Teaching Comparative Government

Like many other European countries, Russia is facing an aging population. That means paying for pensions becomes more and more difficult. How does Russia's population distribution compare with that of other countries you're studying? Do those countries face more, less, or similarly difficult problems? What are the political consequences of those problems? Russia protests: Thousands rally over plan to raise pension age Thousands of people have taken part in protests in cities across Russia to express their anger at government proposals to raise the pension age. Demonstrators in the capital, Moscow, carried banners reading: "We want to live on our pensions, not die at work." The government says it wants to raise the pension age from 60 to 65 for men, and from 55 to 63 for women, to help cope with a shrinking workforce. Communist Party protesters But unions warn many people will not live long enough to claim a pension. Russian men have a life expectancy of just 66, while...

Legislatures in liberal democracies found a way to preserve voting rights of legislators a hundred years ago. It's probably time for something new. An obscure British parliamentary rule was broken. Here’s why it’s a big deal. Last week in the U.K.’s House of Commons, the governing party appeared to cast aside its “pairing rule,” a chamber practice that has been used to preserve voting rights of absent Members of Parliament (MPs) — including MPs out on maternity leave. This caused a huge outcry, with the minister for the Cabinet Office forced to respond to an urgent question in the House of Commons this week, promising that such errors would not be repeated. But the ensuing controversy also highlights the limitations of relying on informal legislative practices in increasingly diverse parliamentary bodies. This is how legislative pairing works Pairing is an informal arrangement between two legislative parties when an MP is sick, on parental leave, or otherwise not present to vote. ...

Politicians in Nigeria are choosing sides in preparation for next year's elections. 15 APC senators dump party Fourteen senators of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday defected from their party to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The senators in a joint letter to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, made their intention known. The letter reads: Dear Senate President, After due consultation, with our constituents and stakeholders in our constituency, in proper recognition section 16 (1G) of the 1999 constitution, and for the fact of our party, The All Progressives Congress… We hereby inform you that we are changing our political affiliation from APC to PDP. We thank you for your exemplary leadership. Congress… In a follow-up announcement, Mr Saraki said another senator, Abdulazaz Nyako, has also announced his defection… 37 House of Reps members dump APC Nigeria House of Representatives A total of 37 members of the House of Representatives have defected from Nigeria’...

In China, the Long March was a crucial episode in the civil war of the 1930s. Beginning in Jiangxi Province, it was an epic retreat of the Communist army as the Kuomintang (Nationalists) tried to follow them. Mao Zedong became the leader of the Communist forces during the retreat. Now, educational tourism is a growing business in Jiangxi. China’s ‘red education’ history tours and the rise of communist cosplay If anyone can best tell the scale and intensity of China’s “red education” drive to promote loyalty to the ruling Communist Party, it’s businessman Yu Meng. The 36-year-old runs the largest Red Army uniform rental business in Jinggangshan, a city dubbed the “cradle of the communist revolution” deep in the mountains of Jiangxi. Last year alone, his company rented uniforms to 256,000 people taking part in red ideology study tours. Political tourists in rented uniforms Yu started the Xiangganbian Red Army uniform company 10 years ago. But it’s only in the last three years that the bu...

When I began studying about China, it was known in the USA as Red China as opposed to the more friendly Nationalist China (on the island of Taiwan). Later we began calling it Communist China. After Nixon's visit some of us called it the People's Republic of China. Somewhere along the way, Americans began using the simple name China and called "Nationalist China" Taiwan. Now the Communists in the People's Republic are discussing ways to improve the "business environment." No wonder we don't call it communist or red anymore. Look for further developments. China vows to further improve business environment China will work to tackle the weak areas in its business environment to further improve overall competitiveness and sustain the sound momentum of steady economic performance, the State Council's executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Wednesday. The Chinese government places high importance on improving the country's busines...

PM May's plans for Brexit survived on a vote in Commons because several Labour MPs voted for her bill. The future looks rocky. Britain’s May narrowly avoids defeat in parliament on EU trade laws British Prime Minister Theresa May narrowly avoided a defeat in parliament at the hands of pro-EU lawmakers from her own party on Tuesday, fending off a rebellion that had threatened to deepen a crisis over her Brexit strategy. Parliament voted 307 to 301 against an amendment to trade legislation [that]… was seen as a test of May’s ability to deliver a smooth British exit from the European Union and keep her job… One Conservative lawmaker present told Reuters that the party whips whose job it is to enforce discipline, desperate to win the vote, had threatened to call a confidence vote in May if she lost, a move that could bring down the government… May is expected to face many more challenges to her strategy after a summer break as she works her way through a mountain of Brexit-related l...

I'm not sure about the validity of these measurements, but it's not a great title to win. India is no longer home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Nigeria is It is a distinction that no country wants: the place with the most people living in extreme poverty. For decades, India remained stubbornly in the top spot, a reflection of its huge population and its enduring struggle against poverty. Now new estimates indicate that Nigeria has knocked India out of that position, part of a profound shift taking place in the geography of the world’s poorest people. According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, Nigeria overtook India in May to become the country with the world’s highest number of people living in extreme poverty, which is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. The threshold captures those who struggle to obtain even basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing, and takes into account differences in purchasing power between count...

