AHS Comparative Government

The New York Times reports this morning that the Russian government is forcing an increasing number of dissident politicians and journalists to leave the country. The Russian authorities are forcing dissidents into exile by threatening them and their family members with imprisonment. The authorities have also deployed violence against the most visible opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/world/europe/russian-opposition-leaders-exile.html

On 1 August, the Mexican government held an advisory referendum that asked voters whether the country's five previous presidents should be prosecuted for corruption. In a previous blog post, I suggested that -- because prosecution of all but one of the past presidents is barred by law -- the referendum might have been intended to make it appear that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is doing something about corruption even though he has done little to address the problem (see Blog post of 16 July). The referendum, however, was a flop: only 7% of the Mexican electorate voted in the referendum, significantly less than the 40% turnout required for the referendum to have any effect.

Pork is China's staple source of meat; the country is home to half of the world pigs. Since 2018, however, repeated outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) have killed tens of millions of pigs in the country. Chinese officials report that, in 2019, between one-fifth and one-third of China's pigs were killed by ASF (or by culling to prevent further spread of the disease); other sources contend that as many as half of China's pigs have been killed as a result of the ASF epidemic.

The Economist contends that the Chinese government has mismanaged its response to the crisis, and that it is hiding the severity of the problem from the public:

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/08/28/african-swine-fever-is-spreading-rapidly-in-china-again

The Economist reports this week that "Russian women with non-traditional views are increasingly being harassed by reactionary groups, whose targets include feminists, gay activists, women who work in the porn industry and those who dare to have romantic partners who are not ethnic Russians." At least one of the groups that has organized bullying campaigns against women, Male State, appears to have ties to the Russian Interior Ministry and to local police forces.

"Bullies Proclaiming 'National Patriarchy' Harass Russian Feminists." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd, 28 Aug. 2021, https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/08/28/bullies-proclaiming-national-patriarchy-harass-russian-feminists. Accessed 28 Aug. 2021.

Russia will hold elections for the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, in September. Half of the 450 seats in the State Duma will be elected by plurality in single-member districts; half will be chosen in a nationwide proportional representation election. 

Recent polls show that support for the ruling United Russia Party has fallen to about 27%. This does not mean, however, that the party will fare poorly in the September elections. United Russia has more support, and is better organized nationally, than any other party. This means that it will likely dominate the single-member district elections and retain its majority in the State Duma even if it fails to win a majority in the proportional representation election. (In the 2007 and 2011 State Duma elections, all 450 seats were elected by proportional representation. In the 2011 election, United Russia only retained its majority in the State Duma through widespread electoral fraud. Not long after, the Russian Federal Assembly voted to return to the hybrid electoral system used before 2007 in State Duma elections. This clearly benefited United Russia: in the 2016 State Duma elections, the party won 54.2% of the proportional representation vote but nonetheless captured 343 out of the 450 seats in the State Duma by winning 203 of the single-member district seats).

A second reason that United Russia may fare well in the September elections is that it can, if it believes it necessary, resort to electoral fraud. The possibility that there might be significant fraud in those elections became more likely this week when the Russian government moved once again to shut down the country's leading independent election watchdog:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58265932

Over the past 40 years, more than 300 million people have moved from China's rural villages to the country's booming cities. Under China's hukou (household registration) system, almost all of this migration has been illegal. As a result, the migrants constitute a "floating pool" of easily hired, easily fired urban factory labor: the migrants typically work long hours under poor conditions for modest pay. Moreover, because they are not lawful residents of the cities in which they live, they and their children are typically excluded from the housing, health care and educational services made available by local governments to lawful residents of Chinese cities.

In recent years, things have begun to change. A decrease in the population of working age has led to a rise in wages for factory workers. Under reforms announced in 2020, as many as a third of China's migrants and their families may eventually obtain lawful resident status in the cities in which they live and work. Nonetheless, a large number of young migrants, and young people who grew up in China's urban working class, have become alienated from mainstream Chinese society:

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/08/14/how-chinese-factory-workers-express-their-views-on-life

In July, cyber-attacks shut down Iran's train system and the Iranian Transportation Ministry's computer system. Unusually, the attacks do not appear to have been launched by Israeli or US intelligence or military units; instead, they appear to be the work of a private group opposed to the Iranian government. Experts are not certain whether the group is operating inside or outside the country.

