Month: January 2008

The “Genocide Olympics”?

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(Image from the San Francisco Chronicle)

In a piece published today New York Times op-ed columnist, Nicholas Kristof, addresses the link between China’s foreign policy goals and the continuing genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or have died from starvation, disease and malnutrition, and millions have been displaced, whether internally or as refugees abroad, for which, Kristof argues, China bears some moral culpability. Kristof is not alone in this view and the NGO, Olympic Dream for Darfur, has decided to try to do something about it by establishing the “Genocide Olympics” campaign, which is meant to shame China into changing its policies toward Sudan.* Will this work? Is it good foreign policy? Is it morally acceptable to mix sport with politics? Remember, there is historical precedent for this type of thing as the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Quoting Kristof:

The Beijing Olympics this summer were supposed to be China’s coming-out party, celebrating the end of nearly two centuries of weakness, poverty and humiliation.

Instead, China’s leaders are tarnishing their own Olympiad by abetting genocide in Darfur and in effect undermining the U.N. military deployment there. The result is a growing international campaign to brand these “The Genocide Olympics.”

This is not a boycott of the Olympics. But expect Darfur-related protests at Chinese Embassies, as well as banners and armbands among both athletes and spectators. There’s a growing recognition that perhaps the best way of averting hundreds of thousands more deaths in Sudan is to use the leverage of the Olympics to shame China into more responsible behavior.

The central problem is that in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, diplomatically protecting and supplying the arms for the first genocide of the 21st century. China is the largest arms supplier to Sudan, officially selling $83 million in weapons, aircraft and spare parts to Sudan in 2005, according to Amnesty International USA. That is the latest year for which figures are available.

As the highlighted portion of the quote above implies, China is acting in a fundamentally realist manner, eschewing moral concerns in order to increase its power and security.

*Please do not refer to Sudan as the Sudan, or to Ukraine as the Ukraine, but Sudan and Ukraine, respectively, as they are no longer regions within colonial empires, but are independent states in their own right. Adding the in front of their country names is anachronistic.

Blog Assignment PLSC240 Introduction to Comparative Politics

The function of your blog will be to select, research, analyze, and contribute knowledge and information on a topic of interest to you (the group will select one topic only) in comparative politics. As we address the theories and principles of comparative politics over the course of the semester, you will post to your blog analyzing how these theories, principles, and ideas apply to your chosen topic. In addition, since this course is called “comparative” politics, I would like you to analyze at least two (and up to four) different countries, one of which should be a developing country. The goal is for the members of your group to learn more about that topic than we could ever hope to cover in class over the course of a single semester. You will have to post your topic of choice (with potential countries), and a brief description, by midnight, Wednesday, January 30th.

My goal is to allow you to be as resourceful, self-initiated and creative as possible. These are your blogs and you will ultimately be responsible for the nature of the posts. I will guide you, but will allow much latitude in what you decide to post and how you use this assignment to express yourself and demonstrate to me how much you are learning about a particular topic. I want us to build a learning environment and community together, which means that we will all be involved in this enterprise. To make an analogy, it would be as if I were to instruct you to build an apartment building with X number of units on a particular plot of land, and pretty much let you loose to create your vision. I will guide you along the way, for certain, but will let you be the ultimate owner of the finished product. So your first step is to select a topic.

As you may have noticed we have already addressed some topics in comparative politics that may be of interest to you. To help you begin to narrow down your choice of topic, use some of the resources that you already have available to you. First, go to my blog and search for PLSC240, and you’ll see a series of posts with potential topics/ideas. Another immediate source is the textbook. For example, browse the entries in the index of O’Neil’s Essentials.

