Teaching Comparative Government

I guess it takes a visit from the UK's PM to get the British press to write about Nigeria. Political intrigue swirls around Buhari as May arrives in Nigeria It is Theresa May’s first visit to Nigeria, but Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, has made many trips to the UK over the past two years. However, while May was greeted by drummers and a red carpet, Buhari has kept as low a profile as possible on his UK visits. The septuagenarian president spent three months in London in 2017 on sick leave with an unknown illness thought to be cancer. He was not seen for two months and his aides refused to say what was wrong with him. His deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, ran the country in his absence. Buhari’s health appears to have improved since, though he almost never speaks to the media so it is difficult to judge. Political intrigue is thickening ahead of next year’s presidential election. Buhari has announced he will run again, but there has been a spate of defections from his party, the A...

It's never easy to extend one set of statistics to a whole political system, but they often offer glimpses of the system. IF you can "read" the numbers. Life in Vladimir Putin's Russia explained in 10 charts Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics as its undisputed leader for almost two decades. Over successive terms as president and prime minister he has overseen an economic boom, military expansion and the re-establishment of Russia as a major power. Living standards for most Russians improved, and a renewed sense of stability and national pride emerged. But the price, many say, was the erosion of Russia's fledgling democracy. How has life changed for ordinary Russians during this time? 1. Fewer people are poor Levels of poverty may be significantly lower than before, but Russia is still above the average for many of the world's biggest economies. 2. But wage growth has stalled recently During Mr Putin's first stint as president, wages consistently...

The author of this opinion piece is John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and author of ‘The Life and Death of Democracy’. Are his arguments reasonable? Should we join in creating a new category of democratic governance: phantom democracy? Phantom democracy: a puzzle at the heart of Chinese politics As China rapidly moves to the centre of the international order, the question that’s becoming increasingly pertinent is: what kind of a political system is this new global power? In the booming business of China watching, the standard answer is that it is an “authoritarian” regime, with qualifiers such as “soft authoritarianism”, “hard authoritarianism” and “authoritarian capitalism” commonplace. But by all accounts, China is reckoned the antithesis of a “liberal democracy” defined by open competition among freely formed political parties. Some Chinese observers celebrate the advantages of this “authoritarianism” and welcome the triumph of a “post-democracy” freed fr...

The US is not the only place where people try to manipulate public opinion. Europe Worries as Facebook Fights Manipulation Worldwide Iranian Facebook "stamps" Facebook revealed this post to be the work of an Iranian-backed campaign aimed at Britain, the first known influence campaign with a target outside the United States. The picture was just like many of the other Facebook posts criticizing Britain’s decision to leave the European Union: a fake commemorative stamp showing a person preparing to shoot himself in the foot. But on Tuesday, Facebook revealed that the unremarkable post was anything but. It originated from an Iranian-backed group aimed at Britain, in what the company said was the first known instance of a foreign influence campaign aimed at people outside the United States. Facebook has spent the past two years trying to block foreign propaganda in the United States. But its disclosure of hundreds of fake accounts and pages, including the one tied to the Iranian...

Politics can be a life and death "game" in Mexico. Mexico violence: Newly elected Congresswoman kidnapped A newly elected Mexican Congresswoman, Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, has been kidnapped at gunpoint on a highway in central Hidalgo state. Two men shot at Ms Rodríguez's car, injuring an assistant and the driver and causing the vehicle to flip over. The gunmen pulled Ms Rodríguez from the car and forced her into their vehicle. The kidnapping comes little more than a month after the mayor of the town of Naupan was seized and killed in the same area. Ms Rodríguez was elected on 1 July to represent eastern Veracruz state in the lower house of Congress for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The 32-year-old was due to take up office on 1 September. The state she will represent is one of the most violent in Mexico… The motive for his killing is not known but local politicians often become targets for criminal gangs if they are seen to interfere wi...

