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julianp22

Opinion | What Happened to America's Political Center of Gravity? - The New York Times - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...blican-platform-far-right.html

fire sequoias threat

shared by julianp22 on 20 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • The resulting scores capture how the groups represent themselves, not necessarily their actual policies.
  • The Republican Party leans much farther right than most traditional conservative parties in Western Europe and Canada, according to an analysis of their election manifestos. It is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front), which some consider far-right populist parties. The Democratic Party, in contrast, is positioned closer to mainstream liberal parties.
  • the United States’ political center of gravity is to the right of other countries’, partly because of the lack of a serious left-wing party.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The Republican Party leans much
  • If we could put every political party on the same continuum from left to right, where would the American parties fall?
  • Conservative Party in Britain and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany — mainstream right-leaning parties
  • The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.
  • Marine Le Pen
  • The Democrats fall closer to mainstream left and center-left parties in other countries, like the Social Democratic Party in Germany and Britain’s Labour Party,
  • Note: Circles sized by the percentage of the vote won by the party in the latest election in this data. Only parties that won more than 1 percent of the vote and are still in existence are shown. We analyzed parties in a selection of Western European countries, Canada and the United States.
  • agnesg22 on 27 Sep 21
     
    The visual accompanying this article was very useful! I found it helpful to compare the American political parties to European political parties. I always knew that American politics were very right-leaning, but I had no idea of the extent.
Kay Bradley

Francis Fukuyama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Francis_Fukuyama

clash of civilizations terrorism

shared by Kay Bradley on 11 Sep 11 - Cached
Kay Bradley liked it
  • He is best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government.
  • also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement,[2] from which he has since distanced himself.
  • Bachelor of Arts degree in classics from Cornell University, where he studied political philosophy under Allan Bloom.[5][8] He initially pursued graduate studies in comparative literature at Yale University, going to Paris for six months to study under Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, but became disillusioned and switched to political science at Harvard University.[5
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  • He is now Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and resident in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.[
  • Fukuyama is best known as the author of The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama predicted the eventual global triumph of political and economic liberalism:[citation needed]
  • As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol's 1972 book
  • In a New York Times article of February 2006, Fukuyama, in considering the ongoing Iraq War, stated: "What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a 'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends."[14] In regard to neoconservatism he went on to say: "What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about
  • Fukuyama began to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda of the Bush administration, citing its overly militaristic basis and embrace of unilateral armed intervention, particularly in the Middle East. By late 2003, Fukuyama had voiced his growing opposition to the Iraq War[15] and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense.[16]
  • Kay Bradley on 11 Sep 11
     
    Disagrees with Samuel P. Huntington's thesis
Thomas Peterson

Russia Legislators Use Inquiries Into Wealth to Settle Scores - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-wealth-to-settle-scores.html

Russia corruption

shared by Thomas Peterson on 02 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Thomas Peterson on 02 Sep 12
     
    MOSCOW - When the Russian authorities began a series of investigations this spring into the business affairs of a prominent opposition lawmaker, it was widely viewed as thinly veiled political retribution. But in a sign of how quickly the tables can now be flipped in such disputes, allies of the politician, Gennady V.
  • Thomas Peterson on 02 Sep 12
     
    This article concerns attempts by Russian lawmakers to target opposition party members who they believe have violated Duma policy by "engaging in business or other paid activities". The controversy over the hypocrisy present in the aforementioned investigations sheds light on a question that interests me greatly: will Russia's corrupt and billionaire-driven government be sustainable in the long term? This particular case also raises questions about the mechanisms used by the ruling party, United Russia, in maintaining control over the Russian government.
  • Kay Bradley on 03 Sep 12
     
    This article also speaks to political culture, a key part of comparative politics analysis. Russia's transition to democracy has been halting, and many CoPo scholars say this is because Russia has a civic (and by extension political) culture that is used to authoritarianism of one sort or another. The notion of rule by democratic law is taking a long time to take hold. Is this explanation adequate? Compared to other countries?
Kay Bradley

Essentials of Comparative Politics, 3e: W. W. Norton StudySpace - 1 views

www.wwnorton.com/...news.aspx

shared by Kay Bradley on 03 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 03 Sep 12
     
    Comparative Politics in the News: feeds from the New York Times and the BBC
Kay Bradley