Continue reading “Blog Assignment PLSC240 Introduction to Comparative Politics”

Modeling Social Processes–Abortion in Cross-national Comparison

Thanks to a post by Zoe and Geoff, I decided to use the social fact of variation in abortion rates from country to country as the inspiration for class discussion today on the modeling process in social sciences. First, the data* (listing only the top and bottom 10–the US is 30th (out of 90 countries with data available) with a rate of 23.9% in 2003):

Country

Year

%

Russia

2005

52.5

Greenland

2004

50.2

Bosnia and Herzegovina

1988

48.9

Estonia

2004

47.4

Romania

2004

46.9

Belarus

2004

44.6

Hungary

2004

42.0

Guadeloupe

2005

41.4

Ukraine

2004

40.4

Bulgaria

2004

40.3

…

…

Suriname

1994

3.0

Puerto Rico

2001

2.2

Malta

2004

1.7

Qatar

2004

1.3

Portugal

2005

0.8

Venezuela

1968

0.8

Mexico

2003

0.2

Poland

2004

0.06

Panama

2000

0.02

Chile

1991

0.02

Now, according to Lave and March, the next step in the model-building process is to consider a social process that would lead to this outcome. There were three potential answers given in class, which correspond to three categories of explanation that we will address throughout the course:

1) Cultural–it would seem that religion is very important to individuals in the countries with the lowest rates. Most of these countries are strongly Catholic and the Church’s official policies are strongly anti-abortion (pro-life). Thus, individuals in these societies are inculcated with a strong view of what to do in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.

2) Rational Choice–one of the groups argued that the decision to abort (or not) a fetus was made on the basis of strategic calculations of self-interest. The countries at the bottom, these students argued, were agricultural and poorer, and children are needed as a source of labor for the household, as a future hedge against retirement for parents who live in societies with a poorly developed social welfare state, with little hope of receiving retirement funds from the government.

3) Institutional–rules, laws, regulations. Some students argued that some countries (like Chile) have laws making abortion illegal, thus either lowering the number overall, or decreasing the incentive for those having illegal abortions to report them to the official authorities.

That was great work; give yourselves a pat on the back or a round of applause.

The third step in the modeling process is, then, to tease out further implications of your preferred hypothesis above. Let’s go back to the cultural explanation. If it’s true that the Catholic Church has a tremendous impact on people’s views of what is right and wrong then, as one student asked, “wouldn’t it also be the case that divorce levels in these countries should be lower than divorce levels in the countries at the top of the list (since the Catholic Church also frowns upon divorce) ?

Continue reading “Modeling Social Processes–Abortion in Cross-national Comparison”

Voter Turnout Across the World

O’Neil (in Chapter 6) argues that democracies are institutionalized through the institutions of participation, competition, and liberty.  The most common form of participation in democracies is voting in elections.  Yet, the general sense seems to be that voters are turning out to vote in ever smaller numbers over the years.  Do the data bear that out?

The IGO IDEA–The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance–has a fantastic website dedicated to, amongst other things, tracking voter turnout levels in elections around the world. Referring to the map below, we see that voter turnout levels differ from country to country. Why might this be the case? This observation could be used as the first step in demonstrating Lave and March’s four-step process of modeling social and political phenomena. Thus, step one (“observe a social fact”) is voter turnout levels are higher in some countries and lower in others. Step two, then, requires us to consider a social process that could have accounted for this variation in outcomes. Can you think of a social process that can account for the findings on the map below?

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Here are some important findings from IDEA’s report on world voter turnout trends.  For a complete list of data for each respective country, go here.

  • High turnout is not solely the property of established democracies in the West. Of the top 10 countries in the 1990s only three were Western European democracies.
  • Turnout across the globe rose steadily between 1945 and 1990 – increasing from 61% in the 1940s to 68% in the 1980s. But post-1990 the average has dipped back to 64%.
  • Since 1945 Western Europe has maintained the highest average turnout (77%), and Latin America the lowest (53%), but turnout need not necessarily reflect regional wealth. North America and the Caribbean have the third lowest turnout rate, while Oceania and the former Soviet states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Central Eastern Europe are respectively second and third highest in the regional league table over this period.
  • The overall average turnout in the post-war period for established democracies is 73%, which contrasts with an average of 58% for all other countries. However, turnout rates in both established and non-established democracies have been converging over time.
  • Out of the 81 countries which had first and subsequent elections between 1945 and 1997, the average turnout in first elections (61%) is actually lower than the average for subsequent elections (62%). This represents a mixed pattern backed up by the fact that turnout in 41 countries dropped between the first and second elections but turnout actually rose in another 40 countries.

