Egypt's Failed Transition to Democracy

Egypt’S FailEd tranSition
Nathan J. Brown
Nathan J. Brown is professor of political science and
international
affairs at George Washington University and nonresident senior
as-
sociate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The July 2013 military ouster of elected president Mohamed
Morsi
clearly marked the failure of Egypt’s two-year attempt to realize
a tran-
sition to democracy following 2011’s mass uprising against
authoritar-
ian rule. That uprising had given birth to tremendous hopes that
the
region might see the forging of a new politics—a politics in
which those
wielding power would find themselves held accountable by the
people
acting through regular free elections; in which official actors
would
safeguard rather than trample human rights; and in which the
long-over-
due reform of numerous political institutions could take place in
a man-
ner both systematic and in keeping with societal needs and
international
norms. There were significant differences among Egyptians
about what

those goals meant in practice, how they were to be aligned with
prevail-
ing cultural and especially religious values, and how they
should be
pursued. But in the heady aftermath of President Hosni
Mubarak’s over-
throw, such strains seemed manageable—and indeed, they
seemed to be
precisely the sorts of policy differences that democratic
mechanisms are
designed to handle.
The failure of Egypt’s democratic experiment was not
inevitable, but
there were deep problems that repeatedly summoning voters to
the polls
could not overcome. Although elections were not the cause of
the coun-
try’s political woes, voting threw the growing fissures in the
Egyptian
body politic into stark relief and sometimes aggravated them.
Those di-
visions have not only sabotaged Egypt’s post-2011 democratic
hopes,
but have also undermined its prospects for future democratic
develop-
ment.
During the almost thirty months between 11 February 2011,
when
Mubarak was forced to resign, and 3 July 2013, when the
military de-
Journal of Democracy Volume 24, Number 4 October 2013
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46 Journal of Democracy
posed and detained his elected successor Morsi—with both men
targets
of widespread popular demonstrations as well as military
action—each
step along the path of democracy ended with opposing segments
of
Egyptian society driven farther apart. Egyptians were called to
the polls
over and over—for a total of five national elections or
referenda, some
with multiple rounds—but every vote led to differences being
redefined
and magnified rather than managed or resolved.
Partisan Motives
There was considerable debate in Egypt about the sequence of
events
and procedures that should follow Mubarak’s forced departure.
Should
elections come first, and if so, for what? Should a constitution

be writ-
ten first instead to clarify such questions, and if so, how should
Egypt
be governed in the meantime? Most of that debate missed the
point. All
answers to such questions were partisan. Early elections would
benefit
civilian actors who were more popular, especially those
experienced at
translating general support into voters at the polls. But critics
who de-
cried the “rush” to elections were predictably enough also those
who
seemed most likely to lose them; only rarely was a call for
delay in
voting coupled with a realistic alternative that was recognizably
demo-
cratic.
Finding the best sequence in the abstract was not the problem.
Instead,
two things were needed for Egypt’s post-2011 democratic
development:
a broad agreement among elites on the rules of the transition,
and a
procedure that allowed people to express their will early
without having
all matters settled by backroom deals. Without general
consensus on the
rules, spoilers would cover the landscape; without popular
participation,
there might be a stable outcome but it would not be democratic.
These two ingredients would have been difficult to combine in
the
best of times, but Egyptians lost much hope of obtaining either

when
they allowed the military to seize control of the transition
process in
February 2011 and to start making all the rules on its own.
Thus, the
problem was not that Egypt rushed to elections but instead that
the elec-
tions did not always deliver authoritative outcomes that bound
those
who held real power. Just as ominously, votes went forward
under con-
ditions that the eventual losers often ended up rejecting.
It was for these reasons that elections seemed only to deepen
rather
than ease or resolve differences. The resulting political crisis
continued
for almost two-and-a-half years until July 2013. At that point, a
mass
uprising that saw millions of demonstrators cheering the
military and
even the once-reviled police brought down the president that
Egyptians
had elected just a year earlier and suspended the constitution
that they
had approved at the polls barely six months before.
A review of the frequent marches to the voting booth shows the
numer-
47Nathan J. Brown
ous false starts on the democratic path. Egyptians were initially
called

to the polls in March 2011 by the military to approve a series of
consti-
tutional amendments (drafted by a small committee) that spelled
out a
way to build a new constitutional order. With this very first
balloting,
the revolutionary coalition began to find itself torn asunder.
Islamists
embraced the referendum because it promised a quick transition
process
and, implicitly, the rapid return of an elected parliament and
president
(to be chosen via elections in which then-popular Islamists
would be the
most experienced contestants and would no longer have to treat
scruffy
revolutionary youngsters as equals). Non-Islamists, for their
part, rallied
around the idea of writing the constitution first, but they were
too slow
in laying out a coherent alternative plan for a transition. When
voters
supported what they were told were “amendments,” the military
decided
not to insert the approved language into the old constitution.
Instead,
hiding behind the cloak of what they called “revolutionary
legitimacy,”
the generals opted to write a new, temporary “constitutional
declara-
tion” that inserted the clauses voters had approved into a forest
of other
articles on how the state would be run during the transition.
That docu-
ment was issued by military fiat, thus setting the dangerous
precedent of

insisting that the constitution was whatever those in power said
it was.
The Islamists’ response was to accept the March 2011
constitutional
declaration but to push for the elections that it stipulated,
hoping to edge
the military aside through the establishment of democratic
institutions
(ones that, not coincidentally, would likely give Islamists much
voice
and heft). By contrast, many of the groups that had organized
the upris-
ing in early 2011 opted instead for renewed street protests,
increasingly
redirecting their ire from the old regime to military rule.
The next two elections came in late 2011 and early 2012 as
Egyp-
tians voted in several rounds first for a lower house of
parliament and
then for an upper house. Those elections returned a resounding
Islamist
majority but left few satisfied. Non-Islamists felt their fears of
Islamist
majoritarianism deepening; Islamists discovered that their
parliamen-
tary majority meant little because the military had taken care in
the con-
stitutional declaration to ensure that the new parliament would
have no
power to oversee the cabinet or pass legislation without the
generals’ ap-
proval. Even the military itself suddenly realized that it had
engineered
a transition plan that gave it an oversight role which was potent

but only
temporary. Once a new president was sworn in, the military
would have
no formal role and no clear tools with which to influence the
outcome of
the constitutional process.
That constitutional process was supposed to begin with an
indirect
election. The two houses of parliament were jointly to choose a
hundred
Egyptians who would spend six months drafting a final
document, which
would then go before the voters within fifteen days. The
parliament was
given no guidance as to who should serve among the hundred
constitu-
tion-writers, and talks among various political forces regarding
a con-
sensus slate broke down. The result was that Islamists selected a
body
that was drawn half from parliament (with its heavy Islamist
majority)
and half from various social groups and official bodies (with
Islamists
significantly represented there as
well). Many non-Islamists boycotted
the process, and some turned to the
courts in a bid to stop it altogether.
An administrative court agreed with

them, disbanding the hundred-mem-
ber committee on the grounds that it
was unrepresentative and that par-
liamentarians could not elect them-
selves to it. The result could have
been as politically healthy as it had
been legally implausible if it had led
to an agreement among Egypt’s rival
political groupings, but instead it re-
sulted in parliament once again fail-
ing to craft a consensus and the Islamists electing a very similar
body to
replace the disbanded constitution-writing committee.
As these drafters went to work, voters were summoned back to
the
polls in May 2012, this time to elect a president. Several
leading candi-
dates were disqualified on obscure or questionable grounds (one
leading
candidate was eliminated when it was revealed that his mother
had taken
U.S. citizenship, while the Brotherhood’s first choice, Khairat
al-Shater,
was banned from running because he had a criminal record
arising from
a trumped-up charge that the old regime had lodged against
him). After
the first round, Egyptians found that they had sent forward to a
June
runoff a former general who had loyally served the old regime
and the
60-year-old Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s second choice.
After per-
suading a wide range of groups that he was the lesser of two

evils in the
runoff, Morsi managed a narrow win.
Once again, however, Egyptians woke up on the morning after
an
election to find the conflicts tearing at their society deepened
rather
than assuaged. On the eve of the balloting, the Supreme
Constitutional
Court had rushed out a ruling that the law under which
parliament had
been elected was unconstitutional, and that the lower house of
parlia-
ment should therefore be disbanded. Just as presidential voting
was be-
ginning, the military also sprang a new constitutional
declaration that
robbed the presidency of significant power and carved out a
strong role
for the military in the constitution-writing process then
underway.
Once elected, Morsi tried to reverse these steps. He reconvened
the
parliament before finally bowing to the courts and acquiescing
in its
suspension. More successfully, he asserted that the military’s
claimed
The military rewarded the
protestors on July 3 by
forcibly deposing Morsi,
arresting him and his
top aides, shutting down
Islamist broadcasters, and
taking a series of steps