Presidential politics in Nigeria still revolve around "big men," the personalities of the wheeler-dealers. New Nigeria PDP-led alliance aims to defeat Buhari Nigeria's main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) has formed an alliance with dozens of other parties in a bid to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari in next year's election. The coalition, including a faction of the governing party, plans to field a single candidate. They say they want to "rescue the nation from further decline"… A similar coalition of opposition parties, which backed Mr Buhari, was largely responsible for the defeat of then-President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 elections, says the BBC's Ishaq Khalid in the capital Abuja… The 39-party alliance, called the Coalition of United Political Party, says it wants to form a government of national unity… The president's supporters say his agricultural reforms, infrastructure investment and the current rise in global oil p...

I doubt anyone in the last century would have predicted that the PRI in Mexico would fall to near irrelevance so quickly. In congress that seems to have happened. Mexico’s motley new congress THE change brought by Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Mexico’s congress is as startling as his election to the presidency on July 1st. His coalition, Juntos haremos historia (together we will make history), is expected to have three-fifths of seats in the lower house and the senate (see chart)…. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will become the fifth-biggest party in the 500-member lower house. The centre-right National Action Party (PAN), with 92 seats, will be the main opposition. Mr López Obrador’s legislative forces are a motley group of activists, celebrities and professional politicians. The heart of the coalition is his four-year-old Morena party. It also includes the anti-capitalist Workers’ Party (PT) and the conservative Social Encounter Party (PES), which has evangelical...

David Mamet's sarcastic epigram is "Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance." Maybe the Communist Party in China has figured a way around that idea. It's a cliché (or valid generalization) that political leadership in China is older than the leadership in other countries. But I have always been amazed by the age of the leaders of the Communist Youth League. Now Choi Chi-yuk, writing in the South China Morning Post reports that a 49-year-old has been named the leader of the Communist Youth League. Not only that, but the headline suggests this new leader could be the beginning of a generational shift. I'm spending time adjusting my frame of reference. Is the promotion of this Chinese aerospace technocrat the start of a communist youthquake? (Xi Jinping has shifted focus to training and promoting top young talent.) He Junke A 49-year-old aerospace technocrat has been named to lead the 81 million-plus members of China’s Communist Youth League, hi...

The bit of programming that keeps track of the number of page views on this blog "rolled" over to 800,000 this morning. A dozen years and my persistence and your peeks at these pages brings those results. "Pageviews all time history   800,347" An unknown number of those page views were evidently from trolls in Russia, Turkey, India, and Brazil. (I'm pretty sure there are not thousands of AP students in those countries, but some days there are hundreds of page views from those and other countries.)

When I saw Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the New York Times, I was reminded that the metaphor he used was helpful in explaining government and politics in Russia. Here's the introduction to his editorial. Now imagine how this image (a Potemkin village) could help make sense out of elections in contemporary Russia, a constitution that can be modified by the supermajority in the Duma, or Putin as virtually president for life. Do a web search for Potemkin Village to see how common the idea is. Trump’s Potemkin Economy According to legend, Grigory Potemkin, one of Catherine the Great’s ministers (and her lover), created a false impression of prosperity when the empress toured Ukraine. He supposedly did this by setting up fake villages, or possibly just facades, along her route, then dismantling them after she passed, and setting them up again further down the road. A movie set as a Potemkin Village There probably isn’t much if any truth to the story — among other things, Catherin...

Mexico's newly elected president has run for this office twice before. Will this result be a charm or another disappointment? López Obrador, an Atypical Leftist, Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide Riding a wave of populist anger fueled by rampant corruption and violence, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico on Sunday, in a landslide victory that upended the nation’s political establishment and handed him a sweeping mandate to reshape the country… AMLO, president of Mexico The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them. The core promises of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign — to end corruption, reduce violence and address Mexico’s endemic poverty — were immensely popular with voters, but they come with questions he and his new government may struggle to answer… He won by captur...

A remarkable effort might return a huge pile of money to Nigeria. 'Abacha loot' to be given to poor Nigerians Money looted by Nigeria's former military ruler Sani Abacha is to be distributed to poor families, the government says. The distribution is to start next month after more than $300m (£228m) was returned by the Swiss authorities. The money, stolen by Abacha in the 1990s, is due to be given to around 300,000 households, with each getting around $14 a month. Critics fear the handouts could be a way to influence next year's election. At this rate, the payments - to be made to residents in 19 of Nigeria's 36 states - should last for about six years. The money was originally deposited in Luxembourg, and is a fraction of the billions of dollars allegedly looted while Abacha was in power from 1993 to 1998. He ruled Nigeria with an iron fist until his sudden death on 8 June 1998 after an apparent heart attack. President Muhammadu Buhari made the recovery of stolen as...