Politics and Government

In the last few decades, "rights talk" has become increasingly common. But what is the origin of these "rights?" Why do we have the right to freedom of speech or religion or assembly? That is an easy question for Americans: our Declaration of Independence says We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. The main United Nations documents, the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], are far more ambiguous, simply noting that "the peoples of the United Nations" have "reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights." (And where "the peoples" first affirmed that faith is entirely unclear.) The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is similarly vague, recognizing rights but never suggesting why they are rights and whence they came. But the UN’s second-highest official has just given us the answer: rights come from the United Nations itself. Jan Eliasson, the Deputy Secretary General (and a former Swedish ambassador to the United States) told a press conference on October 2 that you have this gift given to us by the [Universal] Declaration of Human Rights.... So you have to have to keep in mind, yes, this is the basis for, I hope, most of the countries in the world — the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, since this is in the Universal Declaration.... That’s a very powerful "since." It implies that if those rights were not in the UDHR-- if that "gift" had not been given us in that document-- those rights would not exist. Indeed it implies that if the UDHR were amended, or if the UN were to adopt some limitations on freedom of speech or religion, those rights would cease to exist. Eliasson is a superb diplomat and a thoughtful, warm, and popular man, but his views here represent fully the intellectual trap into which UN bureaucrats and more importantly too many Europeans have fallen. The UN and its documents may be effective or ineffective at respecting and protecting peoples’ rights, but the UN cannot possibly be the origin of those rights-- any more than certain EU documents can. They are inherent in us as men and women, and the state or international institutions such as the UN have no right to denigrate them or take them away, or they are as shaky as a leaf or as a "gift" in the hands of bureaucrats and officials. There is of course a deeper problem here, which the secular Mr. Eliasson and the secular states of Europe cannot solve: if there is no God who endows us with rights, there really are no "rights" at all, just "gifts" the state may or may not hand us from time to time. The Polish constitution of 1992 is an interesting effort to have it both ways: We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic, Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources, Equal in rights and obligations towards the common good - Poland, Beholden to our ancestors for their labours, their struggle for independence achieved at great sacrifice, for our culture rooted in the Christian heritage of the Nation and in universal human values, Recalling the best traditions of the First and the Second Republic, Obliged to bequeath to future generations all that is valuable from our over one thousand years’ heritage, Bound in community with our compatriots dispersed throughout the world, Aware of the need for cooperation with all countries for the good of the Human Family, Mindful of the bitter experiences of the times when fundamental freedoms and human rights were violated in our Homeland, Desiring to guarantee the rights of the citizens for all time, and to ensure diligence and efficiency in the work of public bodies, Recognizing our responsibility before God or our own consciences, Hereby establish this Constitution of the Republic of Poland.... God, Christianity, culture, history, experience, "universal values," "other sources"-- this 1992, post-communist constitution throws all possible sources of rights into the basket. Certainly that’s better than viewing them as a gift from the United Nations. Mr. Eliasson ought to come up with a better formulation, lest it be thought that he actually believes what he said on October 2.

Significant Middle East Developments Turkey-Syria. Turkey returned fire into Syria today after a new Syrian shell landed in the Turkish town of Akcakale. Today’s fire exchange comes two days after Syrian artillery fire across the border killed five Turkish civilians--a women, her three children, and a relative. Yesterday, while not explicitly naming Syria, the parliament gave the Turkish government blanket authorization to conduct military operations across its borders for the remainder of the year. Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan reaffirmed his desire for peace with Syria but added that testing Turkey would be a “fatal mistake.” Meanwhile, the UN Security Council approved a unanimous statement Thursday calling for an immediate end to such violations of international law and for Syria to “to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors.” Syrian ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja’afari said that the Syrian government had not apologized because it is waiting for the findings of an investigation into the situation. Syria did express condolences to the families and to the people of Turkey for the deaths. Ja’afari also called on Turkey to “act wisely, rationally and responsibly” and to prevent cross-border crossings of “terrorists and insurgents.” Inside Syria, warplanes bombed Homs