(threatening even graver
ones) against the Brother-
hood’s leadership.
49Nathan J. Brown
authority to issue constitutional declarations now belonged to
the presi-
dency, and followed up with a decree nullifying the military’s
recent
actions. The military acquiesced, even allowing Morsi to
negotiate per-
sonnel changes at the top of the uniformed officer corps. Other
politi-
cal players also went along with Morsi’s moves, but fears
lingered that
the presidency was now unchecked. Most non-Islamists
continued to
refuse to involve themselves in the constitutional process while
growing
increasingly shrill in their criticisms of Islamists. Morsi treated
these
oppositionists as so many annoyances who could safely be
overlooked.
His supporters met shrill critiques with shrill responses,
sometimes re-
sorting to authoritarian speech restrictions that were still very
much part
of Egypt’s legal order.
By November, as the deadline for completing the draft
constitution
approached, both Morsi and his foes betrayed signs of panic.
The presi-

dent charged that a cabal of opposition politicians, old-regime
elements,
and judges was scheming to dissolve the constituent assembly,
roll back
his own moves to tame the military, and even disband the upper
house
of parliament. Such maneuvers would have amounted to a
counterrevo-
lution, leaving the shell of a presidency but returning Egypt to
de facto
military tutelage. His fears were almost certainly overblown,
though
they do not seem to have been fully imaginary. Morsi tried to
seize the
initiative by issuing yet another constitutional declaration, this
one re-
moving the issue of the constituent assembly and other matters
from ju-
dicial review. This was effectively an assertion of absolute
presidential
power, even if only a temporary one meant to expire with the
passage
of the new constitution. The effect was to set off a new round of
pro-
tests, this time not against the old regime or the military but
against the
Muslim Brotherhood and the president who hailed from that
movement.
In the midst of this tumult, the constitutional assembly rushed
to fin-
ish its task. Completing their work in an all-night session, the
assembly
members forced Egyptians to trudge back to the polls one more
time
in a referendum (held between 15 and 22 December 2012) that

large
parts of the opposition boycotted, contributing to a low turnout
of about
33 percent. The constitution passed, but majorities in the largest
cities
turned out against it.
And according to the newly approved constitution, Egyptians
were
still not done voting. They were to be summoned before the end
of Feb-
ruary 2013 to elect a new lower house of parliament to replace
the one
disbanded in June 2012. (According to a later Supreme
Constitutional
Court ruling, that step would itself set off a new election: The
still-
sitting upper house would be dissolved, with new elections
scheduled
as soon as the lower house finally sat.) But those later elections
never
came. Under the new constitution, the upper house was required
to sub-
mit a draft election law to the Supreme Constitutional Court
before elec-
tions could be scheduled, and the Court sent it back twice after
finding
constitutional flaws. In late June 2013, one of the upper
chamber’s last
acts was to submit a third draft to the Court; the Court had no
opportu-

nity to act before a political crisis broght the entire system
down.
On June 30, millions of Egyptians marched in the streets
nationwide
to demand an immediate end to Morsi’s presidency, effectively
signal-
ing that they were not willing to wait until the next elections to
remove
him. The military rewarded them on July 3 by forcibly deposing
Morsi,
arresting him and his top aides, shutting down Islamist
broadcasters,
and taking a series of steps (threatening even graver ones)
against the
Brotherhood’s leadership.
But having launched their coup, military leaders quickly
proclaimed
that Egyptians would still keep voting. The constitution was
suspended,
it was true, but two small committees, one legal and one
political, would
work on amending it, and Egyptians would then be summoned to
ap-
prove their work. The upper house of the parliament was
disbanded, but
the Supreme Constitutional Court was urged to speed its review
of the
electoral law so new parliamentary elections could be
scheduled. And as
soon as a new parliament was seated, a new president would be
elected.
Bad Behavior

If democracy failed to develop in Egypt, then, it was not for
lack of
voting. The problem was not that elections came too early or
too often:
A revolution that is carried out in the people’s name is unlikely
to be
able to keep them out of the voting booths for long. And better-
timed
electons might have helped: Had parliamentary elections been
success-
fully scheduled for the second quarter of 2013, it is likely that
signifi-
cant opposition energies would have gone into campaigning
rather than
street protests, thereby forestalling any mass uprising.
The immediate problems in Egypt can be traced not to voting as
such
but to the choices of the main political actors. And at a still
deeper level,
anyone seeking to grasp what went wrong in Egypt must reckon
with the
persistence of underlying authoritarian patterns as well as a
transition
process (dating from 2011) that was, in actuality, neither a real
process
nor anything that provided for a real transition.
First, the actors’ bad choices are obvious. The Brotherhood’s
behav-
ior ranged from high-handed to extremely heavy-handed. Some
of its
moves were subtle but far-reaching in significance. The problem
was
not that the Brotherhood was antidemocratic but that its
conception of

democracy was shallow and often illiberal; further, Egypt had
no rules
of accepted democratic behavior. For instance, when forming
the con-
stituent assembly, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary deputies
agreed that
half the drafters would be nonpartisan representatives of various
institu-
tions and organizations in Egyptian society—but then chose
numerous
formally “nonpartisan” people with Islamist inclinations. The
Brother-
51Nathan J. Brown
hood pressured institutions that were supposed to stand outside
partisan
politics, sending followers to prevent the Supreme
Constitutional Court
from meeting by surrounding its building, filing legal
complaints against
critical journalists, and pushing legislation that would have
forced all
senior judges into retirement. Some of its actions were rough
indeed,
such as when the Brotherhood called out movement stalwarts to
protect
the presidential palace in December 2012—and those stalwarts
seized,
beat, and interrogated demonstrators. As his presidency tottered
in June
2013, Morsi decided on a strategy of bluster and threats that
merely
united and augmented an already implacable opposition.

The opposition could also be blamed for nondemocratic
behavior.
Major opposition actors not only tried to stave off or boycott
several
elections; even when they found one they could like (the mid-
2012 pres-
idential balloting, for example), they ended up seeking to
overturn its re-
sults with street protests. Oppositionists complained about the
make-up
of the constituent assembly but did little to articulate their own
consti-
tutional vision, instead simply pressing non-Islamists to
withdraw from
the body. And virtually every sin with which the opposition
charged
the Brotherhood—using force against protestors, trying to purge
judges,
denying and even applauding security-force abuses, harassing
media—
was a sin that the opposition embraced with unseemly
enthusiasm in
July 2013.
In short, Islamists plausibly charged non-Islamists with refusing
to
accept adverse election results, while non-Islamists plausibly
charged
Islamists with using those same election results to undermine
the devel-
opment of healthy democratic life.
That said, it must also be acknowledged that both charge and
coun-
tercharge also contained unfairness and exaggeration. It is true,

for in-
stance, that the Brotherhood dominated the constitutional
process, but
it is not clear that non-Islamists would have accepted any
process that
reflected the Islamists’ electoral strength. It is true that non-
Islamists
struck a petulant pose every time that the Brotherhood made one
of
its clumsy conciliation efforts, but those attempts offered very
little in
the way of guarantees, and those participating exposed
themselves to
charges of breaking opposition ranks. It is true that the
Brotherhood
used force against protestors in December 2012, but it was also
true
that Egyptian security forces made no effort to defend the
offices of the
Brotherhood and its political party from a very real series of
attacks,
leaving the Brotherhood to fall back on its own devices. It is
true that
non-Islamists relied on courts and ultimately chose to invite
military in-
tervention, but it was also true that they had few ways to affect
the rules
of the political game as these were being written.
Turning to the deeper reasons for failure, it is impossible to
ignore
the heavy weight of Egypt’s authoritarian past. This legacy—a
factor
with which key actors have still not come to grips—made itself
felt in