According to The New York Times, the attacks demonstrate that "[a]n opposition group without the budget, personnel or abilities of a government [can] still inflict a good deal of damage."

Bergman, Ronen. "Mysterious Hacker Group Suspected in July Cyberattack on Iranian Trains." The New York Times. The New York Times Co., 14 Aug. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/world/middleeast/iran-trains-cyberattack.html. Accessed 15 Aug. 2021.

In 1951, a diplomatic conference adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; most of the world's governments then formally acceded to the Convention. The scope of the Convention was significantly expanded, and the protections afforded refugees were increased, by a 1967 Protocol amending the Convention. 149 countries have acceded either to the 1951 Convention, the 1967 Protocol, or both. The fundamental principle of both the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol is "non-refoulement," the idea that a human being may not be forced to return to a country where they face a serious threat of persecution.

Today, there are 30.5 million refugees and asylum seekers, more than at any time in the past. (The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that there are 82.4 million forcibly displaced people globally; more than half are people displaced within their own countries). In the past decade, however, public hostility to refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in general has grown in many countries. Governments have responded by looking for ways to avoid their responsibilities under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, without going so far as to withdraw their accession to those agreements:

https://www.economist.com/international/at-70-the-global-convention-on-refugees-is-needed-more-than-ever/21803326

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 Sunni Islam. Several Uyghur separatist groups have operated in Xinjiang in the past fifteen years; some have carried out acts of violence against Chinese officials and Chinese troops stationed in the region.

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. (In 1949, 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. Moreover, China recently held as many as 1 million Uyghurs (out of a total Uyghur population in Xinjiang of 10 million) in re-education camps (see Blog post of 28 September 2019); many Uyghurs released from re-education camps have been moved to prisons or to factory forced-labor facilities.

Chinese government officials have often claimed that, in the long run, the Uyghurs and the other Central Asian peoples who live in Xinjiang will support (or at least accept) Chinese control of the region if the Chinese government can produce rapid economic growth and rising living standards in Xinjiang. The Economist warns this week, however, that the repressive policies currently pursued by the Chinese government in Xinjiang will not produce economic growth or increased acceptance of Chinese rule:

https://www.economist.com/china/2021/08/07/chinas-efforts-to-lift-xinjiangs-economy-may-smother-it

In 2001, a Goldman Sachs economist famously predicted that, by 2025, the combined nominal GDP of Brazil, Russia, India and China would reach half that of the G-6 countries (the US, Japan, Germany, France, the UK and Italy), and that the combined output of the BRICs (as they were soon called) would exceed that of the G-6 by 2040. The BRIC economies, and those of many other middle-income countries, grew rapidly in the first decade of the century; by 2017, the combined nominal GDP of the BRICs was more than half that of the G-6 countries. In the past ten years, however, the rate of economic growth throughout the developing world has slowed; the combined output of the BRICs may not exceed that of the G-6 by 2040.

The slowdown in economic growth in developing countries has had significant political consequences. In its analysis of that slowdown, The Economist notes that:

In the 1990s and 2000s, rapid growth in trade and output was associated with a decline in inequality between countries but a rise in inequality within them, emerging markets very much included. When growth slowed in the 2010s, the distribution of economic gains within economies became relatively more important in determining whether living standards continued to improve, stagnated or fell. A more fractious politics became the norm around the world, and countries slid either towards or further into autocracy. The democracy index produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company, has declined every year from 2015 to 2020.

Politicians from the political fringes have enjoyed surprising success, often on the back of unrealistic promises. The policies they have pursued frequently undermine growth, from the surprisingly abstemious fiscal policy of Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the unexpected enthusiasm for welfare spending on the part of India’s Narendra Modi. [Arvind Subramanian of the Centre for Global Development] sees increasing evidence that slower growth contributes to political instability, feeding a vicious cycle.

"The Prospects for Developing Countries are Not What They Once Were." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, Ltd., 31 July 2021, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/07/31/the-prospects-for-developing-countries-are-not-what-they-once-were. Accessed 2 Aug. 2021.