today while four thousand Republican Guards stormed the Qudsaya suburb of Damascus. Rebels announced the capture of an air defense base with a cache of missiles outside of Damascus. Jordan. King Abdullah dissolved parliament yesterday paving the way for parliamentary elections expected early next year. The announcement came on the eve of an Islamist-led demonstration in Amman today calling upon the king to enact faster and more extensive democratic reforms. The turnout today was significantly lower than the fifty thousand that the IAF, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party and the demonstration’s organizer, had expected. Yesterday, the Jordanian government cancelled a planned pro-government demonstration scheduled for the same time as today’s opposition protest to avoid clashes and violence. Jordanian police arrested eight individuals in the lead-up to today’s demonstration after finding guns in three minibuses headed into central Amman. Iran. Iran experienced its first significant public unrest in two years on Wednesday, when security forces clashed with money changers and protesters in the heart of Tehran. The demonstrations were spurred by anxieties after the Iranian rial experienced a 40 percent drop against the dollar in the past week. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the fall on currency speculators and tied it to U.S.-led sanctions. At least sixteen people were arrested for trading excessively outside the banking system. With a heavier than normal police presence on the streets, merchants reopened for business on Thursday amongst relative calm. Libya. Libyan prime minister Mustafa Abushagur announced Friday that he would withdraw his proposed cabinet line-up, a day after over one hundred protesters stormed the General Assembly to voice discontent and forced the session’s delay. Once the Assembly reconvened late Thursday evening, it voted to reject the prime minister’s nominations. Meanwhile, an FBI investigative team from the U.S. finally reached Benghazi on Thursday, nearly one month after the site was attacked and four U.S. officials were killed. Quotes of the Week “This last incident is pretty much the final straw…There has been an attack on our land and our citizens lost their lives, which surely has adequate response in international law.” – Turkish deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc said on Wednesday after Syrian mortar fire killed five civilians in Turkey “Maybe we have some violations from time to time, but it is not a widespread phenomenon.” – Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’ deputy foreign minister told the BBC regarding Human Rights Watch recent report on Gaza “Iran is overcoming the psychological war and conspiracy that the enemy has brought to the currency and gold market and this war is constantly fluctuating.” – Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a close Khamenei ally, said according to Fars news agency While We Were Looking Elsewhere Tunisia.  Protesters today stormed the seat of local government in Sidi Bouzid where the first revolution of the Arab uprisings began. Sidi Bouzid, where fruit seller Mohammad Buazizi immolated himself and set off nation-wide protests in late 2010, has seen periodic demonstrations since. Meanwhile, interim president Moncef Marzouki apologized today to a woman raped by two police officers and then charged with indecent behavior last September. The president received the woman and her fiancé at the presidential palace today and called the police officers’ behavior an aberration. Gaza. Human Rights Watch released a report on Wednesday accusing Hamas’ security forces of committing severe abuses, including torture of detainees, execution after forced confessions, warrantless arrests, and subjecting civilians to military courts. Deputy Middle East Director of HRW, Joe Stork, said that “after five years of Hamas rule in Gaza, its criminal justice system reeks of injustice, routinely violates detainees’ rights, and grants impunity to abusive security service.” Yemen. The U.S. State Department added Yemeni group Ansar al-Sharia to its list of terrorist organizations yesterday. A released statement called Ansar al-Sharia a rebranding attempt by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in order to recruit more people. The UN’s Al Qaeda sanctions committee also listed Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist group. The Southern Movement, an alliance of Yemeni groups that want independence for the southern part of the country, declared on Wednesday that they would not attend a national dialogue proposed for next month by the government. Iraq. Iraq experienced another wave of bombings on Sunday, capping the deadliest month in over two years. Insurgents coordinated attacks in various cities that targeted Shiite neighborhoods and security forces, killing twenty-six people and wounding at least ninety-four. This Week in History This week marks the eightieth anniversary of Iraq’s independence from Britain. On October 3, 1932,  Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations as an independent state ruled by the monarch King Faysal. However, British troops did not complete their withdrawal from Iraq until after World War II. The monarchy fell in 1958 to revolutionary forces led by General Abd al-Karim who proclaimed Iraq a republic. Members of the royal family, including the king and the crown prince, as well as Nuri as-Said, who had served as prime minister, were all killed.

