AHS Comparative Government

The Economist contends that Russian President Vladimir Putin is slowly losing public support. This has made him more repressive in his treatment of dissent:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/04/24/vladimir-putin-is-growing-ever-more-repressive-as-he-loses-support

The Economist also posits that Putin has largely isolated the Russian economy from the international economy. This has insulated the country from oil price fluctuations and global downturns but has only exacerbated the underlying lack of investment, modernization, diversification and growth from which Russia has suffered for decades:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/04/24/the-kremlin-has-isolated-russias-economy?itm_source=parsely-api

In a leaked audio recording, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif complains that the Revolutionary Guards have outsize influence over his country's foreign policy. He also contends that the Revolutionary Guards led Iran into the Syrian Civil War, in support of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that the Revolutionary Guards and the Russian government tried to prevent Iran from agreeing to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concerning its enrichment of nuclear fuel. (Former US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Plan of Action in 2018 and imposed tough new economic sanctions on Iran; in response, Iran began to enrich uranium beyond the levels permitted in the Plan of Action and to stockpile enriched uranium. While the recently inaugurated President of the United States, Joe Biden, has expressed interest in negotiating a return by both countries to the Plan of Action, neither the US nor Iran has taken a concrete step toward returning to compliance with it.)

Zarif, a moderate by Iranian standards, had intended to stand a candidate in this summer's presidential election. (The incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, having served two consecutive terms as president, may not run for reelection this year). The leak of the interview with Zarif, which had been part of an oral history project, may constitute an effort by his political enemies to discredit his candidacy or to prompt his disqualification as a candidate by the country's Guardian Council, a body of hardliners close to the Revolutionary Guards:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56889412

The Economist reports this week that

[o]n March 21st [Iranian] state television began airing the second season of “Gando”, a thriller believed to have been produced with the help of the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In the show imaginary diplomats who bear a strong resemblance to [Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif and his team are accused of espionage. (Mr Zarif is rumoured as a possible presidential candidate [in this year's election]; he denies any interest.) "Many Iranians are probably wondering what the country’s security services are up to," says Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a website that monitors the Middle East. "While Israel blows things up, the IRGC is commissioning fictitious spy thrillers targeting Iran’s own government amid sanctions and a deadly pandemic."

"Will an Attack on Iran Derail Efforts to Revive the Nuclear Deal?" The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd., 17 April 2021. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/04/12/will-an-attack-on-iran-derail-efforts-to-revive-the-nuclear-deal. Accessed 18 April 2021.

The United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union (EU) following a 2016 referendum in which Britons narrowly voted for Brexit. A sizeable majority of Scots, however, voted to remain in the EU. Scottish voters are not happy that the UK withdrew from the EU over their objections, for several reasons. First, they believe that Scotland would be better off in the EU. Second, they resent being outvoted once again by English voters. (Scotland's left-leaning voters have been outvoted for decades in British general elections by their more conservative English counterparts). Third, when Scottish voters rejected independence in a 2014 referendum, once of the principal arguments made for remaining in the UK was that an independent Scotland would be outside the EU (and would not necessarily be allowed to join); the only way for Scotland to remain in the EU, therefore, was for Scotland to remain part of the UK. Brexit thus undermines one of the key reasons that Scots voted against independence.

Support for Scottish independence has grown in the years since the Brexit referendum, particularly among young Scots. (In one recent poll, nearly three-quarters of Scots aged 16-35 supported independence). This week, The Economist examines the growing likelihood that Scotland will become independent, and what will happen if it does:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/04/15/brexit-has-reinvigorated-scottish-nationalism

An estimated 31 million Chinese children live in "their home towns or villages, usually in the care of relatives, while both of their parents work elsewhere." Moreover, a growing number of children are left behind in Chinese cities when their parents move to find work in a different city. Some 2 million Chinese children live without anyone to care for them. Chinese government agencies at all levels are beginning to address the problems of the country's "left-behind" children, many of whom suffer from neglect, abuse or depression:

"The Plight of China's 'Left-Behind' Children." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd., 10 April 2021. https://www.economist.com/china/2021/04/08/the-plight-of-chinas-left-behind-children. Accessed 12 April 2021.

This week, the Chinese government took a number of steps to emphasize that it will not tolerate any challenge to the monopoly on political power enjoyed by the Chinese Communist Party.

In Hong Kong, "[s]even prominent pro-democracy campaigners ... were convicted [on 1 April] of unlawful assembly for their involvement in demonstrations in 2019. Among them were Jimmy Lai [the owner of Hong Kong's largest media company] and Martin Lee [the former Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association and a former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, the territory's governing body]."

"Politics This Week." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd., 10 April 2021. https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2021/04/08/politics-this-week. Accessed 12 April 2021.

In a move calculated to rein in the country's highly profitable internet companies, the Chinese government fined the e-commerce giant Alibaba $2.8 billion for antitrust violations. "Chinese regulators [then] asked Ant Group, the Alibaba affiliate whose I.P.O. was halted last November, to become a financial holding company subject to stricter rules. The authorities also told Ant to stop anticompetitive practices."

Sorkin, Andrew Ross, et al.  "Alibaba’s Big Fine Is a Warning Shot." The New York Times DealBook. The New York Times Co., 12 April 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/business/dealbook/alibaba-fine-antitrust.html. Accessed 12 April 2021.

