Britain Wrap Up

The United States and Britain are very different. For one, they are different continents, but their systems of government are different as well.
The United States’ government is unique in its own right. Consisting of three branches: legislative, judicial, and executive, there are various checks and balances on powers which allow all branches to have equal amounts of power. The legislative body, is the focus of this article because the legislative body is divided into bicameral or two house system. These two houses are called the House of Representatives and the Senate. Within congress, laws are made and passed. Although Congress does not have the authority to execute laws because that is the job of the judicial branch, Congress passes laws with the hope that they will be passed and put into effect. The head of the whole United States Government is Barack Obama
The Government of Great Britain is modeled after the Westminster model which is different from the United States. Parliament, which is the equivalent to both the House and Senate, is made up of two houses: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Instead of having a president, Government is run by the Prime Minister and the State is run by the Queen. Parliament has cabinet members and unlike the President of the United Sates, the Prime Minister, currently David Cameron, is called into government and questioned for at least 30 minutes during Prime Ministers Questions. Government in Britain is brutal and every single move by the Prime Minister is closely monitored.
The difference between US government and Britain’s government is that Britain’s government has developed a system which holds its leaders accountable and laws are easily passed. Though this seems like a good thing, the US constituents, although are not happy currently, feel that they have a greater voice within government than citizens in Great Britain do.
In terms of deficit spending and ridding the country of debt, the US and Britain have taken various approached. The US approach was through a huge Stimulus Package which pumped a lot of money into the economy and tax benefits to all citizens.
Unlike the US, Britain has taken steps in reducing their deficit debt. They have recently passed an austerity plan, and although citizens are not happy with it, it will rid the country of their debt in four years.
The major difference between governments is the time is takes to pass a law. The US is facing government being deadlocked for two years due to the House majority with the Republicans and the Senate majority with the Democrats. Meanwhile, Britain is instituting community based programs that will help to eliminate the deficit. Due to the government makeup and party system, one could argue that Britain is doing better than the United States. Even though the two governments face different challenges, they are still both leaders in the world.
I have taken away so much from British politics this year. For one, the United States doesn’t exactly seem to be the world leader in everything that we claim to be. We have flaws that desperately need to be fixed, but we have such a voice in government and easy access to our representatives that everything starts to balance out.
For all governments, times are hard. Times are hard for everyone. These next few years will be a challenge for everyone throughout the world and it will be interesting to follow the race to see who will come out on top politically, economically, etc.