Mitt Romney’s “win” over President Obama in Wednesday’s presidential debate has lifted GOP hopes of victory on Election Day. A critical part of Governor Romney’s strategy to make that happen looks to be hammering Obama on foreign policy—he had a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week lambasting Obama’s Middle East policy, and he plans to give a major foreign policy address on Monday. So now is a good time to ask a question: How different would Romney’s foreign policy likely be from Obama’s? Probably not much. Yes, that answer runs contrary to the sturm und drang coming from the campaign trail. Both parties insist that a wide gulf separates the two men in world affairs. Romney says that his approach will vanquish the challenges that have stumped Obama. Democrats, for their part, repeatedly point to the many neoconservatives staffing the Romney campaign, implicitly suggesting that a Romney presidency means a return to George W. Bush circa 2002. And it’s not just the partisans arguing that Obama and Romney represent wildly different foreign policy visions. Journalists like to talk about “a stark divide on foreign policy” and Romney and Paul Ryan “having parroted the views of their neocon advisers.” But here are three reasons why Romney’s foreign policy would likely end up looking a lot like Obama’s no matter how much hand waving and table thumping you witness over the next month: First, foreign policy is hard to change. Presidents don’t make it solely as they please. They instead confront complex realities abroad and difficult politics at home that greatly narrow their choices. Just four years ago Democrats were trumpeting, and Republicans complaining, that Obama would “transform” American foreign policy. Today the tables are turned. Republicans are trumpeting, and Democrats complaining, that Obama’s foreign policy resembles George W. Bush’s second term. Guantanamo remains open, the Afghanistan war drags on, and drone strikes mount. The ambitions of the 2008 campaign yielded to the complications and trade-offs that characterize governance. Second, despite the harsh campaign rhetoric and partisan jabs, Obama’s and Romney’s foreign policy views are broadly similar. A year ago journalists were trumpeting how an isolationist wave was washing over the Republican Party. And if Ron Paul had won the GOP nomination we would have a clash of foreign policy worldviews. But Romney is not Ron Paul. He is an internationalist with a strong pragmatic streak—much like Obama. The two men may not live in the same zip code when it comes to foreign policy, but they certainly reside in the same area code. Third, while Romney hasn’t offered many specific foreign policy prescriptions, the ones he has offered look a lot like Obama’s. The governor sees the need to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan, favors tougher sanctions to halt Iran’s nuclear program, and offers Syrian rebels kind words but no direct U.S. military support. In other words, current White House policy. The two significant foreign policy promises on which Romney does differ from Obama—spending far more on defense and punishing China as a currency manipulator—are also two vows that probably won’t last much past inauguration day. Dreams of bigger defense budgets clash with the cruel math of tax cuts and budget deficits, while common sense, or Chinese retaliation, will cool the current ardor for going toe-to-toe with Beijing on currency valuations. None of this is to say that a Romney foreign policy would mirror Obama’s or that the results would be the same. A President Romney probably would not negotiate a new arms control treaty with Russia. (Then again, the odds are that Obama won’t either, or if he does, that any resulting agreement will languish in the Senate.) And a President Romney might tinker with missile defense plans, try new approaches to doling out foreign aid, or find himself embroiled in fewer public disputes with Israel’s prime minister. Moreover, many foreign policy choices are close calls. So even men with similar world views and pragmatic streaks can disagree about which is the right one, and even closely decided decisions can have immensely different consequences. It is to say is that Campaign 2012 doesn’t present the American electorate with a stark foreign policy choice. The candidates are less stark alternatives than variations on a theme, and a basket of tough foreign policy problems awaits whoever wins on November 6. If that turns out to be Mitt Romney, he will quickly discover what Obama already knows: what is easy to promise on the campaign trail turns out to be exceedingly difficult to deliver once in office.    

