AHS Comparative Government

Jeremy Corbyn has been reelected leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, securing victory by a greater margin than he enjoyed when he was first elected last year.  While Corbyn remains popular with Labour Party members, he is not respected by his fellow Labour MPs.  In June, 172 of Labour's 229 MPs voted that they had "no confidence" in Corbyn's leadership of the Party; only 40 Labour MPs voted that they had confidence in his leadership.

Corbyn's reelection raises some interesting questions.  Will the Labour MPs who resigned this summer from the "shadow cabinet" return to the Labour front bench?  Will Corbyn try to remove his strongest critics within the Party from Parliament by backing efforts to deselect them as Labour Party parliamentary candidates in the 2020 election?

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37461219

Since 1978, China has enjoyed "the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history."  As a result, "more than 800 million people [have been lifted] out of poverty." ("China Overview." The World Bank. The World Bank Group 2016. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.)

China's economic expansion has been fueled by coal.  Burning coal to generate electricity, however, has serious environmental consequences.  China's cities are badly polluted; one recent study concluded that 1.6 million people die prematurely in China each year as a result of air pollution.  (Amos, Jonathan. "Polluted Air Causes 5.5 Million Deaths a Year New Research Says." BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation 13 Feb. 2016. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.)  Coal consumption, moreover, generates greenhouse gasses and contributes significantly to global climate change.

Understandably, the Chinese government is trying to reduce the country's coal consumption.  To that end, it is building a number of new nuclear power plants.  But the Chinese public, well aware of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, is increasingly wary of atomic energy:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21707576-china-wants-its-nuclear-industry-grow-dauntingly-fast-glowing-future

Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party won more than three quarters of the seats in Sunday's elections for the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly.  United Russia won 54.28% of the vote for the 225 seats elected by proportional representation; the Communist Party came in second in proportional representation balloting, with 13.45% of the vote.  Voter turnout in the election was 48% -- the lowest turnout for a national election since the end of the Soviet era.  In Moscow, only 35% of the electorate bothered to vote:

Russians head to the polls today to elect the 450 members of the State Duma, the lower, directly-elected house of the Russian Federal Assembly.  "Irregularities" in the last State Duma elections in 2011 helped President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party win a narrow majority of the seats -- and resulted in massive protest demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Today's election should entail fewer irregularities, largely because they are unnecessary.  Putin's adoption of a more assertive foreign policy (seizing the Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, "protecting" the Russian speaking residents of eastern Ukraine from the "fascist" Ukrainian government, defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from the "terrorists" trying to overthrow him) is popular with the public.  Moreover, in the past five years, Putin has consolidated his control of the Russian press; at the same time, the Russian Federal Assembly has enacted legislation effectively banning demonstrations and shutting down most Russian civil rights and civil liberties organizations.  (The respected Levada Center, Russia's leading polling organization, was effectively closed down by government decree earlier this month).  The replacement of Russia's proportional representation electoral system with an electoral system in which some State Duma members will be elected by proportional representation and others will be elected by plurality in single-member districts may also help United Russia win the majority of the seats in the Duma in today's election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/world/europe/kremlin-says-it-wants-a-spotless-election-but-locally-it-is-marred.html?ref=world

The British Labour Party once embodied the aspirations of millions of British workers and their families.  It established a comprehensive welfare state, with cradle-to-grave social services, when it governed the country in the late 1940s; a more centrist Labour Government dramatically increased funding for health care and education at the turn of this century.

Today, the Labour Party is badly divided.  It has no plausible hope of governing the United Kingdom before 2025.  Its weakness and internal conflicts are also preventing it from effectively fulfilling its essential role as Britain's main opposition party.

An article in The Economist argues that the Labour Party, and Britain, would be better off if the Party avoided splitting in two; it also outlines the hard work that Party moderates will have to do to reestablish the Labour Party as a party of government:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21707199-how-britains-left-got-its-crisisand-how-it-can-get-out-salvaging-jerusalem

This week's issue of The Economist includes a useful analysis of how social change is affecting China's uneasy political control of Tibet:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21707220-tibetans-culture-changing-their-own-will-well-force-plateau-unpacified

Over two months ago, Britons voted to leave the EU.  So far, little has changed.  Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that the United Kingdom will not give formal notice that it is withdrawing from the EU this year; there are rumors that Britain may not give such notice next year, either.  Once Britain formally notifies the EU that it intends to withdraw, it will have only two years to negotiate the terms of that withdrawal with the 27 other members of the EU.  At the same time, Britain will have to negotiate trade agreements with every other country in the world -- all of Britain's current trade agreements are agreements made between the EU and other countries.  Britain is simply not yet prepared to renegotiate its place in Europe (there are EU agreements on dozens of subjects other than trade), and its terms of trade with the rest of the world, in a two-year period.

