AHS Comparative Government

Dominic Cummings, who once served as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief aide, told a Parliamentary select committee today that tens of thousands of Britons died unnecessarily as a result of mistakes made by senior British officials, including Johnson and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. Cummings told the committee that Johnson is unfit to serve as Prime Minister, and accused Hancock of incompetence and of lying to Parliament:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-57253578

Nigeria's economy has been shrinking since 2015, when oil prices began to fall. The Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened Nigeria's economic problems. Nigeria's continuing economic crisis has fueled a horrifying rise in kidnappings for ransom and has exacerbated violence in northeast Nigeria (the Boko Haram insurgency), on the Jos Plateau (communal violence), and in the country's southeast (growing Igbo separatism). The government of President Muhammadu Buari, however, has so far resisted economic reforms intended to increase output and to diversify the country's exports (making Nigeria less vulnerable to future fluctuations in oil prices):

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/05/13/nigerias-economy-is-stuck-in-a-rut

Iranian voters will choose a new president in June; the incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, has served two terms and and is barred by the country's constitution from seeking a third consecutive term. This week, two prominent hard-line conservatives entered the race. 

The first, Ali Larijani, was the Speaker of the Majles from 2012 to 2020. From 2005 to 2007, Larijani served as Iran's chief negotiator with the international community over Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program. Larijani is from a politically powerful family. One of his brothers, the Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, currently heads Iran's Expediency Council and served from 2009 to 2019 as Iran's Chief Justice. Another one of Ali Larijani's brothers, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, is a senior foreign policy adviser to Iran's Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The second hard-line candidate, the Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, is Iran's current Chief Justice. He is widely reviled among Iran's reformists and moderates. In 1988, at the behest of Iran's Leader at the time, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Raisi presided over the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners, including Islamic leftists (members of the People's Mujahedin Organization), secular leftists (members of the Organization of the Iranian People's Fedayeen) and Communists (members of the Tudeh Party). The executions are widely regarded as the worst human rights abuse in Iran's post-revolutionary history:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57129854

Borrowing an idea from the US Republican Party, Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed legislation that will require Britons to show photo identification when they vote. The proposal is milder than most US voter identification laws: Britons who do not have photo identification will be issued voter identification cards free of charge. Nonetheless, voter fraud is quite rare in the United Kingdom. As such, there appears to be no reason to adopt the law except, perhaps, to discourage poor and non-white citizens (who tend disproportionately to vote for the opposition Labour Party) from voting:

https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/05/15/american-style-voter-id-laws-are-coming-to-britain

Voters in the United Kingdom went to the polls last week in a a series of significant elections.

In voting for Scotland's devolved Parliament, the pro-independence Scottish National Party won 64 seats -- one seat short of an outright majority. This was widely seen as a triumph for the SNP and its leader, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Although the SNP did not win a majority in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Green Party, which also favors independence, won eight seats, giving the pro-independence parties a solid majority. The Scottish Parliament, therefore, will almost certainly vote within the next five years to ask the Westminster Parliament to conduct a second referendum in Scotland on the question of independence. (Polls suggest that, at present, Scottish voters are evenly divided on independence).

The Labour Party foundered in last week's elections. Critically, it lost a bye-election (a special election called when a Member of Parliament dies or resigns) in Hartlepool, a working-class constituency in Northern England that it had held since 1974. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party now holds a number of seats across northern England that were once Labour strongholds; last week's Tory victory in Hartlepool suggests that the Conservatives' success in the north in the 2019 general election was not a fluke and that the Labour Party will have to work hard to regain its traditional base of support.

The Labour Party, however, did claim several important victories. Labour mayors in London, Manchester and Bristol were reelected, and a Labour candidate was elected the first mayor of West Yorkshire, a county government recently given greatly expanded powers. The Conservative government has responded to these Labour victories by proposing legislation that would change the electoral system used in English mayoral contests from rank-order voting to plurality voting. The proposed change is intended to make it easier for the Tories to win such elections:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/09/government-to-change-english-voting-system-after-labour-mayoral-victories

In a recent briefing, The Economist examined the disturbing possibility that China might invade Taiwan, precipitating a war between China and the United States. The piece warns that Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the President of the People's Republic of China, would like to restore Beijing's control over Taiwan during his tenure as China's leader. The briefing concludes that "[w]ar over Taiwan may not appear imminent in Beijing. But not, shockingly, is it unthinkable."

"China’s Growing Military Confidence Puts Taiwan at Risk." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd., 1 May 2021: 13-16. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/05/01/chinas-growing-military-confidence-puts-taiwan-at-risk. Accessed 6 May 2021.

China has just completed its decennial census. The population of the country may have peaked last year, at 1.4 billion, and begun to fall. (The Chinese labor force has been shrinking for a decade, a result of declining birth rates and a relatively young retirement age). At the same time, the share of the elderly in the Chinese population has grown rapidly.

An article in The Economist examines the implications of these demographic trends, as well as the ramifications of the country's serious gender imbalance (there are 30 million more men than women in China):

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/04/29/is-chinas-population-shrinking

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has broadened the law enforcement responsibilities of the Mexican armed forces: the country's new National Guard, which has replaced the Federal Police, is comprised primarily of Mexican service members. López Obrador has also put the military in charge of building and operating the "Maya Train" through the Yucatán Peninsula; once the line is built, it will be owned by the military, which will retain the revenue it generates. The military will also build, own, operate, and retain the revenue generated by the new civilian airport planned for Mexico City, currently under construction at Mexico's Santa Lucía Air Force Base.

These new responsibilities have given the Mexican armed forces an importance that they have not enjoyed for decades. But there is a danger that Mexican military leaders might decide that they want a greater say in how the country is governed, threatening the country's long tradition of civilian control of the military:

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/29/mexicos-president-is-giving-the-armed-forces-new-powers