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is from Rolph van der Hoeven, professor of employment and development economics at the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University. He outlines changes in the global landscape since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and calls for a new social contract to guide the next set of development aims. One of the most important trends since the launch of the MDGs has been the rapid growth of large developing countries like China, India, and Brazil. Ironically it was not their growth, but instead the 2008 financial crisis, that forced the G8 to accept the G20, where these developing countries are represented, as a central forum for global financial governance. But this new representation of emerging power should not be limited to financial structures. In the post-2015 development agenda, traditional OECD donors cannot be in the driver’s seat anymore. The post-2015 agenda has to be a common undertaking by all countries and people in the world, for several reasons, as I explain in a recent background paper. The MDGs were set as global targets. Unexpectedly, this has made them much easier to achieve due to the performance of a very few large, fast-growing countries. In fact, about three-quarters of the poor now live in middle-income countries, as various large countries that were low-income in 2000 have now “graduated” into middle-income status. These developments have important implications on how to shape both the instruments and the targets of global poverty reduction. For most of the world’s poor, traditional development assistance has become irrelevant. Poor households in middle-income countries would benefit most from more equitable income distribution, improved access to social services, good jobs, and a well-functioning rights-based system that gives them access to government services and labor rights. It is important to ensure that the poor in middle-income countries can exercise their right to a greater share of the proceeds from the broader development of their societies. Clearly, a post-2015 system has to come to grips with issues of human development—economic, social, and cultural—and labor rights as well as with issues of inequality and redistribution. To do so, a new development agenda must take account of the changing geopolitical landscape, the increasing diversity of developing countries, and the radically different development patterns of the countries where the global poor live. This implies a need to give much more attention to development at the national level. More global attention to national issues could also help to strengthen the special position of the least developed countries and the poor living in them. Furthermore, the crisis of 2008 and the current challenges of reducing public and private debt make it amply clear that protecting the poor and the socially disadvantaged in industrialized countries has also become a serious social and political problem. MDG targets should therefore be considered for all countries, including the developed ones. Growing economic interconnectedness is creating hardships in developed countries, especially among workers displaced by outsourcing. It would be politically unwise to ignore this in a post-2015 system.  Moreover, having targets for all countries would express better than does the current MDG system that all countries in today’s global world share a continuing responsibility for sustainable prosperity. A post-2015 development agenda should therefore take the form of a global social contract in which the least developed countries would be guaranteed development aid and other concessional resources to achieve poverty reduction and inclusion in the world economy. At the same time, people in all economies (industrialized, emerging, and least developed) would be able to exercise economic, social, and labor rights to gain a better share in national development outcomes. They would also be guaranteed minimum safeguards for social protection during economic downturns. The best way for countries to create such a social contract would be to renew the social contract that all countries agreed to through the Millennium Declaration in 2000, which is based on such fundamental values as freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for the environment, and shared responsibility. Governments should also strengthen their own accountability and that of international organizations through new or improved mechanisms in which citizens of the world can freely express their opinions. One might argue that a global social contract overloads the post-2015 development agenda, undoing the main strength of the current MDGs: their simplicity. However, as shown by global responses to recent crises in finance, nutrition, and the environment, simplicity compromises effectiveness. Indeed, traditional development aid interventions, as conceived by the MDGs, often do not provide an effective response to global challenges. Nor do they enable large numbers of the poor to move out of poverty in a changing world. A post-2015 system therefore needs to confront new challenges, which should be put in the context of promoting human development for the poor during economic crises and more favorable times as well.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced on October 4 that it is making a “one-off extraordinary award” of U.S. $ 1 million to Desmond Tutu, the retired archbishop of Cape Town, “in recognition of his lifelong commitment to speaking truth to power.” The Mo Ibrahim Foundation once a year may award a former African chief of state a prize of U.S. $5 million and an annual payment for life of U.S. $200,000. The recipient must have been democratically elected, promoted good governance and development, and have left office at the end of his term in accordance with the constitution. It is expected that the foundation will announce this year’s decision before the end of October. However, since the prize was established in 2007, it has been awarded only three times: to Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique in 2007, Festus Mogae of Botswana in 2008, and Pedro Verona Pires in 2011. Other years it could find no former chief of state that met the necessary qualifications. That has been taken as an indictment of the quality of leadership by African chiefs of state. The Foundation has made an “extraordinary award” once before, to Nelson Mandela, who left office long before the prize was established. The fact that it has announced a special award for Archbishop Tutu fuels speculation that this year, again, no former chief of state will be found eligible. It should be noted that the award to the archbishop is substantially less than would be made to a chief of state. The archbishop is perhaps Africa’s most influential moral leader at present. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights, observed that South Africa has produced the “two great moral giants of my lifetime, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.” The archbishop continues to call for South Africa to live up to its calling to be the “rainbow nation” of God, and he does not hesitate to criticize—in blistering terms—the current government when it falls short. He compared President Jacob Zuma’s government to the apartheid state when it declined to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama in 2011 out of fear of offending Beijing. He does not restrict his prophetic utterances solely to Africa: he is also calling on the International Criminal Court to indict former UK prime minister Tony Blair and former president George W. Bush for undertaking the Iraq war on “false pretenses”–the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction. Mo Ibrahim, who established the foundation, is of Sudanese origin and now based in London. A billionaire entrepreneur in mobile communications, his company, Celtel, had twenty-four million phone subscribers in fourteen African countries at the time he sold it in 2005 for U.S. $3.4 billion. The Foundation also produces an annual index on the state of government in Africa.

