AHS Comparative Government

One week ago, suspected Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 100 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria. The mass kidnapping was similar to Boko Haram's seizure of more than 300 girls from a school in the same region in 2014. Although Boko Haram no longer controls a sizable portion of northeastern Nigeria, it appears to be able to conduct terrorist operations in the region at will:

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/world/africa/nigeria-kidnapping-girls-dapchi-chilbok.html

The Chinese Communist Party announced Sunday that it supports a proposal to amend the Chinese Constitution to abolish term limits for the offices of President and Vice President. Such an amendment would clear the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping, due to be elected to a second term at a meeting of the National People's Congress in March, to serve additional terms beginning in 2023:

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/02/26/world/asia/ap-as-china-politics-.html

Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian reality television star with a privileged background and close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is running against Putin in next month's presidential election. Is she sincere in wanting to expand the limits of acceptable political discourse in Russia? Or is her candidacy merely an effort to divert attention from the fact that the most serious potential challenger to Putin, Alexei Navalny, has been barred from running -- and to undermine Navalny's call for Russians to boycott the election? Irrespective of Sobchak's intentions, the principal effect of her candidacy may be to lend a veneer of democratic legitimacy to Putin's inevitable victory:

https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21736541-unintended-puff-mr-putin-russian-tv-star-ksenia-sobchaks-presidential-campaign

Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian Sociologist who headed the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, died Friday in Tehran's Evin prison. Seved-Emami, who was a citizen of both Iran and Canada, was being held on espionage charges. Iranian authorities contend that Seved-Emami committed suicide; both Seved-Emami's family and the Iran Sociology Association question this claim. According to Iranian authorities, two other prisoners -- both of whom were arrested in the country's recent wave of anti-government protests -- have committed suicide in prison in recent weeks:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43025356

When Great Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the Chinese government promised that Hong Kong residents would continue to enjoy the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate that they had enjoyed under British rule. The Chinese government also promised to introduce fully democratic procedures for electing the Legislative Council that governs the city, and for selecting the City’s Chief Executive.

In recent years, however, the Chinese government has restricted some of the freedoms that Hong Kongers have traditionally enjoyed (though Hong Kong residents still enjoy far greater freedoms than other Chinese citizens); the Chinese government has also made it clear that it has no intention of introducing procedures for selecting the city’s Legislative Council and Chief Executive that are “democratic” in the Western sense of the term. As a result, many young Hong Kongers have begun to agitate for greater autonomy for Hong Kong; a few have even begun to call for Hong Kong’s independence from China.

Anson Chan, the Chief Secretary of Hong Kong from 1993 to 2001, recently discussed the state of freedom in Hong Kong in a presentation to the Asia Society in New York. Chan contended that "the rule of law, basic rights and freedoms, particularly freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, [and] freedom of religion, ... [and] the independence of the judiciary ... are under pressure" in Hong Kong, and concluded that the Chinese government has, in fact, violated the 1984 agreement between China and Britain that led to the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997:

https://asiasociety.org/video/hong-kongs-vanishing-autonomy?page=2

As if to prove Chan's point, Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal made it clear last week that, in the future, stiff sentences will be handed out to Hong Kongers who engage in civil disobedience to advocate the establishment of fully democratic procedures for selecting the city's government. At the same time, the government of Hong Kong has disqualified candidates for office who favor greater autonomy for the city:

https://www.economist.com/news/china/21736567-candidate-who-espouses-self-determination-territory-barred-standing-its

A government is legitimate if the people it governs believe that it has the moral right to govern them. In the West, political democracy is a key source of legitimacy: people believe that their government has the right to govern them because they chose its members and because they can hold those members accountable for their decisions at the next election. But other things -- social and economic progress, nationalism, and political and religious ideology -- can serve as the basis of a system of government's legitimacy. In 19th century Russia, the Orthodox Church played a critical role in persuading Russians that they were morally obligated to obey the Tsar. Today, the Orthodox Church plays an important role in persuading Russians to support the political system established by Russian President Vladimir Putin:

According to The Economist, neither British Prime Minister Theresa May, nor her government, nor the ruling Conservative Party, has a clear idea what Britain's relationship with the European Union should be when Britain leaves the EU. While most British political leaders agree that there should be a transitional period in which the status quo largely prevails, there is no agreement within the Conservative Party on what Britain's short-term, transitional relationship with the EU should be, let alone on Britain's long-term trade relationship with the EU.

The British economy has done fairly well since the Brexit referendum. Firms in some industries have moved operations to countries that will remain in the EU, leading to job losses in those industries. However, the fall in the value of the pound in the weeks that followed the referendum has helped British exporters sell more goods overseas, leading to job gains elsewhere in the economy. But if Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 without an agreement maintaining the status quo for several years, and at least the outline of a long-term trade deal with the EU, the British economy could suffer serious damage:

https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21736156-government-under-fire-all-sidesincluding-many-tory-eurosceptics-theresa-mays-sea

Writing in today's New York Times, Georgetown History Professor James Millward posits that a system of high-tech surveillance has been established in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to control the Region's Uyghur population:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surveillance-state-uighurs.html?ref=todayspaper

Uyghurs, and members of other predominantly Muslim, Turkic ethnic groups, constituted more than 90% of the population of Xinjiang in 1949. Decades of state-encouraged settlement of Han Chinese in the Region, however, have changed its demographic composition. Today, nearly half the population of Xinjiang is Han Chinese.

While the Han Chinese residents of Xinjiang are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as the Uyghur residents, the Chinese Government will soon apply to all Chinese citizens some of the techniques of social control now being pioneered in Xinjiang. For example, the Chinese Government plans to establish a digital "social credit system." The prospective system will operate like the credit score system familiar to most American consumers -- except that Chinese citizens will be scored on the desirability of their social and political behavior. Citizens' scores will then be used to determine their eligibility for such things as the right to travel abroad, job promotions and access to public housing.

How can advanced industrial societies in Western Europe simultaneously maintain relatively generous social services for their citizens and a climate for private investment likely to produce solid economic growth? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany adopted "flexicurity" policies that combined labor market liberalization (reforms making it easier to hire and fire workers, and to adjust workers' pay and conditions of employment), increased spending on job training and re-retraining, low-cost daycare services for working parents, and government-provided income maintenance and healthcare programs. The Economist considers whether such policies would prove effective in boosting economic growth in European countries where it remains difficult for employers to fire workers (making employers reluctant to take on new workers -- particularly young workers -- in the first place):

According to British government estimates, maintaining the current level of social services in the United Kingdom will require permanent tax increases equivalent to 2% of GDP each decade for the next several decades. Although significant tax increases have been taboo in the United Kingdom since the 1970s, British politicians of both the left and the right are beginning to explore ways that the British government might raise taxes in order to maintain or even improve the country's social services:

https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21735603-politicians-right-well-left-are-beginning-confront-need-raise-more

Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Northern Ireland has a devolved government. The government of Northern Ireland is based on the principle of power-sharing: the government must include ministers from both unionist and nationalist political parties, and important policy decisions must gain the support of both unionist and nationalist members of the Northern Ireland Assembly.