four ways. First and most obviously, authoritarian actors played
a key
role in the transition both through what they did and what they
did not
do. The Egyptian military did not seek to exert direct day-to-
day con-
trol over public affairs, but it refused to accept civilian
oversight and
for more than a year monopolized the making of key decisions.
That
led most other political forces to gear their actions to the
military’s.
The only gestures made toward challenging the officer corps—
first by
revolutionary youth and later and in a much more limited way
by the
Brotherhood—were ineffectual.
The general pattern was for civilian political actors to seek an
ac-
commodation with the military in order to avoid having to deal
with
each other. The Morsi presidency did not invent this strategy,
though
it seemed at first to perfect it—but the gambit ultimately proved
fatal.
As for the civilian opposition, it prodded the military to depose
Morsi
but quickly found that it had stirred up a force beyond its
control. If the
military’s role was corrupting, that of the security services was
even

more pernicious. These provided a level of public safety that
was un-
even at best, and too often stood deliberately idle while violent
protests
raged, giving a green light to disorder. Egyptian media were fed
a steady
stream of outlandish information (in 2011, directed primarily
against
revolutionary youth; in 2012 and especially in 2013, aimed
mostly at the
country’s newly elected leadership) that undermined trust.
Second, decades of authoritarian rule had left behind an
unbalanced
political scene that tilted elections toward the Islamists and
gave non-
Islamists a deep mistrust of the ballot. The problem was not that
the
Mubarak regime had repressed non-Islamists more than
Islamists—just
the opposite. Islamists were treated far more harshly. But
because par-
ticipation in formal politics was so unpromising under
authoritarian
rule, non-Islamist parties that had focused their energies in that
direction
had by 2011 become little more than dried-out husks. With their
broader
social agenda, Islamists had deeper and more extensive
organizations
that could be quickly turned to electoral purposes. Non-
Islamists had
nothing to match these (and mostly were not inclined toward
building
such organizations).

Third, the infrastructure of authoritarianism remained in place.
A vir-
tually permanent official state of emergency may have come to
an end in
2012, but authoritarian practices and procedures had become so
deeply
woven into laws and institutions that it sometimes seemed to
political
rivals as if their only way to deal with one another was to reach
for the
very sticks that had been wielded against them in the past.
Mubarak
had gone, but there were still powerful public prosecutors whom
those
outraged by press stories could lobby for the filing of criminal
charges;
military and state-security courts stayed open regarding some
cases; and
the state-owned press promoted the agenda of those in power
with mind-
less and shameless enthusiasm.
53Nathan J. Brown
Even where the machinery of state was not clearly authoritarian,
it
provided imperfect tools (or none at all) for civilian oversight.
The judi-
ciary and the religious establishment, for instance, were able to
exercise
considerable autonomy within their own realms and had some
ability to
resist the newly elected institutions (the presidency and the
parliament).

The judiciary in particular went beyond resisting partisan
oversight and
tried to make itself self-perpetuating to a degree that
undermined demo-
cratic mechanisms. Judges had the means not merely to defend
against
encroachments on judicial turf by parliament and the
presidency, but to
undermine these institutions by striking at their legal basis.
Fourth, Egyptians discovered that authoritarian politics—and
per-
haps especially the brand to which they had long been exposed,
with
its meaningless elections and hollow but still formally
democratic pro-
cedures—is a poor school for democracy. By discrediting
democratic
promises, leaving a cloud of distrust and suspicion hovering
over the
rules and conduct of elections, suppressing healthy
organizations in
both civil and political society, and favoring a divide-and-rule
approach
to opposition, autocratic politics can reach out from its grave to
hobble
efforts to move toward democracy.
Thus, each actor went into democratic politics with unrealistic
expec-
tations regarding what it could achieve and exaggerated
suspicions of
the motives of all rivals. It was not so much that Egypt’s
political actors
lacked democratic commitments (though some did), but more
that they

deeply distrusted their adversaries and regarded real democratic
pro-
cesses as full of potential pitfalls. Here they paid for decades of
life
under dishonest rulers who mouthed democratic promises and
sought
to hide behind democracy’s form while withholding its
substance. After
the 2011 uprising, the Egyptian political landscape was filled
with ac-
tors who had learned always to look for the fine print and to
distrust ev-
ery promise and procedure until its advantages were proven in
practice.
In short, fear ruled the day: Everyone was suspicious that
democratic
promises were worth little (they had been made and ignored so
often in
the past), and that democratic procedures were nothing but traps
des-
tined to end up helping only one’s rivals.
Bad Choices
If the authoritarian past weighed heavily on Egyptian politics
after the
uprising, the transition “plan,” such as it was, only made things
worse—
even if more by accident than by intention. Egypt’s transition
was not
badly designed; it was simply not designed at all. Its original
failing lay
in a series of shortsighted decisions made by generally well-
meaning
but myopic actors who found themselves thrust into positions of
limited

authority in February and March 2011. In retrospect, we can see
that the
extensive debates which at the time swirled around the topics of
how to
sequence the writing of a constitution and the electing of a
president and
parliament only obscured the real mistakes that were being
made.
The most basic problem was the huge amount of political
control that
fell into the hands of the military high command for no other
reason than
that the high command claimed it and no one else could come
up with a
timely alternative. The soundest idea heard was a call for a
presidency
council capable of compelling the main political forces
(assuming that
they could be identified and could manage their differences) to
move
forward by consensus. But revolutionary groups did not unify
around
this notion until it was too late.
So the military was free to take the next misstep. It began when
the
generals charged a tiny ad hoc committee with marking the
outlines of a
transition by amending parts of the 1971 Constitution. Then the
commit-

tee’s work was folded into the March 2011 constitutional
declaration, a
document whose authors have never been revealed. Nor did
anybody in
the military bother to explain why this declaration borrowed
some ele-
ments from the suspended 1971 Constitution but not others.
Among the
2011 declaration’s gaps was its silence on the matter of
amendment: If a
change needed to be made to the constitutional text (and various
actors
quickly came to feel that some were necessary) first the military
and then
the president (once elected) would have to assert the
constitutional power
to do so. Had a process of broad and careful consultation been
used to
adjust the basic law, the results might have been made
palatable. But the
generals were predictably bad at consultation, and later the first
freely
elected president turned out to be even worse. So Egypt’s rulers
took
turns decreeing unilateral changes with ultimately disastrous
results.
Suspicions arising from the opacity of the process emerged as
early
as the March 2011 referendum. Islamists suspected that their
revolution-
ary partners’ real agenda was to delay elections for fear of how
well
Islamists would do. Non-Islamists felt (with similar legitimacy)
that Is-
lamists were shoving hard for a vote so they could elbow their

way into
the most seats at the table.
Such political rivalries were not in themselves bad. The deeper
problem
was that the only way to settle them was not through
negotiation, com-
promise, and consensus but by pressuring, nagging, and
bargaining with
the generals. Suspicions of separate deals and secret agreements
deepened
fears, and Egypt’s contending political forces quickly learned
that allega-
tions need not be coupled with evidence in order to be taken
seriously.
Differences on questions of political machinery were not that
vast in
early 2011, and a more consensual process could certainly have
been
devised. Much of the basic framework for making a
postrevolutionary
political order—a weaker presidency, stronger safeguards for
freedoms,
more democratic procedures, and judicial independence—united
almost
the entire political spectrum. But the tiny ad hoc committee,
acting in
haste, had created a number of procedural time bombs.
55Nathan J. Brown
The first of these was the stipulation that a new constitution
would

be drafted by a hundred figures chosen by parliament. This
offered no
guarantee that everyone would have a voice. The hundred-
member as-
sembly’s draft was to go before the electorate immediately for
an up-or-
down, simple-majority vote. No one realized at the time how
much these
procedures would favor Islamists. Their electoral abilities were
not a
surprise, but the scale of their eventual parliamentary and
presidential
victories was. This was a process that could work well only if
there was
already a deep consensus. It could hardly produce a consensus
on its
own, nor did it give anyone much incentive to pursue one.
For a brief period in early 2011, it looked as if goodwill could
make
up for a bad process. But as the revolutionary coalition broke
apart, few
saw compromise as a paying proposition. Periodic efforts to
achieve
it—in 2012, when it was time to pick members of the
constituent assem-
bly, or in early 2013, when domestic and international
mediators tried to
bring Morsi and the opposition together—foundered in an
atmosphere
of mistrust.
The Meaning of Failure
Elections themselves were hardly the cause of Egypt’s
democratic fi-

