Category: Comparative Politics–PLSC240

This category was previously known as PLSC240, which was the number of my Intro to Comparative Politics class at U of R.

How do you Prove You’re a Jew?

Gershon Gorenberg has written a new article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine
on the difficulties some Israeli Jews are having proving their Jewishness before rabbinic courts in that country.  The article is interesting and touches upon many of the issues we discussed in intro to comparative that deal with concepts of identity–nationhood, ethnicity, citizenship, etc.  In fact, I think I’ll be including this article in the syllabus during future iterations of this course.  In addition, I did not know that there is no civil marriage ceremony (marriage ceremonies are purely a religious affair in Israel) in Israeli law, but upon further reflection, I probably should have guessed that would be the case.

The story is particularly significant for American Jews, to which the accompanying snippets below attest:

02jewish1-500.jpgOne day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fiancé to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove — before a rabbinic court, no less — that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she…

…In recent years, the state’s Chief Rabbinate and its branches in each Israeli city have adopted an institutional attitude of skepticism toward the Jewish identity of those who enter its doors. And the type of proof that the rabbinate prefers is peculiarly unsuited to Jewish life in the United States. The Israeli government seeks the political and financial support of American Jewry. It welcomes American Jewish immigrants. Yet the rabbinate, one arm of the state, increasingly treats American Jews as doubtful cases: not Jewish until proved so.

More than any other issue, the question of Who is a Jew? has repeatedly roiled relations between Israel and American Jewry. Psychologically, it is an argument over who belongs to the family. In the past, the casus belli was conversion: Would the Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew coming to Israel, apply to those converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis? Now, as Sharon’s experience indicates, the status of Jews by birth is in question. Equally important, the dividing line is no longer between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. The rabbinate’s handling of the issue has placed it on one side of an ideological fissure within Orthodox Judaism itself, between those concerned with making sure no stranger enters the gates and those who fear leaving sisters and brothers outside.

The story reminds me of a friend of mine who–of Croatian parentage but born in Canada– upon her arrival in Croatia (she had decided to move there during the middle of the war in the 1990s) had gone to the local police station with the aim of registering her presence (at that time, all foreigners were required to report to police within 24 hours of their arrival).  When she took out her Canadian passport, a clerk at the Ministry of Internal Affairs asked her the names of her parents.  After my friend responded, the clerk refused to allow her to register as a foreigner and insisted that she take out Croatian citizenship on the spot.  When my friend insisted that she was a Canadian citizen, the clerk responded “your father is ours, your mother is ours, that makes you  one of us also.”

 

Janjaweed Militia Renews Scorched-Eart Policy in Darfur

The New York Times reports that the notorious Janjaweed militia is once again active in Darfur.

 darfur_scortched_earth.jpg

Abu Surouj, Sudan, after government forces and allied militias burned the town last month. Such attacks in Sudan are a return to the tactics that terrorized Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict.

Photo: Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

 SULEIA, Sudan — The janjaweed are back.

They came to this dusty town in the Darfur region of Sudan on horses and camels on market day. Almost everybody was in the bustling square. At the first clatter of automatic gunfire, everyone ran.

The militiamen laid waste to the town — burning huts, pillaging shops, carrying off any loot they could find and shooting anyone who stood in their way, residents said. Asha Abdullah Abakar, wizened and twice widowed, described how she hid in a hut, praying it would not be set on fire.

“I have never been so afraid,” she said.

The attacks by the janjaweed, the fearsome Arab militias that came three weeks ago,, were a return to the tactics that terrorized Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict.

Such brutal, three-pronged attacks of this scale — involving close coordination of air power, army troops and Arab militias in areas where rebel troops have been — have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured. But they resemble the kinds of campaigns that first captured the world’s attention and prompted the Bush administration to call the violence in Darfur genocide.

I noticed the same pattern during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with militia groups acting in close concert with government support.  In my study of the Croatian region of Baranya, I noticed that the villages in which civilians were killed all had one thing in common–they were on (or very near) a major regional road.  This meant that government military forces (with their tanks and armed personnel carriers) had easy access to these villages, allowing the militias to swoop in and do their thing.

Cross-National Comparisons in Incarceration Rates

Every time I hear or read about a numerical fact, I always ask myself “is this high, low, average” for this particular phenomenon.  In order to answer this question, I’m required to make at least an implicit comparison.  So when I read today that for the first time ever, 1 in 100 American adults is incarcerated, I wondered how that compared to other countries.  The information is not hard to find.  Here’s a chart for your perusal.  What do you think accounts for the variation in incarceration rates across countries?

Here are some snippets from ABC News:

incarceration-oecd.jpg For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

The steadily growing inmate population “is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime,” the report said.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are pressuring many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft on crime.

Kenyan Leaders Sign Peace Agreement

Kenya’s political leaders have finally reached an agreement that Kenyans hope will signal the end of the recent instability and inter-ethnic bloodshed, which resulted from disputed elections in late December of last year. The New York Times reports that the structure of the political system in Kenya has been altered as a result of an agreement between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga:

29kenya-span-600.jpgNAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s rival leaders broke their tense standoff on Thursday, agreeing to share power in a deal that may end the violence that has engulfed this nation but could be the beginning of a long and difficult political relationship.