Beyond Belief - Clive Crook - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...306172

globalization comparative advantage political economy economics atlantic

shared by Kay Bradley on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • name a single proposition in all social science that was both true and nontrivial. It took a while, but Samuelson finally thought of a good answer: the principle of comparative advantage
  • The doctrine in question, devised by David Ricardo in 1817, makes a strong claim about the gains that accrue from trade.
  • For nearly 200 years, the principle of comparative advantage, and the ideas about economic policy that flowed from it, divided the world into two camps: those with basic economic literacy, and the rest.
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  • Understanding this idea, and advocating it to the world, was part of what it meant to be an economist—especially an American economist.
  • ately things have changed. Some of America’s most eminent economists, including Samuelson himself, have edged away from that earlier consensus.
  • The shift is both momentous and disturbing. Just why it happened is a mystery.
  • what the principle of comparative advantage does not say.
  • trade between two countries will make both better off so long as each is especially good at making something different from the other
  • absolute advantage
  • there are mutual gains from trade even when one country is better at producing everything. All that matters is that its margin of superior efficiency is greater for some products than for others.
  • comparative advantage
  • Kay Bradley on 24 Sep 12
     
    Clive Crook weighs in on the Globalization debate.  
Kay Bradley

Telling Americans to Vote, or Else - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...americans-to-vote-or-else.html

voter turnout elections nytimes

shared by Kay Bradley on 06 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Thirty-one countries have some form of mandatory voting
  • Australia adopted mandatory voting in 1924, backed by small fines (roughly the size of traffic tickets) for nonvoting, rising with repeated acts of nonparticipation.
  • The results were remarkable. In the 1925 election, the first held under the new law, turnout soared to 91 percent. In recent elections, it has hovered around 95 percent. The law also changed civic norms. Australians are more likely than before to see voting as an obligation. The negative side effects many feared did not materialize. For example, the percentage of ballots intentionally spoiled or completed randomly as acts of resistance remained on the order of 2 to 3 percent.
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  • A democracy can’t be strong if its citizenship is weak. And right now American citizenship is attenuated — strong on rights, weak on responsibilities
  • three reasons in favor of mandatory votin
  • The second argument for mandatory voting is democratic
  • if some regularly vote while others don’t, officials are likely to give greater weight to participants
  • This might not matter much if nonparticipants were evenly distributed through the population. But political scientists have long known that they aren’t. People with lower levels of income and education are less likely to vote, as are young adults and recent first-generation immigrants
  • Changes in our political system have magnified these disparities.
  • Kay Bradley on 06 Nov 11
     
    Mandatory voting proposal. Compares to Australia, which has had mandatory voting since 1924.
iteuscher

'The whole thing is a sham': plan to help Sierra Leone mudslide victims derided - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...leone-mudslide-victims-derided

shared by iteuscher on 10 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • iteuscher on 10 Sep 17
     
    Interesting to compare the response to disasters in different countries (US to the recent hurricanes and Sierra Leone to a recent deadly mudslide). Also shows how promises of aid can be a shallow political tool.
Kay Bradley

What Can US Democracy Learn From Brazil? - The New York Times - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...zil-election-us-democracy.html

Brazil elections climate change democracy new york times

shared by Kay Bradley on 07 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 07 Nov 22
     
    A Comparative Politics Professor was interviewed for this article! There are pros and there are cons. . . .
Kay Bradley

Moaning Moguls | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...moaning-moguls

wealth inequality taxes inequality tax

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In the past year, the venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Kenneth Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, both compared populist attacks on the wealthy to the Nazis’ attacks on the Jews.
  • recent work by the economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty showed that ninety-five per cent of income gains in the first three years of the recovery went to the top one per cent—a lot of them believe that they’re a persecuted minority.
  • Business leaders were upset at the criticism that followed the financial crisis and, for many of them, it’s an article of faith that people succeed or fail because that’s what they deserve.
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  • If you believe that net worth is a reflection of merit, then any attempt to curb inequality looks unfair.
  • as a classic analysis by the historian James Weinstein showed, the reforms were intended to co-opt public pressure and avert more radical measures
  • they sprang from a pragmatic belief that the robustness of capitalism as a whole depended on wide distribution of the fruits of the system.
  • Committee for Economic Development, which played a central role in the forging of postwar consensus politics, accepting strong unions, bigger government, and the rise of the welfare state.
  • The C.E.D. called for tax increases to pay for the Korean War and it supported some of L.B.J.’s Great Society
  • As Mizruchi put it, “They believed that in order to maintain their privileges, they had to insure that ordinary Americans were having their needs met
  • That all changed beginning in the seventies, when the business community, wrestling with shrinking profits and tougher foreign competition, lurched to the right
  • Today, there are no centrist business organizations with any real political clout, and the only business lobbies that matter in Washington are those pushing an agenda of lower taxes and less regulation. Corporate profits and C.E.O. salaries have in recent years reached record levels, but there’s no sign of a return to the corporate statesmanship of the past (the occasional outlier like Warren Buffett notwithstanding)
  • In the postwar years, American companies depended largely on American consumers. Globalization has changed that—foreign sales account for almost half the revenue of the S&P 500—as has the rise of financial services (where the most important clients are the wealthy and other corporations). The well-being of the American middle class just doesn’t matter as much to companies’ bottom lines
  • Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform
  • Today, by contrast, corporate chieftains have little to fear, other than mildly higher taxes and the complaints of people who have read Thomas Piketty. Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can really threaten
erine2021