Osborne's Announced Austerity Plan

The spending cuts this week that Obsorne announced were worth £81 million. The British are justifying these cuts because they say that the welfare state is no longer affordable at the current state of Britain right now. This is affecting the middle working class because their jobs are most at risk. This is also going to largely impact the poor because their services that they are accustomed and dependant on receiving no longer have the funding, so can no longer be given out. All of the groups of government are going to cut back as well. 490,000 public jobs are expected to be cut over the next few years. Even the Queen has announced that she will not have Christmas party in order to cut back spending. Students, who have been accustomed to free education, are now concerned about how much they are going to have to pay. Business leaders are welcoming the budget cuts but a lot of people studying how these cuts will affect people say that the poor will be hit the hardest.
The British make a lot of budget cuts and tax increases. The Obama Administration, while although still faced with this problem, acted by giving the US a stimulus package. Instead of just taking more money from the people in order to save the economy, the Obama Administration pumped money into the economy to give it a jumpstart. It is like if your car battery dies and you need someone with jumper cables to jump start your car. In the Obama Administration, government is the car that has a good battery, and the economy is the car. The car with the good battery pumps an electrical current from its batter to the other car, or the economies, battery. The Obama Administration crossed their fingers that the economy, or the car with the dead battery would start. This analogy also applies to Britain but instead of trying to jumpstart the car, they completely get rid of the old car with the dead battery and trade it in for a unicycle. Now, the people who were once accustomed to being able to drive at fast speeds without fear of their battery dying, just as government agencies spent money without questioning the total balance left, are now left to their own devices trying to ride a unicycle and keep up with the rest of the world economy. Just as you might speculate, this is going to cause problems for not only the people of England and Britain, but also for the globe as a whole.
I think that neither the approach that the Obama Administration took nor the cuts that Osborne announced are good. I think that taking the approach to pump a lot of money into the economy without specifying exactly where it should be spent didn’t help. Instead of spending the money that the government intended to go straight into consumer goods, the people decided to save it for when the rainy day came along that shed light on the fact that we didn’t have any money left. This left the US weak and the deficit increasingly higher than before. On the other hand, I think that Obsorne’s cuts are harsh as well. Not only does he cripple the middle working class, but at the same time, he wants to get rid of the welfare state completely. If you look at the idea of Progressive Era President Roosevelt, you that that he reinvented the idea of his safety net to catch people when they fall through the cracks. Well, if there is no form of a welfare system, meaning that there is no safety net, and you are forcing the working class people into poverty, what is going to happen to them? I personally think that the people of Britain need to realize how fortunate they’ve been up to this point in terms of not paying for university. I have quite a few university aged friends in England, so I can understand their point of view, but as an American and a 17 year old girl that is waiting to figure out how much she has to pay for college, I tend to have a little bit of a pessimistic view on people who are complaining about paying less than a third of what I will probably have to pay.
Osborne’s move shows us that politics in Britain right now are, as mentioned earlier, up in debate. The problem is that the whole world is engulfed in this financial crisis and each individual country is struggling to make change that will benefit their country the most. Whether pumping money into the economy or cutting public benefits and dumping havoc on the middle class, each country is trying it’s best to survive. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the time up until Christmas plays out.

Political Attitude and Political Ideology

My political attitude is moderately conservative which makes my political ideology liberalism.

2.1, 2.4, 2.5

In all three of the articles combined, each individual author(s) had their own take on what a state is.