asco. While the mundane realities of democratic politics are not
particu-
larly pretty anywhere, they nonetheless offer real possibilities
to which
Arab societies still strongly aspire. But those who build a
democracy for
the first time must do so on foundations that autocracy has
built. Getting
rid of autocrats is easier than getting rid of their structures or
erasing the
stains on political practice that autocrats have left behind.
Egypt’s post-
2011 politics has not overcome the legacy of the past.
Failure was not inevitable. We have already seen that there were
mo-
ments when Egypt’s course could have taken a very different
turn. Had a
deal over the constituent assembly been struck in the first half
of 2012, a
more consensual process might have emerged; had the strong
opposition
within the Brotherhood to fielding a presidential candidate
carried the
day or had a few percentage points shifted in the 2012 first-
round presi-
dential results, there might have been a different runoff; had
President
Morsi learned how to reach beyond his narrow base, the
showdown of
mid-2013 might never have happened. Even as late as June
2013, had
the upper house succeeded in passing a Constitutional Court–
approved
election law, the confrontation might have taken the form of an
election

campaign rather than massive street protests and a military
coup.
Missed opportunities, in short, have abounded, leaving three
sets of
lessons—for students of democracy, for Islamists, and for
Egyptians.
For those interested in transitions from authoritarian rule,
Egypt’s
experience provides a stark lesson: Not only do decisions about
timing,
sequence, and rules have a large impact on political outcomes,
but those
decisions themselves are the outcomes of deeply political
processes. To
put it more paradoxically, the design of a transition matters, but
at the
same time transitions are not designed—instead they are shaped
by po-
litical contests among confused and confusing actors at a time
when the
basic rules of political life are unclear, constantly reshaped, and
broken.
There is no force outside the political process that designs a
transition;
there is no time-out when politics ceases so that political
systems can
be designed in a pristine atmosphere; there is no magic moment
when
political actors put aside their own goals, values, and

experiences and
stand aloof from day-to-day political struggles.
The generals who were given a free hand to steer the transition
in
February 2011 did so in a way that guarded their institutional
interests
but walled off important parts of Egypt’s authoritarian state
from re-
form. Their decisions about the timing and sequencing of
elections not
only affected electoral outcomes but also undermined trust
among civil-
ian political actors and aggravated their tendency to shun the
hard work
of coalition-building. No one, at any rate, should have expected
the mili-
tary to give up its institutional self-interest, the opposition to
embrace
elections that it knew it would lose, the Brotherhood to ignore
its edge
in electoral support, or the judiciary to abjure its tools for self-
defense.
When the mass uprising of 30 June 2013 culminated in the
military
coup of July 3, Egypt appeared to reprise the mistakes of
2011—seeing
the country’s problems as the work of a few individual
miscreants, mis-
taking purges of personnel for the reform of institutions,
rushing a tran-
sition process, failing to provide for consensual constitutional
design,
walling off particular institutional interests from discussion,
and failing

to provide for meaningful public participation. But while it
seemed that
“Egypt” was making the same mistakes again, that is not quite
correct,
for it was not the entire nation of Egypt that was acting.
Instead, various
political actors (the military, some judicial personnel, the
security ap-
paratus, and a small number of political movements) were
taking deci-
sions in Egypt’s name, sincerely believing themselves in each
case to be
defenders of the nation as a whole. Those decisions, however
much they
damaged hopes for a democratic transition, were not mistakes
for the ac-
tors who made them—for by its choices each actor acted on
behalf of its
particular partisan interests, interests that no actor could see as
distinct
from Egypt’s national interest.
If the lesson for analysts is that transitions are not designed but
po-
litically shaped, the lesson for Islamists is far less clear.
Islamists will
almost surely try to learn from the Morsi presidency, but they
will take
considerable time to do so. For the past generation, the Arab
world’s
leading Islamist movements have become increasingly
politicized—tak-
ing part in elections, writing platforms, and seeking public
office out
of a belief that the political process, even if flawed, was one of
the best

ways they had to pursue their Islamizing agenda. Egypt’s
Muslim Broth-
57Nathan J. Brown
erhood was the largest movement to try such an approach, and
from
2011 until 2013 its investment in politics seemed to be paying
off more
handsomely and quickly than expected. Islamists swept
parliamentary
elections, won the presidency, and dominated the constitution-
writing
process. The Brotherhood’s rivals on the Islamist spectrum
began racing
to follow a similar path.
What Next for the Muslim Brotherhood?
In July 2013, that sudden success came to a sudden end. The
Morsi
presidency is without a doubt one of the most colossal failures
in the
Brotherhood’s history. What lesson will the movement learn
from it?
The Muslim Brothers (as well as Islamists more generally) may
con-
clude that their failure was a result of their own
miscalculations. And
it seems undeniable that Morsi and the Brotherhood made
almost every
conceivable mistake—including some (such as reaching too
quickly for

political power or failing to build coalitions with others) that
they had
vowed they knew enough to avoid. They alienated potential
allies, ig-
nored rising discontent, focused more on consolidating their
rule than on
using the tools that they did have, and used rhetoric that was
tone deaf
at best and threatening at worst.
Such introspection might go deeper than tactics and lead to new
thought
about basic organizational issues. Although the Brotherhood had
tried af-
ter Mubarak’s fall to refashion itself into a national governing
party, the
movement had been built not for open democratic competition
but for
resilience under authoritarian pressure. It was tight-knit,
inward-looking,
and even paranoid. It came to be led by figures, including Morsi
himself,
who were termed “organization men,” little used to dealing with
the world
beyond Brotherhood confines. A thorough recognition of these
limitations
might have induced the Brotherhood itself to step aside and
leave the
political game to its post-Mubarak spinoff, the Freedom and
Justice Party
(a body that the Brotherhood instead decided to keep on a short
leash).
Things could have even gone so far as an announcement by the
movement
that its members were free to join any political party they liked,
an idea

that a few young Brotherhood activists favored in 2011. Either
path (a far
more autonomous party or no direct political role at all) would
have been
very hard for the current leaders—raised as they have been on
hierarchy,
coordination, and discipline—to follow.
But even if Islamists eventually engage in reflection and self-
criti-
cism of this sort, they will likely conclude that whatever
mistakes they
made in organization, one of their biggest errors was to
underestimate
their adversaries’ resistance to the Brotherhood’s political role.
In other
words, the Brotherhood’s mistake lay in ever thinking that it
would be
allowed not merely to win elections, but to govern. In Islamists’
eyes,
the Morsi presidency might come to be seen as similar to the
experi-
ences of Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front in the early 1990s
(when the
military halted an electoral process to prevent an Islamist
victory) or of
Hamas in 2006 (when that Islamist group won the Palestinian
elections
only to have domestic rivals and international actors sabotage
its ability
to rule). This diagnosis may well win out over the long term,

but where
will it point? Will it lead to the movement abandoning political
work,
to individuals abandoning the Brotherhood, or to the
Brotherhood deter-
mining that it will play politics but no longer by peaceful rules?
At a minimum, many Islamists will likely find that electoral
politics
holds far less appeal. The effect may not set in immediately—
the feeling
of having been cheated, the urge to fight back, and the desire to
salvage
whatever institutional and constitutional achievements can be
preserved
may win out for now. Eventually, however, Islamists will have
to come to
terms with the longer-run factors that they pride themselves on
knowing
how to reckon with. At that point, the strategies that have won
most favor
among Islamists for the past generation could give way to some
very dif-
ferent approaches. The sudden unexpected success of Islamists
in 2011
and 2012 led them to make decisions on the fly; their defeat in
2013 will
give them time to ponder how they should face the years ahead.
As for those Egyptians who aspire to a more democratic future,
the
lessons that they learn may end up being oddly similar to those
that the
Islamists draw. A leading lesson might be phrased as “Do not
let vic-
tory take you by surprise.” When the decades-old Mubarak

regime per-
ished in the sudden and spectacular crash of early 2011, the
triumphant
revolutionaries found themselves beholding the wreckage of a
shattered
authoritarian presidency with no shared platform and no
authoritative
structures to guide them beyond those needed to hammer out
commu-
niqués from Tahrir Square. By showing disdain for politics and
ceding
control to the military, those who pulled off the revolution
revealed that
they lacked a common understanding of how to overcome
authoritari-
anism’s malign legacies. In June 2013, a new Egyptian
revolutionary
movement made precisely the same mistake, effectively
allowing the
military to seize the reins once again.
The Egyptian failure to produce a democracy may have been
avoid-
able, but it could still have effects that are highly damaging and
long-
lasting. Indeed, the failure has discredited democratic
mechanisms as a
means for managing differences, at least for the present.
Islamists have
come to feel that even when they win at the ballot box, they will
be de-
nied the right to exercise authority. Their opponents,
meanwhile, decry
“ballotocracy” as mindlessly majoritarian but have shown
themselves
to be even more ruthlessly majoritarian than the Muslim

Brotherhood
when they can outmobilize their foes in street demonstrations.
And that might be the greatest cost of the Morsi presidency—
that,
at least for a time, it has left behind an Egypt in which the very
idea of
democracy has lost much of its meaning and all of its luster.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without
permission.
Running head: SWIMMING 1
SWIMMING 2
Swimming Process Essay
Russell Vilardi
Rasmussen College
Author Note
This paper is being submitted on October 20, 2015 for Dr.
Cassandra Pauley G124 English Composition.