Coronavirus pandemic response survey puts US and US governments at the bottom of the pi... - 2 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by erine2021 on 30 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • United States, fewer than two in 10 people (18%) said the country is more united now
  • Three quarters (76%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the government has done a good job. Only one quarter (25%) of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents agree.
  • 14 countries said their own nation had handled Covid-19 well: 73% agreed, while 27% disagreed.
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  • only two countries where a minority of people said the government had done well.
  • The US and UK have right-leaning governments, while Spain has a left-leaning one
  • compare how well each government is doing among its own supporters.
  • center-left Social Democrats,
  • Economic confidence is also linked to the belief the government is doing well.
  • who said the current economic situation is good were more likely to say the government was doing a good job on coronavirus.
  • women in every country are more likely than men to say their lives have changed because of the crisis,
  • The study was conducted only in countries where nationally representative telephone surveys are feasible.
  • erine2021 on 30 Aug 20
     
    This article explains government approval and unity throughout the COVID19 pandemic. It acknowledges the large shift in disapproval towards the United States government, as well as the Trump administration in relation to their response to the pandemic.
  • mayas2021 on 30 Aug 20
     
    I find it interesting but not surprising that American citizen's opinions on how the their government has handled the corona virus is split down the political aisle. This split reflects the 82% of surveyed Americans that say the country is less united due to the pandemic. The study discussed in this interview also found that UK and Spanish citizen's answers were split by political party as well, and that those who supported the current government in their country generally thought that COVID-19 is being handled well. I also think it's noticeable that the country with the highest percent of observed unity during the pandemic is a country with universal health care, Denmark.
cooperg2021

Coronavirus: How Japan keeps COVID-19 under control - 2 views

www.dw.com/...a-52907069

shared by cooperg2021 on 31 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • cooperg2021 on 31 Aug 20
     
    This article, from a self proclaimed "unbiased" German media source, explores how Japan was able to limit covid cases so well. Compared to most other countries, Japan has significant risk factors: a dense population with a large concentration of old people and a flow of traffic from neighboring China. Yet, they have wildly low numbers of cases and deaths. Although some political scientists theorize that the government has under tested in order to appear organized and keep their 2020 olympics position, many believe that tests were simply preserved in case of emergency. In either case, Japan's hygienic culture is indisputably helpful. An interviewed citizen said that they "didn't need" covid to "teach" them how to wash their hands or wear a mask. In fact, wearing a mask is seen as a civic duty and is seen as the bare minimum for every person. (Flu rates actually decreased due to such strict mask wearing). As a result, Japanese people are able to continue with many regularly scheduled activities; school, festivals, even amusement parks began to re-open by March.
  • dominickq2021 on 31 Aug 20
     
    I think it's really interesting how unspoken rules/cultural norms were able to in some ways make up for the failures of the Japenese government's response in terms of testing.
  • sashajlu on 31 Aug 20
     
    Hi Cooper! It is so interesting how the different cultures have influenced how much the virus spreads. Seeing how in the US, the government played a huge role in influencing the spread of the virus, I'm curious if any other political factors have also played a role in Japan's success.
samuelws

Democracy Is Dying in Brazil | Foreign Affairs - 0 views

www.foreignaffairs.com/...democracy-dying-brazil

shared by samuelws on 02 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 02 Nov 21
     
    Since Bolsonaro has take charge of Brazil, every aspect of political life has depleted into nothing. And many people comparing him to Donald Trump.
  • samuelws on 02 Nov 21
     