Is Freedom on the March Worldwide? Freedom House says “no”.

In a previous post I introduced the NGO, Freedom House, and included a world map of freedom based on the results of that organization’s analysis of the level of democracy worldwide in the last year. The map, of course, is static, and tells us nothing about the dynamics of democratization worldwide. In other words, compared to the year before, is the world more or less free? Well, the news is not good. Here are some highlights (or better yet, lowlights) from the press release:

The year 2007 was marked by a notable setback for global freedom, Freedom House reported in a worldwide survey of freedom released today.

The decline in freedom, as reported in Freedom in the World 2008, an annual survey of political rights and civil liberties worldwide, was reflected in reversals in one-fifth of the world’s countries. Most pronounced in South Asia, it also reached significant levels in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. A substantial number of politically important countries whose declines have broad regional and global implications—including Russia, Pakistan, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, and Venezuela—were affected.

Complete survey results reflect global events during 2007. A package of charts and graphs and an explanatory essay are available online.

As for specifics:

    The number of countries judged by Freedom in the World as Free in 2007 stood at 90, representing 46 percent of the global population. The number of Free countries did not change from the previous year’s survey.

      • The number of countries qualifying as Partly Free stood at 60, or 18 percent of the world population. The number of Partly Free countries increased by two from the previous year, as Thailand and Togo both moved from Not Free to Partly Free.
      • Forty-three countries were judged Not Free, representing 36 percent of the global population. The number of Not Free countries declined by two from 2006. One territory, the Palestinian Authority, declined from Partly Free to Not Free.
      • The number of electoral democracies dropped by two and totals 121. One country, Mauritania, qualified to join the world’s electoral democracies in 2007. Developments in three countries—Philippines, Bangladesh and Kenya—disqualified them from the electoral democracy list.

      We’ll address electoral democracies, and other “hybrid regimes” just before the mid-term break.

      How You can Directly Promote Entrepreneurship in the Developing World

      Periodically, I will use student posts as the inspiration for posts of my own here. This post is inspired by an informative post by Matt and Russ on the NGO KIVA.org. KIVA allows you, from the comfort of your keyboard, to monetarily support entrepreneurship in the developing world through facilitating the supply of micro-credit loans to budding entrepreneurs. This allows these individuals to overcome the handicap of poorly developed credit markets in these countries. [You may want to ask yourself why credit markets in most parts of the developing world are poorly developed.] For as little as $25 US, you can help a budding entrepreneur get the funding s/he needs to attempt to build a sustainable living for themselves and their families. The principal is returned to the donors (or lenders, more appropriately) within a specified time period. We’ll look at micro-credit in both PLSC240 and PLSC250 later in the course. Here is former President Bill Clinton explaining the concept of KIVA to Fox News’ Greta van Susteren.

      Barack Obama Writes Editorial in Kenyan Newspaper

      Democratic candidate for US President, Barack Obama, has written an editorial in one of Kenya’s most prominent newspapers addressing the dire situation there, the catalyst for which were disputed elections that took place in late December. Obama, who has family ties to that African country, wrote that Kenya had reached a “defining moment” on its road to democratic consolidation. Here is a snippet and a link to the full text of the opinion piece.

      Clearly, Kenya has reached a defining moment. It is up to Kenyan leaders and the Kenyan population to turn away from the path of bloodshed, division, and repression, and to turn towards reconciliation, negotiation, and renewed commitment to democratic governance. There is no doubt that there were serious flaws in the process by which presidential votes were tabulated. There is also no doubt that actions taken by both sides in the aftermath of the election have deepened the stalemate.