Over the past year, public frustration in Latin America has been mounting toward the international drug control regime. Latin American leaders brought the drug policy debate to the forefront at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena last April, where the thirty-four heads of state agreed to review and discuss all possible approaches (a process that is now underway). This week at the United Nations General Assembly, Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico’s governments issued a joint declaration, outlining their recommendations for global drug policy and specifically asking the United Nations to “exercise its leadership and conduct deep reflection to analyze all available options.” To explain where the Obama administration drug policy stands, Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (aka the U.S. drug czar), spoke yesterday here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Kerlikowske began his remarks by pointing out that the most vocal participants in drug policy often come from the extremes: drug warriors and those in favor of full legalization. In between these two poles, Kerlikowske reasoned that space exists for a “third way,” one that conceives of drug use as a health problem, even as it supports law enforcement initiatives. The Obama administration’s policy is based in this complicated middle area, combining a strong focus on demand side prevention and rehabilitation with supply side eradication and interdiction. Skeptics of this "new approach" look not just at the rhetoric but also at the resources. In 2011 prevention and treatment combined represented roughly 40 percent of the final budget for the national drug control strategy—sizable, but still less than half the total (and a lower percentage than at least in some periods of the previous Bush administration). Judging from the recent efforts of Latin America’s leaders, from Kerlikowske’s presentation, and from the CFR audience’s questions, it is clear that most see a need for a change in policy direction. It is also clear that a “third way” that satisfies the various national and international partners has yet to be put in place.

In the Washington Post  yesterday, Craig Timberg and Paula Moura described the recent jailing of a top Google executive in Brazil, and explored the broader trend of so-called democracies’ attempts to restrict Internet freedom. While China’s construction of the “Great Firewall” and Iran’s internet blackouts tend to grab headlines, democracies around the word are allthewhile taking their own measures to block content. As the Post article notes: “The struggle over free speech is playing out most vividly today in countries that are America’s friends rather than its enemies, in nations where the right of expression is embraced in concept but often rankles in practice.” In a March piece for the Boston Globe, “How Democracies Clamped Down on the Internet,” Elizabeth Leader and I noted that in Reporters without Borders’ “Internet Enemies Report 2012,” eight of the fifteen offenders listed as “under surveillance” for dubious Internet policies were electoral democracies. I’ve also blogged about how’s Google’s Transparancy Report has shed light on governments’ attempts to surpress content deemed politically threatening —such  as  in Thailand, where the government has filed hundreds of appeals to remove YouTube videos considered critical of the monarchy. At the 2011 Conference on Internet Freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned “we have to make sure that human rights are as respected online as offline.” But whether the Internet is actually the vehicle for worldwide democracry advancement that it has been lauded to be remains to be seen; in fact, as this startling trend suggests, the Internet might just be democracy’s biggest threat.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the vice presidential debate; presidential elections in Venezuela; and nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. [audio: http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/media/editorial/2012/20121004_TWNW.mp3] The highlights: The consensus that Mitt Romney “won” last night’s night presidential debate will likely encourage speculation that next Thursday’s vice presidential debate could catapult the GOP ticket into the lead in the polls if Paul Ryan has similar success jousting with Joe Biden. Political scientists will scoff at the notion, saying that presidential debates seldom influence voting decisions and that vice presidential debates have even less impact. We will have data to test that hypothesis in just five weeks. Venezuelan voters head to the polls this Sunday to choose between incumbent president Hugo Chavez and challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski, who represents a coalition of opposition parties. Chavez leads in the polls, and many of his critics worry that he will do what it takes to guarantee a victory. If Chavez were to lose, it would upend Venezuelan politics and change the dynamics in the region. Even if Chavez wins, though, the future of his Bolivarian revolution is uncertain. Mismanagement and corruption have stalled the Venezuelan economy, and Chavez’s cancer may keep him for completing his term. The Nobel Peace Prize jury will announce this year’s recipient of the award next week. Some of the luminaries nominated for the award include former president Bill Clinton, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified material to Wikileaks. Bob changes things up and offers up his Figures of the Week, Bidzina Ivanishvili and Mikheil Saakashvili. I stay old school and go with a Figure of the Week, which is eleven. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why. For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out: Biden and Ryan face off in the vice presidential debate: The Huffington Post writes that Biden had already put in 60 hours of debate practice a month before the debate.  