Comparative Politics

Once a state becomes highly unequal, it can enter a spiral of decline. All the most unequal rich nations in the world are now falling apart in one way or another and all have a "strong man" in charge: USA, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Israel. On 12 December 2019, the people of the UK confirmed their membership in that club of the world’s most unequal affluent countries headed by a strong man.

More equitable countries tend not to have a leader who matters all that much, a head of government who is not that well known. They also tend to have lower far-right voting, higher overall turnout at elections, higher spending on public goods as a proportion of GDP, fewer (social class)-segregated schools, better quality secure housing, less homelessness, much better mental health, and higher life expectancy. Jobs in such countries are better paid for the majority of people and less precarious.

Nowhere else in Europe is life expectancy falling. Nowhere else in Europe has rising infant mortality. Nowhere else in Europe (bar Germany) has as many people sleeping rough on the streets. Germany only has as many rough sleepers because a very small proportion of the very large numbers of refugees it accepted are without housing. The UK accepts almost no refugees.

Nigeria’s government is reviving old habits from its authoritarian past to stifle criticism.Evoking memories of Nigeria’s three decades of military rule, the repression risks undoing progress Africa’s top oil producer has made since the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1999. Governance and other reforms have helped more than double average annual foreign investment since then -- a pace President Muhammadu Buhari needs to sustain to help reduce the world’s largest number of people living in extreme poverty.

Buhari won a popular vote in 2015 claiming to be a “converted democrat,” and was reelected in February. That assertion has been eroded by crackdowns on civil-society organizations, increasing arrests of journalists and planned laws to regulate social media.

“Investors are less keen on venturing into regions that are considered to be within the grip of erratic strongmen.”

Analysis of results by the Electoral Reform Society shows the Conservatives would have won 77 fewer seats under the regional list proportional representation method of voting. While Labour would have won 10 more seats and the Greens another 11, the Liberal Democrats would have been the biggest beneficiaries by taking 59 more seats.

“No government should be able to win a big majority on a minority of the vote,” Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society. “Something is very clearly wrong.” He added: “Westminster’s voting system is warping our politics beyond recognition and we’re all paying the price. “Under proportional voting systems, seats would more closely match votes, and we could end the scourge of millions feeling unrepresented and ignored.”

More than 860,000 people voted for the Greens and just over 640,0000 cast their ballots for the Brexit Party. But the Greens will only have one MP in Caroline Lucas, while Nigel Farage’s party did not win a single seat.

The Conservatives have become a vehicle for well-drilled fanatics who, like the Militant tendency forty years ago, infiltrate constituency parties in order to deselect MPs who offend doctrinal purity.

There is no more Conservative figure than Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general. His offence? Standing up for parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. These are, it seems, hanging offences in Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party.

the Conservative Party came into existence in the wake of the French Revolution as a defender of institutions – church, monarchy, parliament, rule of law – against abstraction, ideology and ultimately political violence.

for many years the Conservatives were the party of quiet, practical constitutionalism. The party inspired by Edmund Burke (although himself a Whig); the party of Lord Salisbury and Lord Hailsham and Norman St John Stevas; the party responsible for life peerages, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (in everyday terms the most important civil liberties legislation ever passed in the United Kingdom), the select committee system. It is even the Conservative party of all parties that can take the most credit for the European Convention on Human Rights (through David Maxwell-Fyfe) and the Single Market (Lord Cockfield).

Under David Cameron and his immediate predecessors, the Conservatives shifted to explicit but hostile ideological positions on constitutional issues complemented by casual disdain. Cameron, for example, insisted that the United Kingdom should repeal the Human Rights Act as a matter of principle. When Cameron was faced with a defeat in the House of Lords in respect of a welfare proposal that was then dropped, he threatened to “reform” the upper house. And when faced with a Speaker of the House of Commons who was not sufficiently obliging to the Conservatives, Cameron and his colleagues sought to get the Speaker replaced. A pattern began to emerge: strident and populist statements in public and cynical manoeuvring in practice.

The combination of Brexit (where the Conservatives persist in pretending that complex problems have easy solutions), the notion that a referendum result trumps parliamentary supremacy, and minority government for all but two years since 2010 have accelerated this anti- constitutionalist trend.