[you are missing the title here]
Discovery Activity[this should be bold]
How to participate in my favorite hobby (swimming)[fragment]
Step one will involve introduction and naming of the activity. I
will bring the materials for swimming and then ask the
participants to try and identify the materials. It will help in the
process of familiarizing the participants with the activity. I will
also engage the participants in an open-ended question. The
second step in the discovery activity will involve the process of
generating and modeling of the participants’ ideas. I will
involve the participant by asking them[noun and pronoun are
not in agreement; participant should be plural to flow with the
rest of the sentence] to go through the materials to try and name
the materials and establish the functions of each material. As an
expert in the field, I will be responsible for training them on the
best way of using the materials.
The third step [how come the first and second steps are all in
one paragraph, but this one gets a separate paragraph? You want
to keep things symmetrical in writing]of the discovery activity
will involve exploration and experimentation. The participants
will then have to try and use the materials by putting on the
swimming costumes by themselves,[semicolon] after doing so
[comma] they then going into the water to start the activity. I
will be keen to set the limits for the participants so that they do
not end up getting hurt. They will also be able to learn to turn
to their colleagues for assistance instead of looking for me. The
fourth step will involve the sharing of the exploratory work. I
will have to ask all the participants to come together so that
they can be able to share their experience with their colleagues.

Sharing the experience among the participants will help the
participants share and model the ideas that they have developed
during the exploration. It is important to make the sharing
activity voluntary to help the participants feel free to participate
in the activity without the fear of sharing their experiences.
The last step[each step should be its own paragraph] will
involve voluntary repetition of the process. It is important to
allow the participants who are willing to repeat the process to
go ahead and do so as this will help them improve on the
activity.
Planning activity [this should be bold]
How to participate in my favorite hobby
The hobby that we are going to discuss is swimming. I selected
this hobby because it is less involving in terms of labor
requirement hence, making the follow-up process easier for
prediction and planning. I also selected this topic because of
being well familiar and comfortable to work with it.
Material gathering- I will have to gather materials that I am
going to use for swimming. Each learner will have a swimming
costume that they will have to wear during the activity. It is
important for the learners to come with their materials to avoid
inconveniences during the activity.
Staying focused- it is important to stay focused on the activity
and do[take out] not allow any participant to interrupt the
program. You can only achieve this by making sure that each
person is carrying all the necessary tools and equipment for the
activity by providing a list of the material in advance.
Use caution- take caution while conducting the activity with the
participants. In most cases, the participants can start engaging
in dangerous activities like swimming on[in] the deep end when
they are not good at swimming. Provide the necessary
guidelines in advance before allowing the participants to engage
in the activity.
Plan for extra time- people who are still learning normally take
longer than usual when you compare them to the people who

have been doing similar activity[activities] for longer.
Therefore, planning for extra time is critical for the participants
to be able to learn more and engage more with each other.
Extra time will also provide time for sharing with other
participants.
Record the results and the process. The people involved should
be able to record the procedure so that they can be able to
repeat at their own free time.
[this should be tabbed in] Review and discuss- after completing
the activity, it will be important to discuss the experience with
the participants before deciding to repeat.
[this should be tabbed in] Plan for another discovery activity-It
is important to plan for more discovery activity, but it should
happen after thinking what went well for the participants. The
next activity should also be planned early to ensure that
individuals have enough time to organize their equipment for
the activity.
[Your headings are not done in APA format. Please take a look
at the below information to fix that formatting]
Headings
APA Style uses a unique headings system to separate and
classify paper sections. There are 5heading levels in APA. The
6th edition of the APA manual revises and simplifies previous
heading guidelines. Regardless of the number of levels, always
use the headings in order, beginning with level 1. The format of
each level is illustrated below:
APA Headings
Level
Format
1
Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Headings
2
Left-aligned, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading
3
Indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period. Begin
body text after the period.

4
Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase heading with a
period. Begin body text after the period.
5
Indented, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin
body text after the period.
Thus, if the article has four sections, some of which have
subsections and some of which don’t, use headings depending
on the level of subordination. Section headings receive level
one format. Subsections receive level two format. Subsections
of subsections receive level three format. For example:
Method (Level 1)
Site of Study (Level 2)
Participant Population (Level 2)
Teachers. (Level 3)
Students. (Level 3)
Results (Level 1)
Spatial Ability (Level 2)
Test one. (Level 3)
Teachers with experience. (Level 4)
Teachers in training. (Level 4)
Test two. (Level 3)
Kinesthetic Ability (Level 2)
In APA Style, the Introduction section never gets a heading and
headings are not indicated by letters or numbers. Levels of
headings will depend upon the length and organization of your
paper. Regardless, always begin with level one headings and
proceed to level two, etc.
1

Jan/Feb 2014 pp. 74-84
“How China is Ruled”
By David Lampton
Why It's Getting Harder for Beijing to Govern
China had three revolutions in the twentieth century. The first
was the 1911 collapse of
the Qing dynasty, and with it, the country's traditional system of
governance. After a
protracted period of strife came the second revolution, in 1949,
when Mao Zedong and
his Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War and
inaugurated the People's Republic
of China; Mao's violent and erratic exercise of power ended
only with his death, in 1976.
The third revolution is ongoing, and so far, its results have been
much more positive. It
began in mid-1977 with the ascension of Deng Xiaoping, who
kicked off a decades-long
era of unprecedented reform that transformed China's hived-off
economy into a global
pacesetter, lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of
poverty and unleashing a
massive migration to cities. This revolution has continued
through the tenures of Deng's
successors, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping.
Of course, the revolution that began with Deng has not been
revolutionary in one

important sense: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has
maintained its monopoly on
political power. Yet the cliche that China has experienced
economic reform but not
political reform in the years since 1977 obscures an important
truth: that political reform,
as one Chinese politician told me confidentially in 2002, has
"taken place quietly and out
of view."
The fact is that China's central government operates today in an
environment
fundamentally different, in three key ways, from the one that
existed at the beginning of
Deng's tenure. First, individual Chinese leaders have become
progressively weaker in
relation to both one another and the rest of society. Second,
Chinese society, as well as
the economy and the bureaucracy, has fractured, multiplying the
number of
constituencies China's leaders must respond to, or at least
manage. Third, China's
leadership must now confront a population with more resources,
in terms of money, talent,
and information, than ever before. For all these reasons,
governing China has become
even more difficult than it was for Deng. Beijing has reacted to
these shifts by
incorporating public opinion into its policymaking, while still
keeping the basic political
structures in place. Chinese leaders are mistaken, however, if
they think that they can
maintain political and social stability indefinitely without
dramatically reforming the
country's system of governance. A China characterized by a
weaker state and a stronger

civil society requires a considerably different political
structure. It demands a far stronger
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
2
commitment to the rule of law, with more reliable mechanisms -
- such as courts and
legislatures -- for resolving conflicts, accommodating various
interests, and distributing
resources. It also needs better government regulation,
transparency, and accountability.
Absent such developments, China will be in for more political
turmoil in the future than it
has experienced in the last four-plus decades. The aftershocks
would no doubt be felt by
China's neighbors and the wider world, given China's growing
global reach. China's past
reforms have created new circumstances to which its leaders
must quickly adapt. Reform
is like riding a bicycle: either you keep moving forward or you
fall off.
NOT ALL LEADERS ARE THE SAME
According to the German sociologist Max Weber, governments
can derive their authority
from three sources: tradition, the qualities and charisma of an
individual leader, and
constitutional and legal norms. China, over the reform period,
has shifted away from the
first two types of legitimacy and toward something like the
third.