The continuing delay in beginning withdrawal negotiations has led to intense speculation about the likely terms of Britain's post-withdrawal relationship with the EU.  Will British exporters continue to enjoy tariff-free access to markets in other European countries, and will British banks continue to be able to conduct operations throughout the continent?  If so, then Britain will likely have to continue to accept immigrants from eastern Europe and abide by EU business regulations (which the British government will no longer have any say in making).  Or will Britain sacrifice the unhindered access its exporters and banks enjoy to European markets in order to prevent further European immigration to Britain and in order to ignore EU business regulations?  It seems that the Brexit vote didn't resolve these issues; it merely changed the terms of the debate.  The longer the uncertainty persists, moreover, the greater the damage is likely be to the British economy -- investors are hesitant to invest in Britain until its trading relationship with the rest of the world is sorted out:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21706470-theresa-mays-ministers-are-carefully-avoiding-specific-answers-she-systematically

One of the most important reasons that a majority of Britons voted to withdraw from the EU was to prevent further immigration to the UK from eastern Europe.  (Indeed, many Brexit voters hoped that withdrawal from the European Union would result in the departure of most European immigrants from the United Kingdom).  The nasty anti-immigrant tone of the campaign, and the victory of the "leave Europe" side (suggesting that many voters hold anti-immigrant views, even if they don't express them publicly), has emboldened violent xenophobes in Britain.  Anti-immigrant attacks have soared since the referendum:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21706477-rancid-post-referendum-rise-bearing-brunt

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has fired his Finance Minister, Luis Videgaray.  Videgaray designed many of the reforms enacted in the early years of Peña Nieto's term, including legislation opening the Mexican television and telecommunications sectors to greater competition, and a constitutional amendment permitting privately owned companies, including foreign-owned companies, to compete in Mexico's petroleum, natural gas and electric power generation industries.  Videgaray, however, persuaded Peña Nieto to meet with US Presidential candidate Donald Trump -- a move criticized by politicians across the Mexican political spectrum.  Videgaray's economic policies have also drawn increasing criticism, as the peso has fallen against the dollar (resulting in increased prices in Mexico for imports from the US).

Videgaray's departure almost certainly ends his chances of becoming the nominee of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI) in Mexico's 2018 presidential election.  Under Mexico's constitution, Peña Nieto, the PRI's successful presidential candidate in 2012, is limited to one six-year term:

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21706547-donald-trumps-visit-has-upended-mexican-politics-cost-unwanted-guest

In elections held last week for the Hong Kong Legislative Council, candidates favoring greater democracy in the territory won 55% of the vote, and 30 of the 70 seats on the Council.  The Chinese government's unwillingness to make concessions to pro-democracy protesters in September 2014, and its arrest this year of five Hong Kong booksellers for selling materials critical of Chinese government officials, has apparently radicalized a significant segment of the Hong Kong electorate: candidates favoring greater independence for Hong Kong from China won 20% of the vote, and 6 of the seats on the Council:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21706442-new-front-opens-chinas-struggle-against-separatism-city-scares-china

In China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 45.2% of the population is Uyghur, while 40.6% of the population is Han Chinese. The Uyghurs are a Central Asian ethnic group. They speak a Turkic language; most practice Sufi Islam (a branch of Sunni Islam). Several Uyghur separatist groups have operated in Xinjiang in recent years; some have carried out acts of violence against Chinese officials and Chinese troops stationed in the region. In July 2009, mobs of Uyghurs attacked Han Chinese residents of Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital; several days later, gangs of Han Chinese attacked Uyghur Urumqi residents. According to the Chinese government, 197 people were killed in the Urumqi riots; Uyghur exile groups contend that the actual death toll was far higher.

In recent decades, the Chinese government has resettled hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese in Xinjiang, in order to tie the region more closely to the rest of China. (Sixty years ago, less than 10% of the population of Xinjiang was Han Chinese). In many parts of Xinjiang, Han Chinese residents live in settlements separate from the towns and villages where the Uyghurs (and other residents of Central Asian ancestry) live. The Han settlements have their own schools, hospitals, police forces and courts; each settlement also has its own militia, which helps ensure the authority of the Chinese government in the region.

In May 2013, The Economist warned that the establishment and growth of Han settlements in Xinjiang, and the segregation of Han Chinese from Uyghurs in the region, was stoking resentment and separatist agitation among Xinjiang's Uyghur population.  That analysis has been borne out as terrorist attacks by Uyghur separatists against Han Chinese civilians, in Xinjiang and in other places in China, have become more common.  Ham-handed efforts by the Chinese government to suppress the growing violence, such as trying to prevent Muslim Xinjiang residents from fasting during Ramadan, have only added fuel to the fire.

This week, the Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, was removed from his post.  His replacement, Chen Quanguo, is well used to governing a restless part of China with a non-Han Chinese majority.  Until his appointment, Chen was the Communist Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21706327-leader-troubled-western-province-has-been-replaced-he-will-not-be-missed-its-ethnic

At the beginning of 2015, Boko Haram, a violent jihadi group, controlled an area in northeastern Nigeria the size of Belgium.  Since then, Nigerian forces have retaken most of the towns in the region, though Boko Haram continues to conduct suicide attacks in the area; moreover, as Boko Haram retreated, it left behind landmines throughout the region.