Reuters reports that both candidates have attacked the other for their stance on Medicare and other social programs.  The New York Times assesses the Romney-Ryan campaign’s recent criticism of Obama’s foreign policy. The Hill writes that Ryan is “absolutely” looking forward to the debate and is emphasizing Biden’s debate experience. Presidential elections take place in Venezuela: BBC News writes that many Venezuelans continue to support Chavez because of his many social programs. Foreign Policy warns that violence might break out if Chavez is defeated. The Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests that while free and fair elections may be possible, a victory for the opposition is not likely. The Guardian reports that the United States frequently misrepresents Venezuelan democracy. CFR’s Patrick Duddy writes a Contingency Planning Memorandum on “Political Unrest in Venezuela” Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize: The Norwegian Nobel Committee notes that there were 231 nominations for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, 43 of which were organizations. Slate lists likely candidates for each Nobel Prize. The Nordic Page reports that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had an easy time selecting this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Huffington Post reveals a few publicly disclosed candidates.

President Morsi pledged to provide quick solutions to some of Egypt’s daily problems when he took office on June 30. As a candidate, Morsi articulated a detailed sixty-four point plan to improve the lives of Egyptians within his first hundred days in office in areas ranging from security to traffic, bread prices, street cleanliness, and fuel. To track the president’s progress, young Egyptian activists created the "Morsi Meter," an Arabic and English language website that tracks the president’s performance on his sixty-four point pledge. More than thirty thousand people follow it on Twitter. With just four days left in President Morsi’s first hundred days, the Morsi Meter reports that the Egyptian president has achieved only four out of his sixty-four promises. These include rewarding police officers for performance and restoring security, removing road obstructions, launching an awareness campaign about street garbage, and levying penalties against fuel smugglers. Meanwhile, the tracker finds that the president has made progress on another twenty-four out of the sixty-four total promises. Given this lackluster fulfillment of Morsi’s pledges, what is truly striking is that the Morsi Meter found that 42 percent of respondents to its online poll reported to be satisfied with the president’s achievements so far. This satisfaction rate posted on the site is surprisingly high in light of Morsi’s dismally low achievement rate (just over 6 percent). Whatever Morsi’s relative popularity, it is not coming from his bread and butter delivery. Perhaps he is still enjoying a post-Mubarak honeymoon, or maybe Egyptians never truly took his pledges too seriously. What do you think is the reason? Still, there are four days left for the Egyptian president to fulfill his sixty-four pledges for his first hundred days. Maybe he will rally with a number of achievements in the next few days. Somehow, that seems unlikely. Perhaps most importantly is the phenomenon of the Morsi Meter. Egyptians are holding their elected president accountable to his words. One only hopes they continue after he completes his first hundred days.    

Stratfor, the global intelligence company based in Austin, Texas, has published a thoughtful analysis that is well-worth reading, though I disagree with its fundamental premise. The starting point is a possible deal between President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and the Delta militant leader Henry Okah, now imprisoned in South Africa (at Nigeria’s behest) for alleged terrorism. Okah has long been thought a senior leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) that carried out extensive attacks on the oil industry in the Niger Delta between 2005 and 2009. The article places MEND in the context of national politics and posits that a deal with Okah could be part of an effort to secure MEND’s cooperation in the run-up to the 2015 presidential elections, and the struggle for ruling party leadership, which, is suggested to be already underway. It directly ties MEND’s successes from 2005 to 2009 to its protection by the delta region’s governors and security officials. MEND’s activities largely stopped as the result of a national amnesty that included a massive payoff of MEND warlords and the region’s political leaders. The article suggests that Boko Haram may be “The North’s answer to MEND.” That Boko Haram, like MEND, is protected by political insiders. The North has no oil, but Boko Haram has successful undermined public confidence in Jonathan’s ability to govern. So long as Boko Haram limits its operations to internal–not international–targets, it will survive. Implicit in the argument is that Jonathan could end, or at least significantly decrease, Boko Haram’s activities by buying-off its leaders and according its sponsors with greater political influence. The article portrays MEND and Boko Haram as mostly the proxy battles of elite politics. I see a much greater popular dimension to both than that understanding allows. Highly diffuse, Boko Haram includes a popular, religious millenarian dimension that makes it immune to the accepted ways Nigerian politicians “settle” their opponents; mostly by payoffs. Similarly, MEND taps into a deep sense of popular grievance in the Delta over the region’s failure to benefit from oil while at the same time it suffers from the industry’s environmental impact. In both the North and the Delta, popular grievances are probably growing. Until they are addressed politically, continuing cycles of violence seem inevitable.

