuclear program:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22886729

On Sunday, 4 August, Hassan Rouhani will be inaugurated president of Iran.  Rouhani's election represents a victory for pragmatic conservatives among Iran's ruling elite -- insiders who support Iran's theocratic system of government but who were troubled by the severity of the repression used to end the widespread demonstrations that followed the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential election.

Rouhani has suggested that he favors easing internet censorship in Iran.  He also reportedly supports relaxing some of the Iranian government's tight controls on public morality.  Critically, Rouhani is said to favor releasing Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two reformist candidates for president in 2009.  (Mousavi and Karroubi have been under house arrest since demonstrations rocked Iran in 2009 following their public allegations that Ahmadinejad's electoral victory had been procured by fraud).

At the same time, Rouhani's election does not presage a significant change in Iran's system of government.  In a piece posted today on Al-Jazeera, two American academics argue to the contrary -- that Rouhani's election demonstrates that "the Islamic Republic's core project of integrating Islamic governance with participatory politics continues to command the support of most Iranians living in their country."

Leverett, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.  "Rouhani's Inauguration and the West's Strategic Suicide."  Al-Jazeera 1 August 2013: n.pag.  Web.  1 August 2013.

In the past decade, the number of people executed each year in China has fallen by three-quarters.  Nonetheless, with less than one-fifth of the world's population, China executes about four times as many people as the rest of the world combined (not counting Egypt and Syria):

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21582557-most-worlds-sharp-decline-executions-can-be-credited-china-strike-less-hard