What does the local government look like in unitary system like the UK's? As Austerity Helps Bankrupt an English County, Even Conservatives Mutiny Britain is already in upheaval over Brexit, its looming withdrawal from the European Union, with many experts warning of economic hardship ahead. But Northamptonshire is foreshadowing another potential fiscal crisis: Local governments drained of resources, cutting services to the bone. Northamptonshire Councils are Britain’s fundamental unit of local government, dealing with an array of basic needs: trash collection, public transport, libraries, town planning, and care for children and other vulnerable people, among other things. They levy a tax on homes and charge fees for some services. They also collect a nationally set tax on commercial real estate, and keep an increasing share of it. But for years they received most of their funding from the central government. The crisis in Northamptonshire is complicated and partly self-inflicted...

The conflicts and politics in Nigeria finally made the NYT front page. Does that make it more real? How many Americans will read it? Deadly Lack of Security Plagues Nigeria as Buhari Seeks Re-election Nigeria is beleaguered by security threats. In the northeast, Islamist extremists from Boko Haram and its splinter groups are waging increasingly complex attacks on military forces and civilians. In the middle part of the country, more than 1,300 people have been killed in increasingly vicious land disputes between cattle herders and farmers. Farther to the south, violence spikes from time to time in the Biafra region, where separatists are pushing to secede. And in various pockets throughout the country, like a major highway between Kaduna and Abuja, kidnappings of prominent figures and regular Nigerians alike have become common. The threats are becoming a major issue for President Muhammadu Buhari as he tries for a second term in February. Increasingly, critics, and even allies, compla...

Does age bring wisdom? Or does youth imply knowledge of how the modern world works? Why the opinions don't necessarily translate into policy? How young and old would vote on Brexit now Few issues divide opinions between different age groups quite as sharply as Brexit. And it could be that the differences are becoming even more pronounced… If there were to be a second referendum now, 52% would vote Remain and 48% Leave, an average of polls over the past three months suggests… So, it is a stable picture, albeit one that reverses the position in 2016. But the opinions of voters vary dramatically across different groups - none more so than between young and old. Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave. In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave. These younger and o...

Is the evaluation of African cities by "first world" standards legitimate? What does it tell us about the evaluated and the evaluators? Lagos ranked among 'world's worst cities' to live in Seven out of the 10 least liveable cities in the world are in Africa, according the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) annual survey. The league table ranks 140 cities on a range of factors, including political and social stability, crime, education and access to healthcare. Carefully selected Lagos street scene Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, was ranked 138 - two slots ahead of the bottom of the league table which is held by Syria's war-torn capital, Damascus (140). It was closely followed by Zimbabwe's Harare (135), Libya's Tripoli (134), Cameroon's Douala (133), Algiers in Algeria (132) and Senegal's Dakar (131). Johannesburg gained the rank of 86, making it the most livable of African cities. The annual report says cities in the Middle East, Africa and ...

So I discovered that The Economist is doing a whole series on "Liberal Thinkers." The first one, which I missed in the throes of moving, was about John Stuart Mill. In future weeks the essays will be about John Maynard Keynes, "Schumpeter, Popper, and Hayek," "Berlin, Rawls, and Norzick," and "Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche." Look for them. Against the tyranny of the majority Above all, though, like all liberals Mill believed in the power of individual thought. His first big work, “A System of Logic”, argues that humanity’s greatest weakness is its tendency to delude itself as to the veracity of unexamined convictions. He renounced shibboleths, orthodoxies and received wisdom: anything that stopped people thinking for themselves. He wanted them to be exposed to as wide a range of opinions as possible, and for no idea or practice to remain unchallenged. That was the path to both true happiness and progress… As Richard Reeves’s biography makes ...

In the second of a series about liberals and liberal philosophy (the first was about John Stuart Mill), the editors of The Economist offer their understanding and prospects of de Tocqueville. It's good (even with some editing) for FRQs or debates. De Tocqueville and the French exception The gloomiest of the great liberals worried that democracy might not be compatible with liberty HE IS the most unusual member of the liberal pantheon. Liberalism has usually been at its most vigorous among the Anglo-American middle classes. By contrast, Alexis de Tocqueville was a proud member of the French aristocracy… Tocqueville believed that liberal optimism needs to be served with a side-order of pessimism. Far from being automatic, progress depends on wise government and sensible policy… Alexis de Tocqueville He broadened the liberal tradition by subjecting the bland pieties of the Anglo-American middle class to a certain aristocratic disdain; and he deepened it by pointing to the growing dan...