The country seemed to let out a collective cheer as Mwai Kibaki, the president, and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, sat down at a desk in front of the president’s office, with a bank of television cameras rolling, and signed an agreement that creates a powerful prime minister position for Mr. Odinga and splits cabinet posts between the government and the opposition.

The two sides, which have been bitterly at odds for the past two months, will now be fused together in a government of national unity.

But there are still many thorny issues to resolve, starting with how the new government will function with essentially two bosses who have tried unsuccessfully to work together before. The government must also deal with the delicate business of reassigning the choice positions already given to Mr. Kibaki’s allies.

When we get back from the spring break, in intro to comparative we will analyze the political systems of several democracies around the world and you’ll realize that very few democracies have institutionalized a system that contains a strong Prime Minister and strong President. The most successful example is probably France, with its semi-presidential system. Even in strongly democratic France, however, political stability is often compromised when the President and Prime Minister are members of different political parties, as will be the case in Kenya. It will be interesting to see how the Kenyan version of cohabitation will develop in the coming months and years.

Who Speaks for Islam–a New Book by the Gallup Poll

The Gallup Polling outfit has a new book out based on a massive (over 50,000 respondents) recent poll on attitudes amongst the world’s approximately 1.3 billion Muslims. Let us allow the publishers to describe the content themselves:

islamwld.jpgGallup’s largest study of Muslim populations worldwide challenges conventional wisdom and the inevitability of a global conflict as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue. Despite widespread media coverage of global terrorism from America and Europe to the Middle East and Asia, little is known about what majorities of the world’s Muslims really think and feel. What do Muslims say about violence and terrorist attacks? What do they say about democracy, women, and relations with the West? What are their values, goals, and religious beliefs?

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed (Gallup Press; March 2008; hardcover) sheds new light into the “increasing hostility” that Archbishop Tutu characterizes.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. public officials seemed to have no idea whether or not many Muslims supported the bombings. This troubled Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton, who felt that “no one in Washington had any idea what 1.3 billion Muslims were thinking, and yet we were working on intricate strategies that were going to change the world for all time.” Clifton commissioned his company to undertake the enormous job.

The result is Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, based on six years of research and more than 50,000 interviews representing 1.3 billion Muslims who reside in more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations.

Some of the more intriguing findins?

  • Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.
  • Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution AND they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution.
  • Muslims around the world say that what they LEAST admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values — the same answers that Americans themselves give when asked this question.
  • When asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.
  • Muslims say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations with their societies is to change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam.

Note: the map above is from Professor Juan Cole.  The colors refer to the percentage of inhabitants of each state who are Muslims.

The Political Economy of Assassination

Today in intro to IR, we discussed the role of individuals in international politics.  On Friday, we’ll look at the policy debate on page 152 of Mingst, where the debate question is “Should ‘bad’ or ‘corrupt’ leaders be forcibly removed by the international community?  Mingst provides arguments for and against.  What about not only removing them, but having them assassinated?  Two economists–Ben Olken and Ben Jones–have decided to take a look at the link between assassinations and other factors such as democratization and economic growth.  What have they found?

Olken wonders whether economic devel­opment and the path to democratization are shaped more by broad historical forces or by the actions of specific leaders—be they demo­cratically elected prime ministers or thuggish authoritarians…

…In “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” Olken and Jones looked at the effects of political assassination, using a strict empirical methodology that takes into account economic conditions at the time of the killing and what Olken calls a “novel data set” of assas­sination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, between 1875 and 2004.

Olken and Jones discovered that a country was “more likely to see democratization follow­ing the assassination of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.”

…In “Do Leaders Matter? National Leadership and Growth since World War II,” Olken and Jones explored whether “individual political leaders make a difference in economic growth.” This is tricky business for the researcher because, as Olken explains, a country’s economic situa­tion can affect the election of a leader: when the economic outlook is good, for instance, presi­dents are more likely to be reelected. [This is the problem of endogeneity–JD] So Olken and Jones looked at 57 leaders who died in office from accidents or natural causes and “found big changes in growth when autocratic leaders die in office—both positive and negative,” but no sub­stantial change when democratic leaders died in office. “The results suggest,” they write, “that individual leaders can play crucial roles in shap­ing the growth of nations,” provided they are ruling with minimal or nonexistent checks and balances to their power (think Augusto Pinochet or Robert Mugabe).

 

What Does One Have to do to Become Irish?

We had a (sometimes spirited) discussion in intro to comparative yesterday about patriotism, nationalism, citizenship and immigration. You may, therefore, find today’s story in the New York Times about a young 11-year-old lad who was born in Ireland and is about as culturally Irish as they come, except for the fact that his African born parents are illegal citizens in Ireland. As a result, his parents face the prospect of being exiled back to Africa, which would force the boy to go also. Quoting the NYT:

nigerian_irish_boy.jpgDUBLIN — Cork-born and proud of it, George-Jordan Dimbo is top to toe the Irish lad. He studies Gaelic, eats rashers, plays hurling, prays to the saints, papers his walls with parochial school awards, and spends Saturdays at the telly watching Dustin the Turkey, a wisecracking puppet, mock the powerful.