Like Mao, Deng enjoyed a mix of traditional and charismatic
authority. But the leaders
who followed him earned their legitimacy in different ways.
Jiang (who ruled from 1989 to
2002) and Hu (ruling from 2002 to 2012) to various extents
were both designated as
leaders by Deng himself, and Xi's elevation to the top position,
in 2012, was the product
of a collective political process within the CCP. Over time, a
set of norms that regulate
leadership selection has developed, including term and age
limits, performance
measures, and opinion polling within the party. Although
important, these norms should
not be mistaken for law -- they are incomplete, informal, and
reversible -- but they do mark
a dramatic departure from Mao's capricious system.
As the foundations of legitimacy have shifted, Deng's
successors have seen their capacity
to single-handedly initiate policies diminish. Although Deng did
not enjoy the unbridled
power that Mao did, when it came to strategic decisions, he
could act authoritatively and
decisively once he had consulted influential colleagues.
Moreover, the scale and scope
of his decisions were often enormous. Besides embarking on
economic reform, Deng
made other pivotal choices, such as rolling out the one-child
policy in 1979, suppressing
the Democracy Wall protest movement that same year, and, in
1989, declaring martial
law and deploying troops in Beijing. And when it came to
Taiwan, Deng felt secure enough
to adopt a relaxed attitude toward the island, leaving the

resolution of cross-strait relations
to the next generation.
Jiang, Hu, and Xi, by contrast, have been more constrained. The
difference was on full
display in late 2012 and into 2013, as Xi took over from Hu. In
the 1970s, in order to build
ties with Japan, Deng was able to sidestep the explosive
nationalist politics surrounding
questions of sovereignty over the disputed Diaoyu Islands
(known in Japan as the
Senkaku Islands). But Xi, having just risen to the top post and
eager to consolidate his
power in the wake of Japan's September 2012 nationalization of
the islands, felt obliged
to act muscularly in response to Tokyo's move.
3
China, in other words, has gone from being ruled by strongmen
with personal credibility
to leaders who are constrained by collective decision-making,
term limits and other
norms, public opinion, and their own technocratic characters.
As one senior Chinese
diplomat put it to me in 2002, "Mao and Deng could decide;
Jiang and the current leaders
must consult."
China's rulers have strayed from Mao and Deng in another
important respect: they have
come to see their purpose less as generating enormous change
and more as maintaining

the system and enhancing its performance. Deng's goals were
transformational. Deng
sought to move China up the economic ladder and the global
power hierarchy, and he
did. He opened China up to foreign knowledge, encouraged
China's young people to go
abroad (an attitude influenced by his own formative years in
France and the Soviet Union),
and let comparative advantage, trade, and education work their
magic.
Deng's successor, Jiang, came to power precisely because he
represented a change in
leadership style: in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square
protests, both the forces in
favor of reform and those wary of it viewed him as capable and
nonthreatening. But he
eventually jumped off the fence on the side of rapid reform.
Jiang got China into the World
Trade Organization, set the stage for its first manned space
mission, and articulated, for
the first time, that the CCP needed to bring large numbers of
creative and skilled people
into its ranks. During his 13-year rule, China's economy grew at
an average annual rate
of 9.7 percent.
Yet Jiang, by virtue of both his character and his circumstances,
was far from the
transformational strongman Deng was. An engineer by training,
Jiang was practical and
focused on making things work. In 1992, for example, he told a
group of Americans that
a decade earlier,
when he was a lower-ranking official, he had visited Chicago

and paid special attention
to the city's garbage collection because he hoped to find a
solution to the problem of
littered watermelon rinds back home. He then boasted to the
Americans that as mayor of
Shanghai, he had saved land by building corkscrew-shaped
bridge on-ramps that
reduced the need to displace city residents. Precipitous social
change this was not, but
Jiang's preoccupations materially improved the lives of ordinary
Chinese.
Hu and his premier, Wen Jiabao, proved less transformational
still. The evolution was
foreseeable even in 2002, on the eve of Hu's assumption of
power. "Another trend will be
toward collective leadership, rather than supreme leaders," a
senior Chinese diplomat
told me at the time. "Future leaderships will be collective, more
democratic; they will seek
consensus rather than make arbitrary decisions. But the
downside is that they will enjoy
lesser amounts of authority. It will be more difficult for them to
make bold decisions when
bold decisions are needed." Hu enacted virtually no political or
economic reforms; his
most notable achievement was enhancing relations with Taiwan.
The charitable
interpretation of Hu's years in office is that he digested the
sweeping changes Deng and
Jiang had initiated.
4

Following his promotion to top party leader in November 2012,
Xi impressively
consolidated his authority in 2013, allowing a vigorous debate
on reform to emerge, even
as he has tightened restrictions on freedom of expression. The
core of the debate
concerns how to reinvigorate economic growth and the degree
to which political change
is a precondition for further economic progress.
After the Central Committee meeting of November 2013 (the
Third Plenum), the Xi
administration stated its intention to "comprehensively deepen
reform" and has created a
group to do so. The need for such a body signals that many
policy disputes remain and
that the central government intends to stay focused on change
until at least 2020. But
there simply is no clear-cut path forward, because in some
areas, China needs
marketization; in others, it needs decentralization; and in still
others, it needs
centralization.
Although many ambiguities remain, the thrust of emerging
policy is to have the market
play a decisive role in allocating resources, with Beijing
leveling the domestic playing field
between state enterprises and nonstate firms and simplifying
bureaucratic approval
processes. Foreigners can find things to like in the government's
promise to "relax
investment access, accelerate the construction of free-trade
zones, and expand inland
and coastal openness." Such policies would have political

consequences, too, and the
meeting's communique mentioned the need for changes in the
judiciary and in local
governments, while vaguely suggesting more rights for
peasants. That said, in calling for
the creation of a national security committee, it identified both
internal and external
security as major concerns. A long march lies ahead.
THE FRACTURED SOCIETY
These changes in individual leadership style have coincided
with another tectonic shift:
the pluralization of China's society, economy, and bureaucracy.
During the Mao era,
leaders asserted that they served only one interest -- that of the
Chinese masses. The
job of the government was to repress recalcitrant forces and
educate the people about
their true interests. Governance was not about reconciling
differences. It was about
eliminating them.
Since Mao, however, China's society and bureaucracy have
fragmented, making it harder
for Beijing to make decisions and implement policies. To deal
with the challenge, the
Chinese government, particularly since Deng, has developed an
authoritarian yet
responsive system that explicitly balances major geographic,
functional, factional, and
policy interests through representation at the highest levels of
the CCP. Although the
pathways for political self-expression remain limited, and elite
decision-making opaque,
China's rulers now try to resolve, rather than crush, conflicts

among competing interests,
suppressing such conflicts only when they perceive them to be
especially big threats.
They have attempted to co-opt the rank and file of various
constituencies while cracking
down on the ringleaders of antigovernment movements.
5
Many of China's powerful new interest groups are economic in
nature. Labor and
management now clash over working conditions and pay.
Likewise, as Chinese
businesses come to look more like Western corporations, they
are only partially
submissive to party directives. For example, as the scholar
Tabitha Mallory has pointed
out, the fishing industry has become increasingly privatized --
in 2012, 70 percent of
China's "distant-water" fishing companies were privately owned
-- making it far harder for
the central government to prevent overfishing.
Meanwhile, in the state-owned sector, the China National
Offshore Oil Corporation, or
CNOOC, is supporting policies that favor more assertiveness in
the South China Sea,
where significant hydrocarbon deposits are thought to lie, and it
has found common
ground with the Chinese navy, which wants a bigger budget and
a modernized fleet. On
issues both foreign and domestic, interest groups have become
increasingly vocal