"I am also at a stage in life where I would prefer to do something more rewarding with my time, than peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust,"

As UK Brexit Counsellor, Hall Hall was tasked with explaining Britain's approach to leaving the European Union to US lawmakers and policy makers on Capitol Hill and in the White House. She suggested that her diplomatic role -- intended to be politically neutral -- was co-opted to deliver messages that were "neither fully honest nor politically impartial." Hall Hall said that she had filed a formal complaint about being asked to convey overtly partisan language on Brexit in Washington.

Hall Hall said she was resigning now, rather than after the election, so that her decision could not be portrayed as a reaction to the result. She is expected to leave the embassy next week, and is quitting the diplomatic service completely."Each person has to find their own level of comfort with this situation," she wrote in her letter. "Since I have no other element to my job except Brexit, I find my position has become unbearable personally, and untenable professionally."

If the unofficial reports of dead and wounded are anywhere near accurate, this might be the most deadly uprising since the 1979 revolution.

Iran’s turmoil is not driven by U.S. policies, nor is it merely some circumstantial spasm. The protests are the latest salvo in the Iranian struggle for accountable government that stretches back more than a century. And the fury and desperation of the Iranians on the streets this week strikes at the heart of the legitimacy of the revolutionary system.

After the monarchy was ousted, collective action — both spontaneous and opportunistic — was a primary mechanism for gaining advantage in the chaotic struggle for power.

the Egyptian military has been allowed to engage in economic activities as a way of reducing the official defence budget. The military economy also allows senior officers to be compensated for low pay and pensions, by giving them the opportunity to acquire extra income and fringe benefits. The overall volume of such economic activities was relatively modest until 2011, when former President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former general who became president in 2014, has relied on the military to take over major management roles in the civilian economy

this approach overlooks the real structural problems in the Egyptian economy, including low productivity, low investment in all sectors except for energy and real estate, and low value-added, especially in technology-dependent sectors

This week, Namibians voted for a new president and Parliament in the country’s sixth general election since independence in 1990.The South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) has won every single one of those elections

Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are all governed by the liberation movement that ushered in their independence, whereas in South Africa the party that helped to end apartheid is still in charge

Even the least popular among them, Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF, was returned to power with a parliamentary majority of 52.35%

Whereas once the key players in elections were well-established – the parties, newspapers and broadcast media, trade unions, business lobbyists – now we are seeing an increasing number of entities getting involved. Some are non-partisan such as voter advice applications and voter registration drives. Others are clearly partisan, even if not always directly associated with a party, ranging from social movements to alternative media, tactical voting sites, and partisan blogs; in 2017 we even saw the computer game ‘Corbyn Run’ and Grime4Corbyn music campaign.

Whilst the political landscape has seen an enormous rise in the number of these entities that are engaging in electoral activity, researchers actually know little about who they are, what they do, and the impact they have. Few appear to spend enough money to register with the Electoral Commission. Many have small resources and teams and fall dormant outside of elections. Yet voter advice applications and tactical voting websites reported hit numbers during the 2017 election in the millions. In that election, cross-party campaign groups managed to mobilise volunteers and canvassers who are usually put off at the thought of stuffy political party meetings. They possibly played a role in knocking Nick Clegg off his seat in Sheffield Hallam. They will certainly be targeting Boris Johnson.

The SWAPO party received more than 56 percent of the votes for the national assembly, significantly less than during the last elections when the party, which has been in power since independence in 1990, won 80 percent of the vote

Independent candidate Itula Panduleni Filemon Bango finished second, with just more than 29 percent of the vote. Disaffection, especially among Namibia's jobless youth, drove support for former Swapo member and dentist Itula, 62, who ran as an independent candidate.

Geingob's win comes days after allegations of corruption and money laundering in the Namibian fishing industry led to the resignation and arrest of two government ministers in the wake of a joint investigation by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the Icelandic State Broadcaster RUV, and the Icelandic magazine Stundin.

"Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act defines fake news. It leaves it very vague, it says false statement or fact is a statement that is false and misleading, so the government has a lot of latitude to the decide what is fake news," Kirsten Han, the editor-in-chief of New Naratif, a Singapore-based member-funded multimedia platform, said. "I think the concern is that it gives the government so much power to define the narrative and to define what is fake news. If Facebook complies to Singapore, then the question is, will they then comply with other governments as well in the future."

Asia Internet Coalition, an association of internet and technology companies, called the law the "most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date", while rights groups have said it could undermine internet freedoms, not just in Singapore, but elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Facebook, a major investor in Singapore that last year announced plans to build a $1bn data centre there, has its Asia headquarters in the city-state.