If the Irish government has its way, he may soon be living in Africa.

George, 11, is an Irish citizen and has been since his birth when Ireland, alone in Europe, still gave citizenship to anyone born on its soil. [Do you remember what the legal term for this is?] His mother and father, Ifedinma and Ethelbert Dimbo, are illegal immigrants from Nigeria, who brought him back to Ireland three years ago, judging it the best place to raise him.

Since then, the unusual trio — the Irish schoolboy and his African parents — have shared a single room in a worn Dublin hostel while facing a prospect dreaded by children on both sides of the Atlantic, a parent’s deportation.

“Dear justice minister,” George wrote when he was 9. “I heard my Mommy and Daddy whispering about deportation. Please do not deport us.”

“Remember,” he added, “I am also an Irish child.”

P.S. Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what rashers are!

The Fluid Religious Marketplace in the United States

The New York Times reports on a new poll released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which shows a relatively high level of fluidity in the religious identities of residents here in the United States. Analysts and scholars of the role of religion in public life have long understood the US exceptionalism with respect to the important role and place of religion in public life. This has occurred despite (although some would argue because of) the official church-state separation in US society. Most other states with developed economies are much more secular than is the United States, even though some of these states (such as Great Britain and Germany) do not have state/church separation.

The main take-home message of this new Pew Poll, I think, is the fluidity of religious identity here in the United States, where religion is more individualized and personalized and really becomes a type of individual identity. (Remember in Chapter 3 of O’Neil where we differentiated between individual and group identity and discussed whether religious identity could be both.) Conversely, in countries like France, Great Britain, Germany, etc., religion is much more a social–i.e., group–(rather than a religious) identity and is, therefore, much more immutable. Here is an excerpt from the article, with a graphic:

us_religious_makeup.jpgWASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.

For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on telephone interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not track religious affiliation.

It shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. Sixteen percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth-largest “religious group.”

That 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliation is astounding. What are the implcations of this? I can think of two immediately…

You can find the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life here. Here is a link to a video interview with Pew Forum Director Luis Lugo who talks about the next step in data analysis. Lugo characterizes the United States as having a dynamic “religious marketplace.” Here is a link to an interview with Neela Bannerjee, the New York Times journalist, who wrote the article.

Map of Economic Freedom

We’ll be comparing countries today based on their respective approaches to political economy; that is, on how the economic systems apportion the relative influences of the market, state, and civil society sector in the economy. Often, work on political economy tends to focus on the state/market nexus at the expense of civil society. We saw earlier in the course (Alesina and Guiliano) that attitudes and ideologies in the civil society sector can have a dramatic impact on economic patterns within society.

At the end of the lecture today, we’ll look at trends in economic liberalization worldwide over the last decade or so by means of a report from the US Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and this map from the Heritage Foundation annual report on economic freedom around the world.

(The darker the color, the more economically free is that country’s economy.)

index2008_econfreedommap.jpg

Patriotism–What is it? How can we Measure it?

As budding “social scientists” (the scare quotes are legitimate), it is good form to not only define concepts that are malleable but also to provide qualitative and/or quantitative evidence regarding their existence. A recent brouhaha in American politics centers around the political concept patriotism. What is it? How do we know it exists? Can it be measured? These are all important questions, so important, in fact, that they could determine the outcome of the next US presidential election.

In intro to comparative, we’ve been analyzing social identities, ethnic, national, etc. As we know from reading O’Neil, patriotism is based on the idea of citizenship–an individual’s relationship to the state in which s/he lives. O’Neil defines patriotism as “pride in one’s state.”

As near as I can tell, some opponents of Barack Obama’s candidacy have based some of their resistance on what they view as his lack of patriotism. If I’m reading this correctly, the base their argument on the fact that Obama does not (in fact, may even refuse to) wear a lapel pin in the shape of an American flag. This is interesting since it also touches upon issues of national identity; remember that we tried to determine just what is meant to be American. Does one have to wear an American flag lapel pin to be considered patriotic? If any of you think that this is an issue of negligible import, I refer you to this screen shot of the CNN website:

cnn-obama-patriotism.jpg

Given that I’m not a citizen of the United States, I’ll leave that for others to answer. I am, however, a citizen of the Republic of Croatia and this episode does remind me of an incident from the mid 1990s, which I, then working for the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, witnessed. Join me after the jump.

hrvatska-zastava.jpgThe Croatian flag is a tri-color, with horizontal fields of red, white, and blue (from top to bottom), which contains the coat of arms–the “Šahovnica“–in the middle field. The šahovnica has been used in various guises throughout Croatian history as a symbol of Croatian nationhood. While Croats have lived under many different types of regime–Communist Yugoslavia, the Fascist Ustasa regime during WWII, the unitarist, Serb-dominated inter-war regime, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (you get the point!)–the šahovnica has remained a constant expression and symbol of the Croatian people.

Continue reading “Patriotism–What is it? How can we Measure it?”

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