Finally, Chinese authorities formally arrested Chen Guojiang, a labor activist who has sought to improve working conditions for the country's food delivery workers. Chen was detained in February, after he attempted to organize a delivery workers' strike; this put him at odds with powerful economic interests and with the Communist Party, which will not tolerate labor organization independent of Party control. This week, Chen was charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," the charge typically used in China to prosecute activists. He faces five years in prison:

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/12/986365859/china-detains-delivery-worker-who-tried-to-improve-working-conditions

On 6 June, Mexican voters will head to the polls. They will choose all 500 members of the federal Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Mexican Congress; voters in 15 states will also elect new governors. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remains personally popular, but that may not help his party, the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (the National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA), and its allies in the mid-term elections. 

Covid-19 has hit Mexico hard: more than 320,000 Mexicans have died of the disease, and the economy shrank 8.5% in 2020. Although López Obrador is a leftist, he is famously frugal: the Mexican government has not significantly increased spending to assist Mexicans suffering economically from the pandemic or to stimulate the economy. As a result, poverty has increased substantially, driving more Mexicans into the country's criminal gangs.

Mexican voters appreciate López Obrador's egalitarianism, nationalism and personal integrity. But, in most democracies, parties in power tend to lose seats in mid-term elections, particularly when things aren't going well. Mexico may be no exception:

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/08/the-mexican-economy-has-been-battered-by-the-pandemic

Riots have become an almost nightly occurrence in Unionist areas of Belfast and Derry/Londonderry, in Northern Ireland. The riots underscore the precariousness of the peace established in the region less than 25 years ago, and how seriously Brexit has jeopardized that peace:

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/04/08/brexit-is-the-catalyst-for-rioting-in-northern-ireland

Russia's leading dissident, Alexei Navalny, is in prison, where he is suffering from severe back pain, numbness in his legs, fever, and breathing problems. He has not been allowed to see a doctor of his choice, a right guaranteed to him by Russian law; in protest, Navalny has begun a hunger strike. The Economist argues that the Russian authorities may want Navalny to die in prison. If Navalny dies, he would not be the first Russian dissident to die in prison during the Putin era; Sergei Magnitsky, who documented collusion between Russian police and organized crime figures in the fraudulent seizure of Russian assets owned by American investors, died in a Russian prison cell in 2009 after having been denied medical treatment for life-threatening conditions: 

https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/04/10/does-the-kremlin-want-alexei-navalny-to-die-in-prison

The official Covid-19 death toll in Russia is just over 100,000. But 360,000 more Russians died last year than typically die in a given year. This suggests that per capita deaths from Covid-19 in Russia have been quite high -- higher than in the US or in most European countries. There are several possible reasons for this. First, while the Russian government imposed tough lockdown measures early in the pandemic, it later relaxed them when their economic consequences proved politically unpopular. Second, even though Russian scientists have developed an effective Covid-19 vaccine, the Russian government has been slow to roll out a vaccination program:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/world/europe/covid-russia-death.html

In 1967, southeastern Nigeria declared its independence from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, forming the secessionist state of Biafra. A civil war ensued, in which tens of thousands of combatants were killed. Biafra was blockaded for most of the war, resulting in the starvation of an estimated two million civilians, half of them children. Biafra surrendered in 1970.

In 2015, Igbo nationalists in southeastern Nigeria began to advocate independence for the first time since the end of the civil war. This resulted, in part, from the election that year of Muhammadu Buhari as president of Nigeria; Buhari had led a Nigerian Army brigade during the civil war and governed Nigeria as a military dictator from 1983 to 1985. The Nigerian authorities responded to the renewal of secessionism in southeastern Nigeria by shooting protesters at pro-independence demonstrations and by banning the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the leading secessionist organization. According to Amnesty International, the Nigerian authorities also engaged in the extrajudicial killing of independence activists. More recently, Biafran secessionists have launched armed attacks on police and other government facilities in southeastern Nigeria; in the past month alone, six policemen have been killed in the region's Abia state.

Early Monday morning, assailants launched an attack on a jail in southeastern Nigeria's Imo state. Blowing up part of the jail with explosives, the attackers freed nearly 2000 prisoners. Nigerian federal authorities have blamed the attack on IPOB and its paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network. Both IPOB and the Eastern Security Network have denied responsibility for the attack:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/prisoners-escape-jail-in-south-east-nigeria-owerri-imo

During the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, many of the coal mines, factories, and shipyards in northern England closed. The resulting unemployment and urban decay led to widespread resentment of Thatcher's Conservative Party throughout the north, in both working class, traditionally Labour Party-supporting constituencies and in suburban districts that had once voted Conservative. For the next thirty years, the Labour Party could count on the support of the cities and suburbs of northern England in general elections.

In the 2019 general election, however, the Conservatives -- led by Boris Johnson -- won many constituencies in Northern England that had long supported the Labour Party. At the time, pundits advanced a number of reasons for the swing to the Tories in these districts: Johnson's ability to attract support from working class voters by taking populist, right-wing stands on cultural issues (most notably Brexit), the Labour Party's move to the left (in 2019, the Party was led by Jeremy Corbyn, the most left-wing Labour MP), and the raffish personal charm of Johnson himself.

This week, The Economist examines another reason for the growing success of the Conservatives in northern England. The region's economic recovery and low housing costs make possible a prosperous suburban lifestyle for many of its residents -- and a satisfaction with the status quo that helps Tory candidates:

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/04/03/the-truth-behind-the-tories-northern-strongholds