    This article discusses how the Brazilian president is similar to Trump in his rejection of other governmental authorities and dictator-like actions, but these trends to authoritarianism began as early as the 1980s as the military gained political influence and far-right groups gained power in other countries.
Kay Bradley

The Political Economy of Venezuela and PDVSA - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs - 1 views

gjia.georgetown.edu/...economy-of-venezuela-and-pdvsa

Venezuela hyperinflation inflation Latin America petrostate petroleum economy international Less Developed World:

shared by Kay Bradley on 16 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Under the direction of Luis Giusti in the 1994-1998 period, PDVSA’s production soared. This trend changed in 1999, when Hugo Chavez became Venezuela’s president and introduced Chavismo as the guiding economic doctrine.
  • Chavez responded by purging PDVSA of its professionals en masse, replacing them with “reliable” hands—those loyal to Chavez’s socialist regime.
  • This trend has left Venezuela’s output drastically lower than when Chavez took power in 1999.
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  • with capital expenditures far below the value of equipment that is being consumed each year by depreciation and amortization.
  • On top of PDVSA’s reduced capital stock and its deteriorating quality, there has also been a drop in the stock and quality of its human capital.
  • It is important to note that PDVSA’s decreased output is not due to dwindling oil reserves,
  • Venezuela’s reserves—which are the world’s largest, at 9.26 billion barrels
  • At the end of 2018, Exxon’s depletion rate was 6.74 percent per year—a rate comparable to that realized by most major oil companies. That rate implies that it would take 9.9 years for Exxon’s oil reserves to be halfway depleted. That is 370.5 years earlier than when PDVSA would deplete half of its reserves
  • The country with the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela is plagued by a mismanaged, state-owned oil company in a death spiral—PDVSA.
lauran5556555

White House vows to provide 10 million Covid tests for schools each month - 1 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-tests-schools-month-rcna11878

shared by lauran5556555 on 12 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • lauran5556555 on 13 Jan 22
     
    This is interesting and relates to the public policy aspect of comparative politics.
alisimons

Annual Gun Law State Scorecard 2014 - 3 views

gunlawscorecard.org

shared by alisimons on 02 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • alisimons on 02 Oct 15
     
    Also, I don't know if this counts as comparative politics (it compares states within the U.S., not different countries), but I still think this is an interesting representation of how diverse gun policies are within the U.S. and how that affects gun violence.
anays2023

Key senators eye the exits ahead of 2022 midterms: 'It's a six-year commitment' - CNNPo... - 2 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anays2023 on 16 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • anays2023 on 16 Sep 21
     
    Retirement in the senate is always an important issue that most people usually overlook
  • samueld2022 on 18 Sep 21
     
    It is interesting to compare how long senators can serve in the US compared to other countries. For example, In Canada, senators have a mandatory retirement age of 75. A lot of our senators would no longer be serving if this were true here in the US.
  • Kay Bradley on 27 Sep 21
     
    So true! The power of incumbency is hard to deny. . . but it shouldn't be. On the other hand, it does take a while to learn how to be an effective lawmaker, so I am not a fan of short term limits.
Michelle Ito

A Cancer Cycle, From Here to China - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-and-cancer-that-wont-end.html

China contamination

shared by Michelle Ito on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Michelle Ito on 12 Jan 13
     
    I thought that I would post this article seeing that our final comparative politics project can easily relate to this.
ejeffs

Fact sheet on Somalia's 2016 Elector Process - 2 views

reliefweb.int/...ctoral-process-10-october-2016

somalia failed state elections 2016 africa

shared by ejeffs on 14 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • ejeffs on 14 Oct 16
     
    Stateless Somalia is attempting to re-legitimize itself by creating a new electoral process for the 2016 election. Somalia's next president will be elected on November 30th. Some interesting aspects to note is that this election is not universal, but putting a process in place is the country's first step to developing universal elections by 2020 and creating more political participation.
  • madeirat on 14 Oct 16
     
    I think it is especially interesting how hard they are trying to get female representation (1 of ever 3 seats in the House of the People will be contested by only women, 30% of seats in the upper house reserved for women, 16 of 51 delegates required to be women, registration to be a candidate is half as much for women compared to men). I appreciate that they are trying to get diverse representation, but did they go so far as to be a little patronizing? I don't know enough about Somalia to answer, but I'm curious what you think.
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