Most of this is historical trivia, but it also offers clues about how the elite in China rule. Where China’s top leaders go in summer and in secret: a brief history of Beidaihe When state radio reported on Wednesday that Premier Li Keqiang met United Nations General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa in Beidaihe, it was the clearest confirmation that the annual summer gathering of China’s most influential politicians was taking place at the northern Chinese seaside resort. It was Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the key founders of the People’s Republic in 1949, who initiated senior party and government officials in Beijing to work at the famed seaside town of Beidaihe as early as 1953. Mao at Beidaihe Instead of the capital, all crucial meetings in the summer were held in Beidaihe from then on. In August 1958, party elites headed by Mao made two key decisions during an expanded meeting of the party’s Politburo held in the resort… The closed-door meetings were suspended for nearly ...

Americans seem to assume that the adversarial system of enforcing laws (used in the USA, Canada, and the UK) is "normal." It's not, but more countries are trying it out. Mexico is slowly making changes. Judging Latin America’s judges ONE morning this year, in a windowless modern courtroom, Jorge Alberto Rodríguez faced justice. He was accused of driving a stolen car with changed number plates. The judge began by explaining his rights to him. His lawyer then tried to trip up the policemen whom the prosecution had produced as witnesses. To no avail: after an adjournment to allow a missing defence witness to appear via video link, the judge found Mr Rodríguez guilty. That seemed to square with the evidence. Having been on bail for the nine months since his arrest, he was given a suspended jail sentence of five years and fined 15,000 pesos ($800). Such a trial could have taken place in a British magistrate’s court. In fact, it was in Mexico City. The case was conducted under ...

The great Chinese firewall is well known. Who's in charge of maintaining it? Why a protege of Xi Jinping. Is guanxi any different from the links between members of political elites elsewhere? Beijing names new internet watchdog as China keeps door closed to global tech giants China has officially named Zhuang Rongwen as the new chief of the agency supervising China’s internet. Zhuang Rongwen The announcement that Zhuang would replace Xu Lin as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China confirms a report by the South China Morning Post last week, which also said that President Xi Jinping was seeking to shake up the country’s propaganda and censorship wings. Xu, a former aide to Xi in Shanghai, is expected to become the party’s new international propaganda chief, sources told the Post last week… Zhuang, in his new role as China’s cyberspace tsar, will be a key figure for global technology giants trying to get a foothold in the market of about 800 million online users… China s...

If you've noticed the absence of posts here during the past week, think about what has dominated the news. Events relating to comparative politics in Mexico, Nigeria, and China just haven't made the editorial cut recently. While Russia and the UK have been in the news, it hasn't been for things that are relevant to comparative politics (in major ways).   Well, and I've been on an informal vacation and lost in the throes of moving from one house to another. Things will pick up. And meanwhile, search the index.

Things are not going well at the grassroots in Iran. BTW, when there are protests in South Tehran, the less affluent area of the city, unrest has spread beyond the wealthy, educated people. Iran protests resume for 6th day amid violent clashes with security forces Protests renewed in Tehran and several Iranian cities on Sunday evening, marking the sixth consecutive day of protests against the regime’s policies while some violent clashes erupted between protestors and security forces in some cities. Scene in Tehran, August 5. According to videos published by activists, there were protests in the neighborhood of Ekbatan, northwest of Tehran, in other areas like Daneshjoo Park in the center of Tehran, and in the streets of Karagar and Amir Abad in South Tehran. Protestors in Enghelab Street, in the center of Tehran, were chanting “Death to the Dictator.” A video showed security forces attack protestors while some young men burnt trash bins to obstruct the security forces’ advance. Violen...