Charles T. McClean is a Research Associate for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Headlines in Tokyo today are focused on who will win Japan’s next election, but very little attention is paid to how that election will be won. Few are discussing the Supreme Court of Japan’s mandate for electoral reform, reform that must happen before an election can be held. Yet the contours of that reform will decide the rules of the game for the next Lower House election. On March 23, 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2009 Lower House election was unconstitutional because of population disparity. Article 14 of Japan’s constitution guarantees the right of Japanese voters to equality. The court measured equality based on the disparity in the value of individual votes, which reached as high as 2.3 to 1 between Chiba’s 4th district and Kochi’s 3rd district. The court refrained from invalidating the historic 2009 election that brought the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to power. However, the ruling held that the court could invalidate results next time if the Diet did not undertake electoral reform to bring the disparity under a 2:1 ratio. The ruling was based on voter turnout in 2009, where the disparity exceeded the 2:1 ratio in 45 out of Japan’s 300 districts. Today, according to a new census taken in 2010, that number could easily double to as many as 97 unconstitutional districts in a future election. The coming election is the one that matters. Japan’s last major electoral reform effort was in 1994, when the structure of the Lower House was overhauled. Japan abandoned its multi-member districts and introduced a new system with a mix of 300 single-member district (SMD) seats and 200 proportional representation (PR) seats. The PR seats were later reduced to 180. Voter disparity is far worse in Japan’s Upper House, reaching as high as 5 to 1 in the last election in summer 2010. Former Upper House president Takeo Nishioka attempted to pursue comprehensive reform—which would have dramatically reduced the voter disparity to 1.13 to 1—but his death in November 2011 effectively brought this to a halt. Since the Supreme Court ruling, a pair of competing reform plans have been discussed in Japan’s parliament. The main opposition party, the Liberal Democrats (LDP), put forth a plan that would just meet the court’s reform requirements. The LDP plan would cut five SMD seats in Kochi, Fukui, Yamanashi, Tokushima, and Saga prefectures and would reduce the voter disparity from 2.3 to 1.8. A new plan for the Upper House put forward after Nishioka’s death would only slightly reduce the disparity there to 4.75 to 1. The alternative proposed by the DPJ went beyond the Supreme Court’s ruling. Building on the LDP proposal to cut five seats, the DPJ wanted to reduce PR seats from 180 to 140. The DPJ also wanted to include a provision where thirty-five PR seats could be allocated to benefit small parties in the hope that it could entice the New Komei Party (Komeito), which relied entirely on PR seats in the last election, away from the LDP. Komeito’s acquiescence would have allowed the DPJ to pass electoral reform through the opposition-controlled Upper House, and it would have hurt the LDP at the polls. Internal party dynamics, however, got in the way. The defection from the party of fifty lawmakers in July 2012—including twelve Upper House members—meant that even in coalition with Komeito the DPJ was not going to succeed. The bill was abandoned. A new extraordinary Diet session will convene this month. Based on the effort to date, this is what we should expect: First, we shouldn’t expect an election anytime soon. Even if parliamentarians can come to an agreement in the first few weeks of the extraordinary session, and even if that agreement is the bare minimum suggested by the LDP, reapportioning districts takes time. Panels of experts need to decide the new demarcation lines, suggest this to the prime minister, introduce and pass a bill to amend the Public Offices Election Law, and explain the changes to the public before an election can take place (estimates suggest at least 2–3 months). And the DPJ—in power but behind in the polls—has no interest in rushing the process. Second, debates over electoral reform will likely have little to do with conforming to the spirit of the Supreme Court decision and everything to do with party positioning to win the next election. The LDP’s “bare bones” plan and the DPJ’s “compromise” to woo Komeito suggest that neither of Japan’s two major parties is interested in seriously tackling the issue of redistricting or addressing Japan’s disenfranchised voters. It is Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s district (Chiba 4th) that has the greatest voter disparity, and yet the issue still receives less attention than it deserves. A better determinant of the path reform will take can be read from public opinion polling on the upcoming election. As long as the LDP is out-pacing the DPJ two to one in PR districts, the DPJ will be happy to do everything it can to cut PR seats, or at least drag its feet in the reform process in the hopes that its popularity improves. Finally, electoral reform will determine the influence of new entrants into Japanese politics, namely, Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto’s Japan Renewal Party (JRP). As Sheila A. Smith points out, Japan’s coalition dynamics mean that the JRP doesn’t need to capture a majority in the next election to exert influence. Keeping the PR seats at the current number would be good for the new JRP, who wants a seat at the table in the next coalition. Electoral reform may not seem like a priority. Yet for the Japanese public to have an equitable voice in determining their future, electoral reform must happen and it must be significant. Unfortunately, neither of Japan’s major political parties has to date demonstrated an interest in tackling meaningful electoral reform.

