AHS Comparative Government

China's university students are more enthusiastic than ever about applying to join the Chinese Communist Party.  This likely reflects the fact that, in China, the best jobs in government and in state-owned enterprises are reserved for Party members.  Interestingly, Party membership does not appear to be a significant advantage for recent university graduates looking for their first jobs:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21596994-party-membership-does-not-necessarily-mean-better-job-prospects-rushing-join

Nigeria's economic development has long been hindered by a lack of adequate and reliable electric power.  South Africa, a country with a third as many people as Nigeria, produces ten times as much electricity.  Since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, Nigerian presidents have argued that only private capital can develop the increased power generation, transmission and distribution capacity that Nigeria requires and, therefore, that Nigeria's electric power industry must be liberalized.

Reform of Nigeria's power industry, however, foundered under former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar'Adua.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, however, the state-owned electricity monopoly was broken up into 17 separate companies; in 2013, all but two of those companies were sold to private investors.  While the Nigerian federal government continues to own ten major power generation facilities, it is preparing to sell its interest in those facilities.

The new owners of Nigeria's power industry, many of which are multinational corporations, have been given performance targets to meet.  But only time will tell whether privatization results in improved access to electric power on the part of Nigerian businesses and ordinary Nigerians.

Environmental protests have increased dramatically in China in recent years.  Last week, farmers in rural Yunnan province, resentful that pollution from a metalwork factory was destroying their likelihoods, sought a meeting with the factory's manager.  When the manager refused to meet with them, the farmers attacked the factory, destroying equipment, and damaging offices and worker dormitories:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/chinese-villagers-factory-polluting-police-baha-attack

For the past several months, violence in the Mexican state of Michoacán between the Knights Templar drug gang and a number of citizen "self-defense" militias has threatened to spill out of control.  Last Saturday, thousands of Mexican federal troops and police officers escorted unarmed members of the vigilante groups into Apatzingan, the stronghold of the Knights Templar, and declared the city "liberated" from drug cartel control.

The deployment of Mexican federal forces to Michoacán has been accompanied by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's appointment of an administration for the state that effectively parallels Michoacán's elected government.  The Economist notes that the governance of a Mexican state by administrators responsible to the President of Mexico would not have been unusual in the long era during which the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) dominated Mexican politics, but has no precedent in modern, democratic Mexico.  Then again, President Peña Nieto -- the first PRI president following 12 years of rule by the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) -- wrote his thesis at Panamerican University on presidencialismo in Mexican history:

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21596516-enrique-pe-nieto-dusts-old-manual-imposing-order-all-presidents-men

The Economist reports this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin is tightening his control over Russia's broadcast media:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21596580-beyond-spectacle-sochi-olympics-crackdown-russias-media-dreams-about-russia

The Chinese Communist Party maintains five leadership academies at which Party members are trained in the skills they will need to succeed as public officials.  One crucial subject studied at the leadership academies is public relations.  In particular, China's future leaders are taught how to handle the country's increasingly assertive press:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21595925-communist-party-training-school-functionaries-learn-how-handle-more-aggressive-news

Since assuming power in late 1999, Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the country's oil and natural gas revenues to restore the living standards of ordinary Russians; those living standards declined dramatically in the years following the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  The restoration of living standards -- and the growth of an affluent middle class in Moscow and St. Petersburg -- help account for Putin's popularity during his first two full terms as president (from 2000 to 2008).

The Russian oil and natural gas boom, however, has slowly petered out; living standards, while much better than they were in the '90s, are no longer rising rapidly.  This is because relatively little of the rent generated by oil and natural gas sales over the past 15 years has been invested in infrastructure projects and industrial modernization -- and because so much of that rent has been siphoned off by siloviki (officials who serve or previously served in the security services) and businessmen with close connections to those officials.

In the past several years, Putin has sought to remain popular through a mix of nationalist rhetoric and intolerant (but politically popular) measures.  He has also increased the level of repression directed at his opponents:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21595428-conspicuous-dazzle-games-masks-country-and-president-deepening-trouble-sochi