participants in the policy process.
China's bureaucracy has adapted to the proliferation of interests
by becoming more
pluralized itself. Officials use forums called "leading small
groups" (lingdao xiaozu) to
resolve fights among squabbling organizations and localities,
and vice premiers and state
councilors spend much of their time settling such disputes.
Meanwhile, provinces, big
cities such as Shanghai, and industrial and commercial
associations increasingly rely on
representatives in Beijing to promote their interests by lobbying
national decision-makers
-- a model that has been replicated at the provincial level as
well.
PEOPLE POWER
Mao almost never allowed public opinion to restrain his
policies; the popular will was
something he himself defined. Deng, in turn, did adopt reforms,
because he feared that
the CCP was close to losing its legitimacy, yet he only followed
public opinion when it
comported with his own analysis.
Today, in contrast, almost all Chinese leaders openly speak
about the importance of
public opinion, with the goal being to preempt problems. In
August 2013, for instance, the
state-run newspaper China Daily reminded readers that the
National Development and
Reform Commission had issued regulations requiring local
officials to conduct risk
assessments to determine the likelihood of popular disturbances

in reaction to major
construction projects and stated that such undertakings should
be shut down temporarily
if they generated "medium-level" opposition among citizens.
China has built a large apparatus aimed at measuring people's
views -- in 2008, the most
recent year for which data are available, some 51,000 firms,
many with government
contracts, conducted polling -- and Beijing has even begun
using survey data to help
assess whether CCP officials deserve promotion. "After Deng,
there has been no
strongman, so public opinion has become a kind of civil
society," one pollster, who has
seen more and more of his business come from the central
government, told me in 2012.
"In the United States, polling is used for elections, but in China,
a major use is to monitor
government performance."
6
Such developments suggest that China's leaders now recognize
that government must
be more responsive, or at least appear that way. Indeed, since
2000, they have
increasingly invoked public opinion in explaining their policies
on exchange rates, taxes,
and infrastructure. Public opinion may even lie behind the
uptick in Beijing's regional
assertiveness in 2009 and 2010. Niu Xinchun, a Chinese
scholar, has argued that Beijing

adopted a tougher posture in maritime disputes and other
foreign issues during this period
as a direct response to public anger over Western criticism of
China's human rights
record, especially in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games,
when some Western leaders
suggested that they might not attend. The Chinese were so fed
up with France's behavior,
in particular, that China Daily reported that the "Chinese people
do not want the French
president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to attend the opening ceremonies of
the Beijing Olympics."
Beijing's greater responsiveness stems in large part from its
recognition that as local
governments, nonstate organizations, and individuals all grow
more powerful, the central
government is progressively losing its monopoly on money,
human talent, and
information. Take the question of capital. Ever since the Deng
era, more and more of it
has accumulated in coffers outside the central government.
From 1980 to 2010, the
portion of total state revenues spent at the local level rose from
46 percent to 82 percent.
Meanwhile, the share of total industrial output produced by the
state-owned sector
dropped from 78 percent in 1978 to 11 percent in 2009. Of
course, the state still holds
firm control over strategic sectors such as those relating to
defense, energy, finance, and
large-scale public infrastructure, and ordinary Chinese still do
not enjoy anything close to
unlimited economic freedom. The change has also benefited
corrupt local officials,
military leaders, crime syndicates, and rogue entrepreneurs, all

of whom can work against
citizens' interests. But when people gain control over economic
resources, they have far
more choice in terms of where they live, what property they
acquire, how they educate
their children, and what opportunities they will pursue. This is
not unfettered liberty, but it
is certainly a beginning.
As for human capital, in the 1977-78 academic year, the first
after the Cultural Revolution,
some 400,000 students matriculated at Chinese universities; by
2010, that number had
risen to 6.6 million. Moreover, many Chinese students now go
abroad for education -- in
the 2012-13 academic year, more than 230,000 studied in the
United States alone -- and
many are returning home after graduation. The result is that
China now possesses a
massive pool of talented individuals who can empower
organizations and businesses
outside of the state's control. Every day, these entities grow in
number and power, and in
some instances, they have begun performing duties that were
traditionally handled by the
state -- or not handled at all. For example, the Institute of
Public and Environmental
Affairs, a nongovernmental organization that collects and
publicizes data on factories'
waste-disposal practices, has managed to pressure some
companies that pollute into
reforming their ways.
Ordinary Chinese are also gaining unprecedented access to
information. More than half
a billion Chinese now use the Internet. In addition to stanching

the flow of information with
the so-called Great Firewall, the government now has to fight
information with information.
In reaction to online rumors about the fallen CCP official Bo
Xilai, for example, the
7
government released limited portions of court testimony to
Chinese social media. The
central government has undertaken gargantuan efforts to both
harness the benefits of the
Internet and insulate itself from its most destabilizing effects.
At the same time, more and more Chinese citizens are flocking
to cities. Urbanization
tends to be associated with higher educational and income
levels and elevated popular
expectations. As one senior Chinese economist put it to me in
2010, "In the city, people
breathe the fresh air of freedom."
The combination of more densely packed urban populations,
rapidly rising aspirations,
the spread of knowledge, and the greater ease of coordinating
social action means that
China's leaders will find it progressively more challenging to
govern. They already are. In
December 2011, for example, The Guardian reported that Zheng
Yanxiong, a local party
secretary in Guangdong Province who had been confronted by
peasants angry about the
seizure of their land, said in exasperation, "There's only one

group of people who really
experience added hardships year after year. Who are they?
Cadres, that's who. Me
included."
CITIZENS OR SUBJECTS?
China's reformist revolution has reached a point that Deng and
his compatriots could
never have anticipated. China's top leaders are struggling to
govern collectively, let alone
manage an increasingly complex bureaucracy and diffuse
society. Their job is made all
the more difficult by the lack of institutions that would
articulate various interests,
impartially adjudicate conflicts among them, and ensure the
responsible and just
implementation of policy. In other words, although China may
possess a vigorous
economy and a powerful military, its system of governance has
turned brittle.
These pressures could lead China down one of several possible
paths. One option is that
China's leaders will try to reestablish a more centralized and
authoritarian system, but
that would ultimately fail to meet the needs of the country's
rapidly transforming society.
A second possibility is that in the face of disorder and decay, a
charismatic, more
transformational leader will come to the fore and establish a
new order -- perhaps more
democratic but just as likely more authoritarian. A third
scenario is much more dangerous:
China continues to pluralize but fails to build the institutions
and norms required for

responsible and just governance at home and constructive
behavior abroad. That path
could lead to chaos.
But there is also a fourth scenario, in which China's leaders
propel the country forward,
establishing the rule of law and regulatory structures that better
reflect the country's
diverse interests. Beijing would also have to expand its sources
of legitimacy beyond
growth, materialism, and global status, by building institutions
anchored in genuine
popular support. This would not necessarily mean transitioning
to a full democracy, but it
would mean adopting its features: local political participation,
official transparency, more
independent judicial and anticorruption bodies, an engaged civil
society, institutional
checks on executive power, and legislative and civil institutions
to channel the country's
8
diverse interests. Only after all these steps have been taken
might the Chinese
government begin to experiment with giving the people a say in
selecting its top leaders.
The key questions today are whether Xi favors such a course,
even in the abstract, and
whether he is up to the task of seeing it through. Preliminary
indications suggest that
proponents of economic reform have gained strength under his

rule, and the important
policies adopted by the Third Plenum will intensify the pressure
for political reform. But
Xi's era has only just begun, and it is still too early to say
whether his time in the military
and experience serving in China's most modernized,
cosmopolitan, and globally
interdependent areas -- Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai -- have
endowed the leader with
the necessary authority and vision to push the country in the
direction of history. Xi and
the six other current members of the Politburo Standing
Committee, China's most
powerful decision-making body, come from a wider range of
educational backgrounds
than have the members of previous Standing Committees. This
diversity could presage
a period of creativity, but it could also produce paralysis.
There is also the danger that those who climb to the top of a
political system cannot see
beyond it. But history offers hope: in China, Deng saw beyond
Mao and the system he
had fashioned, and in Taiwan, Chiang Ching-kuo ushered in
liberalizing reforms in the
1980s that his father, Chiang Kai-shek, had prevented.
The dangers of standing still outweigh those of forging ahead,
and China can only hope
that its leaders recognize this truth and push forward, even
without knowing where exactly
they are headed. Should Xi and his cohort fail to do so, the
consequences will be severe:
the government will have forgone economic growth, squandered
human potential, and
perhaps even undermined social stability. If, however, China's