More than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Georgia passed an important democratic milestone this week when the opposition party won the  parliamentary elections and the incumbent president, Mikheil Saakashvili, conceded defeat.  The door is now open for the first peaceful transition of power in modern Georgia’s history. The development is also a landmark for the Eurasian region of former Soviet Republics, where most elections have been rigged and often violent. I asked my colleague Anya Schmemann, who was in Georgia during the 2008 war with Russia, to put the news in historical and regional context.  Here’s what she has to say: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty-one years ago, the fifteen former Soviet Republics have followed mostly bumpy paths toward and away from democracy. On Monday, Georgians stunned the world when an opposition coalition led by eccentric billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili won the parliamentary election there. President Mikheil Saakashvili conceded defeat on Tuesday, paving the way for Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream bloc to form a new government. When Ivanishvili becomes prime minister, as expected, it will be the first time in Georgia’s history that the government will have changed at the ballot box rather than through revolution. To be sure, challenges remain. Saakashvili, who was swept to power in 2003’s Rose Revolution, will remain in power until presidential elections next year. Relations between the two men are frosty, to say the least. Due to recent reforms, the parliament and prime minister will acquire greater powers after the presidential election. But the six-party Georgian Dream coalition is fragile, its majority is thin, and its tycoon leader is a political novice. The campaign was bitter. The opposition accused Saakashvili of monopolizing power, curtailing democracy and suppressing dissent. Indeed, Saakashvili used all the tools at his disposal, including state-run media, to secure a win, but his efforts to block his opponents ultimately failed. For his part, Saakashvili, who waged a war with Russia in 2008 and has aggressively courted the West, warned that Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, would move Georgia away from the West and back into Moscow’s sphere of influence. In remarks yesterday, Ivanishvili sought to calm those fears.  “We’ll do our best to sort out relations with Russia,” he said, but, “our main aspiration is Europe and our security is NATO.” Nonetheless, some in the West fear that Russia will increase its sway in the region. The United States, eager to see a peaceful transfer of power in Georgia, lauded the election as open and fair and praised Saakashvili for his gracious concession. If Georgians succeed with a peaceful and orderly transition, it would be an important success story in a region riven by conflict and authoritarianism. In the Caucasus, Georgia’s neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan are embroiled in their own frozen conflict and are ruled by hardline leaders (Ilham Aliev in Azerbaijan succeeded his father and Serge Sarkisian in Armenia has crushed his opposition). In nearby Central Asia, the nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are among the most autocratic in the world. Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek leader Islam Karimov have both ruled since even before the Soviet collapse; Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has continued his predecessor’s authoritarian ways; and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have struggled to overcome poverty and conflict. To the north of Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine have rolled back democracy; Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych’s chief opponent is in prison; Alexandr Lukashenko of Belarus has routinely suppressed the opposition; and Moldovan politics have been unsettled, to say the least. Only the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have overcome the former Soviet curse and have successfully democratized as members of the EU and NATO. Given Georgia’s fractious history, its contested election and transfer of power are remarkable and hopeful. Close Western scrutiny of the election surely mattered, and the United States and others will now need to help both sides navigate the transition to ensure its success.