In the first article, written by Marx, he states that a state is a somewhere that claims control over a certain society within a territory. Being the good government students that we are, we already knew that. Marx decides to take an extra step and branch out and say that citizenship is the key institutional mechanism for establishing boundaries and conclusions. Now that he has established what a state is and what its people feel, citizenship, he leads the reader to the main point of his article. He says that basically, racial domination is a way that rules stay on top. He gives examples of South Africa, the United States and Brazil. South Africa and the United States are similar because white people reigh over black people. Although this is true, there are internal conflicts between the whites in charge. Marx shows the reader through numerous examples that the way the whites are connected is in their quest to be the dominant race in charge. This means in a broad sense, that although the whites fight, they are in common agreement that blacks should be enslaved or discriminated against, and this bonds them. Brazil, however, is a little different. Brazil is a poorer country and has less economic growth. They don’t see the big economic booms like South Africa and the United States did. Also, Brazil has always had slavery and the dominating race was always the Portuguese. In conclusion, Marx says that this racial domination is a way to unite the state in equality. He makes a clear distinction between equality for all and equality for the race that is on top, whether it be white or Portuguese.
In the second article, by Levitzky and Way, comparative authoritarianism is brought up. Levitzky and Way state that competitive authoritarianism is a formal democratic institution that is widely viewed as a tool that can be used to exercise or obtain political authority. Like a regular democracy for a state, there are specific things that each state must do. These things like free and fair elections, individual rights such as the right to vote etc, must extend to all people in that state. But Levitzky and Way bring up a good point. Although there are free and fair elections, they are not so free and not so fair, but they are fair enough to be considered free and fair because no one can disprove that they are not. Together, they bring up four areas of Democratic Contestation. The first, electoral arena, the second, legislative arena, the third, judicial arena and the fourth, the media. If you look carefully at the first, electoral arena, Way and Levitzky talk about the election process. Although elections are held, competition is eliminated either de jure or de facto. The governments make it impossible for other candidates to run by putting them in jail, threatening them, or the extreme attempt of assassination. Their point about the electoral arena is that it can be characterized by large scale problems and there are only few ways to solve these. The second point, the legislative arena, talk about how they are either deadlocked or they cannot function at all. They say that legislatures are controlled like a puppet by the party in charge and tend to be extremely weak. In some countries, the legislature is used as a meeting place for the opposition. The third arena, judicial arena, is just as bad. Despite the attempts to get rid of the people in charge through impeachment and other way such as bribery, extortion, etc., none simply work. Governments often times resort to threats and violence. If you were to pair a failing judicial branch with a failing executive branch, you have a recipe for disaster. This lack of governmental control leaves room for problems to slip right in. The body that has insight over all of these arenas is the media. This brings us to our fourth point. The media is the watchdog over everything that happens. In most cases, the media, like all previously mentioned arenas, is also controlled by governments. Medias are usually censored and if the country cannot gain control over them, they are banned or shut down. Television channels are blocked, newspapers are shut down, magazines and never published, etc. Although the media is in a constant struggle, it is up to them to keep everything in the open and report honestly on the events that take place. With knowing how the institutions in the states are taken advantage of, Levitzky and Way bring us back to their main point: “Authoritarian governments may coexist indefinitely with meaningful democratic institutions”. These institutions, such as branches of government and the media, are considered, under the definition of democracy, to be free until proven otherwise. If the braches can’t function and the media can’t talk about it, how do you address these problems?
The third article, written by Rotberg, addresses failed states and terrorism. He says that because the world seems to become increasingly smaller by each day due to technology, etc., the problems abroad no longer just stay across the ocean. Instead, these problems are violently thrown onto our shores, leaving us, the competition states, to deal with them. You know that a state is failed when you see a number of things. These examples are when living conditions deteriorate; we see foreign exchange shortages, and corruption all starting to flourish. This conflict wouldn’t seem that bad, but the problem is that a state, nowadays, has so many responsibilities, that if one government fails in them, it is not easy for the rest to come in and clean up after the failed state. Performance of States is calculated by GDP and other statistical database. When a state starts to fail, the social contract between the government and the people fails. The people start to move in a different direction than government and using Mexico as a example, you can see what happens when government and people shift in opposite directions. Rotberg also discusses prevention and how certain measures can be taken to ensure that states do not fail. Although there is no magic formula that can guarantee the highs without the lows, Rotberg states that international political will is the main way to keep floating above the water line.d

In all three of these articles, many points are brought up. States are failing while some are thriving. In failing states, or states in danger of failing, government is very corrupt and their practices are very diverse. Methods of bribery and extortion are used to get what the rulers want and the people are so jaded by poverty, poor education, or controlled media coverage, that often the people don’t find out about internal government issues until its too late. There are many ways of governing the people. Racial domination, illegitimate arenas, and the threat of failed states continues to loom over every country. There are ways around it though, thankfully and Levitzky, Way, Rotberg, and Marx talk about it.

failed states

A failed state is a state that doesn’t have a central, stable form of government. It cannot defend its own territory, collect taxes, or manage the economy. This sets it apart from other nations because it cannot function on its own and often requires help from a strong state. A state becomes classified based on the number of responsibilities it can live up to compared to the number of responsibilities it should.
I think that Mexico is in the beginning steps of becoming a failed state. The drug cartels are running the northern part of the state dragging political figures, police and citizens into harm. The government of the state is slowly starting to crumble and the economy is going down with the rest of the country. Although drugs make money, this money is not counted in the GDP and is not taxable since it is illegal. Also, the money made from drugs is also being used to pay off government officials.

http://www.ethiopianreview.com/news/161675

The Future of Freedom: Illibeal Democracy At Home and Abroad

What do you think Zakaria means by illiberal democracy? What events surrounding the publication of this book in 2003 might have motivated Zakaria to write this book?


When Zakaria talks about illiberal democracy, I think he is trying to prove to his reader that although governments may claim to be free in every way possible, even the most 'free' governments, who claim to be the most liberal democracy on the planet, are not as even close to what they either strive or pretend to strive for. Zakaria dives into his work trying to show the reader through examples of history and modern day that governments are not at all what they appear to be and that there is a very different government hiding behind the rhetoric that the people under the government hear every day.