      But Kenya’s hard-won democracy and precious national unity can be salvaged. Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. And now is the time for President Kibaki, Raila Odinga, and all of Kenya’s leaders, to calm tensions, to come together unconditionally, and to implement a political process that peacefully addresses the controversies that divide them and restores the Kenyan people’s confidence in their political system.

      Image from stuff.co.nz

      Freedom House

      Freedom House is an NGO that is prominent in the global movement to expand democracy and economic freedom worldwide. The organization also publishes the well-known (and well-regarded) Freedom in The World rankings annually. These rankings evaluate the countries of the world along various dimensions related to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law. A composite score for each country is then tabulated and each country is placed into one of three categories–free, partly free, not free–as a result. Which color corresponds to which category, do you suppose? Their website provides a vast array of data and resources–and strong analytical country descriptions–on phenomena broadly related to democracy.
      (Click on link for large image)

      freedom_house_rankings_2008.jpg

      Congo Civil War Kills 45,000 Persons Monthly

      We’ll be covering war and strife later in the semester and we’ll note that the nature of warfare has changed over the years. Whereas most wars in the past were of the inter-state variety, contemporary wars are mostly intra-state (i.e, wars resulting from civil and ethnic conflict). A worrisome characteristic of these contemporary wars is that the vast majority of victims are civilians and they generally succumb to factors, such as disease and hunger, not related to direct conflict. In a new report by the International Red Cross, we learn that 45,000 persons have died (and continue to die) monthly from civil war in Congo.

      25congo600.jpg

      The effects of one of the bloodiest wars in modern history continue to unfold in relative obscurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 5.4 million lives have been lost as a result of conflict since 1998, according to a nationwide mortality survey that will be released today.

      While the conflict in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan has begun to draw substantial international attention, the humanitarian crisis resulting from conflict in the Congo has received almost none. About 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and two million displaced.

      “People aren’t dying dramatically in Congo,” said Richard Brennan, a lead researcher with the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee, which conducted the survey. “It’s not like a Rwandan genocide where people die in a very dramatic and acute manner. They are dying quietly and anonymously.”

      In fact, very few of the recorded deaths were caused directly by violence, roughly 0.4 per cent nationwide, the report says. Instead, the principal causes of death across Congo, a largely undeveloped country the size of Western Europe, were malnutrition, preventable diseases and pregnancy-related conditions.
      “Our experience in poorly developed countries over the last 20 years is that in most conflicts, the majority of deaths, frequently over 90 per cent, are due to the indirect consequences of that conflict,” Dr. Brennan said. “They are no less devastating, but they are very much below our radar screen in the West.”

      Corruption and Transparency International (Redux)

      Apropos of an earlier post and discussion in class today about correlation and causality, here is an excerpt from an interview with Transparency International’s Huguette Labelle, where she answers questions about the apparent correlation between corruption levels and GDP, and corruption levels and levels of violent conflict:

      Question:
      The countries with the best scores in the CPI seem to be some of the world’s richest countries – is higher GDP the key to less corruption?
      Answer:
      I think the difference between the countries at the top and the bottom is not so much due to their relative wealth or poverty, but to the development of their institutions. The top scorers have effective public sectors, with open contracting procedures, strong disclosure rules and access to information.

      Labelle is implying here that the correlation between corruption and GDP is not causal; it is spurious (we’ll talk about spurious causation next class).

      Question:
      Many of the countries with the worst scores in the CPI are victims of violent conflict (Somalia, Myanmar, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan). What is the relationship between failed states and corruption?
      Answer:
      In a crisis situation, the institutions of government are weakened, so corruption can more easily take hold and spread. It is not just individuals, but also institutions, that are responsible for maintaining integrity in a country. Many countries at the bottom of the CPI are failed states that are at the intersection of poverty, conflict and corruption.

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