To have a true liberal democracy, a country has to meet a certain amount of qualifications. Another name for liberal democracy is a constitutional democracy meaning that there are certain rights guaranteed to every citizen under some form of a constitution. Zakaria seeks out to try and refocus the minds of the people of the world by showing them how much governments actually follow their constitutions and how much they manipulate the words to weave their way around it. He strives to shift the peoples’ jaded or misdirected views back into balance and show the people what is really going on in the world of politics.

This idea of liberal democracy is broken down to its most basic form throughout the book. Zakaria clarifies that democracy, liberty, and liberal democracy are three very different things. To use a quote out of his book he says, "Democracy is flourishing; liberty is not". To explain this bold statement, Zakaria explains a few different things to his reader. He explains that although a person may have rights, the leader in charge may not recognize the rights even though this leader may have been elected through a free and fair election. He also says that although there may be democracy and liberty both present at the same time, there might be a little too much democracy causing liberty to not even be an issue.

Time and time again, Zakaria comes back to the base of democracy. Zakaria says on the first page of his book, "'democracy' means 'the rule of the people'". Although the people may still have this rule since the power in governments is shifting downwards towards the people, democracy is still not free or 'liberal'. These freedoms that are guaranteed to people in constitutions are not exactly what the people think they are being guaranteed. Zakaria explains this by using many examples but three in particular stuck out at me. Zakaria talks about even the most common rights that people talk about: political, economic, and religious rights. He uses these examples because people are very familiar with these rights are considered the core rights.

A good example would be looking at women and the right to vote. Pre-suffrage, in the 1920's, women could not vote. This was no unconstitutional because the constitution stated that "man could vote". The US was not considered to be any less democratic because women couldn't vote, it was considered normal to the government (predominantly men) at the time. Another example is segregation and slavery. Zakaria brings up that point that slavery and segregation did not end in the United States because people voted it out. Slavery and segregation ended because of fighting and wars. The best way to say it is as he said it, "In the end, slavery died not because it was lost in a vote but because the forces of the North crushed the South". Although Great Britain is considered to be a liberal democracy, it has a state religion, which is breaching the division of church and state.

The Supreme Court, the highest court in the US, is not very democratic or liberal at all. Nine justices serve on the court at any given time. This would not be a problem. The problem is that the strongest, most representative body in the United States government is not very representative. The people do not get to decide who the nine justices are, the president does. Although the people can vote on who the president is, the president normally switches every 4-8 years (minus death, etc.) however, the justices serve life terms on the court. This is not very democratic at all when you actually sit down and think about it.

Zakaria uses his book to explain, in an understandable way, that although governments may seem to be very free and open and transparent and perfect, there are many flaws in the system and illiberal democracy is not just some term that political science majors spit out at each other over coffee in Starbucks. Illiberal democracy is a serious problem that deserved time and thought. If a democracy does not follow the rules that were set in a constitution, then it is no longer a democracy or free at all. Zakaria does not try to argue that democracy is a bad thing or that is does not work at all, he just tries to show everyone that it is possible to have too much of it.

I think when Zakaria was writing this, he was looking out at the world and seeing so many different conflicts that he had to start at the basics and establish where these ideas of democracy and liberty and show how overtime liberal democracy started to come together. There is an excerpt that is carefully placed in his book that says, ”Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to the other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of political system”. Just because the elections are fair, does not mean the leaders are and just because there are protected freedoms, the people are not necessarily free. Zakaria makes the point that things are not what they appear to be and his book proves his point that democracy is not necessarily free.

I think when Zakaria was looking out at the world in 2003, he was looking specifically at the countries we are studying. I think he was looking at the world powers such at Russia, China, Iran, and the US and seeing how the governments functioned and really looked at if it was working or not according the the already established ideas of what government should be and how it should be run.