new leaders manage to
chart a path to a more humane, participatory, and rules-based
system of governance --
while maintaining vigorous economic growth and stability --
then they will have revitalized
the nation, the goal of patriots and reformers for over a century
and a half.
~~~~~~~~
DAVID M. LAMPTON is George and Sadie Hyman Professor of
China Studies and
Director of SAIS-China at the Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies.
This essay is adapted from his book Following the Leader:
Ruling China, From Deng
Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, published by the University of
California Press. © 2014 by the
Regents of the University of California
POL 190 Institutions and Participation Notes 1
POL 190 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS and PARTICIPATION in
Democracies
Why does politics and policy making differ across democracies?
While all democracies share
core/common features (elections, representative government,
accountability and basic rights), both the
process (who makes policies and how) and the outcome of
policy-making (the content of policies) varies

greatly across these countries.
Institutional differences are the key element that explains this
variation:
-making
participate, and the relationship between
them
A simple model can illustrate this process:
Institutions Characteristics of Policies
Structure of decision-making -Who benefits?
‘Veto points’ -Timing/responsiveness
-Coherence of policy
Needs, -Quality of policies/effectiveness
Demand for -Costs of policy
Policies Participants/Actors -Accountability
Number of actors (e.g. parties) -Transparency
Level of conflict -Deliberation
INSTITUTIONS
‘Institution’ refers to the basic ‘rules of the game’ that structure
politics: these organize the decision-
making process (e.g. legislatures, executives), and the number
of actors (e.g. the number of parties).

Two basic sets of rules shape governing/decision-making in
democracies:
government and regional
authorities: Where is power located? How centralized is
political power ‘geographically’? Are all
policies made in one location, or are some capabilities
‘delegated’ to sub-national authorities?
Two Options: Federal or Unitary arrangements
central government: How are
laws made and power distributed within government? Who
holds representatives accountable?
Options: Presidential or Parliamentary or Semi-Presidential
arrangements
A critical comparative concept in understanding the role of
institutions is the ‘veto point’: these are
decision points in a political system where policy-making faces
an obstacle or where a policy can be
‘vetoed’ by particular actors. Some arrangements of political
institutions have more ‘veto-points’ than
others, leading to substantial differences in how and when
policies are made (or fail to be made). Veto
points also tell us how much power rests in the hands of groups
of elected officials.

I. Unitary vs. Federal systems
The geographical/physical location of decision-making power is
the main criteria: is all decision
making done by leaders in the capital city (centralized), or is
decision making shared with regions (i.e.
decentralized)?
state and regions
Basic
Feature
Degree of Centralization of Political Authority
Unitary
Federal
Power/authority is highly centralized in the
central government
Decentralized power/authority; regions share
decision-making power with the center
Cases,
Examples

UK, France, Japan, (and the majority of
the countries of the world)
US, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Nigeria,
Brazil, India, Russia
Some
Advantages
incentive to participate in central
government decisions
development and reduces
regional disparities
administration
government
political affairs
addressed by the central government
Some
Disadvantages

regional needs
cultural majority to dominate the
state and to marginalize
regionally distinct minorities
and authority, and so endangers
citizen control over leaders
-making with
uniform application may make for
large scale errors
government and duplication of efforts
“separatism” and “secession” by
dissatisfied regions
culturally distinct groups in some
regions to be victimized
and an uneven application of laws
process: conflicts over ‘who has
authority’
-
represented’: malapportionment

NOTE: ‘Federalism’ is NOT synonymous with having a
president, the separation of powers in a
constitution, or with having a democracy. The US is also not
the only country that has a federal
arrangement of the state. Some non-democracies have been
federal (Brazil, Nigeria, USSR). Federalism
is not the same everywhere: there are significant differences
between the organization of federalism in
the Brazil, US, Germany, and India.
Degree of Regional Autonomy in Federal countries
Low regional
autonomy
(strong center)
High regional
autonomy
Russia India
US
Canada Brazil
Germany

Switzerland
II. Presidential vs. Parliamentary systems
While all democracies have certain basic guarantees about the
selection of leaders, accountability, and
the rights of individuals, the central government may be
organized in different ways. The two most
common forms are the parliamentary approach (the fused
authority system used in the UK, Canada,
and most democracies around the world) and the presidential
approach (the separation of powers
system at work in the US and Latin America). A few countries
combine elements of both types (France
and Russia for example).
The Presidential System (‘separation of powers’)
EXECUTIVE:
V elect President nominates
(selects Cabinet)
O
T “checks and balances” Judiciary
[separate

E elections]
R Majority Party/
parties
S elect
Minority Party/ approves
parties
LEGISLATURE
Representatives in “Congress”
Basic Features
complex system
legislature (Congress)
have a competitive-conflict
relationship: checks and balances
be filled
predictable, regular change, accountability
n start at several points (Executive, or Legislature):
many representatives can act for
voters

approve. Extensive review/scrutiny of
proposals
s (they must be
consistent, and conform to the constitution)
propose laws, have influence
The Parliamentary system (‘fused’ authority)
EXECUTIVE:
V PM, Cabinet
O
T
E select LEGISLATURE
R elect Representatives in
S [single election] Majority/Governing a single
Parliament
Party/parties
Minority Party/parties
“Opposition”

Basic Features
decision-making (not separate powers)
Cabinet officers) from the members of
the majority (a single majority party, or coalition of parties)
at the same time: the maximum
term between elections is fixed by law, BUT
e Ministers can call an ‘early’ election (why? The
PM/Cabinet cannot act without majority
support, and may call on the electorate to validate their
decisions and control of parliament)
parliament for non-performance: a “Vote of no
confidence” (The PM is given power by, and is always
accountable to the majority in parliament)
more coordinated, and focused on
policy/ideology and presentation of a clear ‘manifesto’ of
policy goals in order to win a majority in the
general election
‘popular will’. Majority rule in parliament
means there is a limited role for the judiciary, and a
written/formal constitution is not essential

majority: law-making is easy, reflects the
majority
An alternative: The Semi-Presidential System
Most of the world’s democracies use either the presidential or
parliamentary system. For the sake of
completeness, however we should note that some countries use
the ‘semi-presidential’ system.
Legislature and Executive, with
separation of powers and checks and balances), AND with the
addition of a PM that represents
the majority in the Legislature (like in the parliamentary
system).
democracies have adopted this model of
government since the 1980s. It is also the system adopted by
Iraq in 2004.
organized/coordinated in balancing
the powers of the president, and for holding the president
accountable. It is an improvement of
the checks and balances of the presidential system
-presidential system can have two negative results.
It may deepen conflict between the
2 branches of government: it leads to an inevitable conflict over
defining the powers of the
president and the powers of the PM. Second (paradoxically), the

system may actually make the
president stronger when the president, PM and majority are all
from the same party.
Accountability in Presidential and Parliamentary systems of
government
Presidential
Parliamentary
Vertical accountability
(control over elected
officials by voters)
opportunities for voters
predictable, allows voters to
evaluate officials and to
replace/remove officials

raises stakes and visibility of
choices for voters and
candidates
public/majority control over
whole legislature
Horizontal accountability
(control over elected
officials by other players
within government)
powers (executive,
legislative, judicial)
mandatory oversight, joint
decision-making by
executive and legislature
officials
oversight

immediate removal and
replacement of the
PM/cabinet
PM/Cabinet to Majority MPs.
Executive accountable to
majority members
as public watch-dog (non-veto
oversight) of majority
oversight (limited)
Combining Political Institutions
So far we have looked at these institutional
arrangements/choices (federal vs. unitary, and presidential
vs. parliamentary) as separate ways of structuring government.
We should, however remember that
these sets of rules are combined in specific countries and that
the combination is the basic building
blocks for organizing democratic politics.
The combination of institutions allows us to make several
observations about important aspects of
politics in democratic countries:

the system and the number of
‘veto points’
government
respond to crises)
the
constitution)
representatives (how many elections—
‘vertical accountability’)
behalf
ntable while in office
(‘horizontal accountability’)
can have to influence the process
Executive-Legislative System
Presidential
(separation of powers)

Parliamentary
(fusion of powers)
Geographical
Centralization
of Authority
Federal
(de-centralized
decision-making)
Maximum veto-points,
largest number of decision
makers
(e.g. US, Nigeria, Brazil,
Venezuela)
Few veto points in the central
government, important veto
points at the regional level
(e.g. India, Canada,
Germany)
Unitary
(centralized decision-
making)

Important veto points in the
central government, no
important veto points at the
regional level
(e.g. Peru, Colombia, Chile,
South Korea)
Minimum veto-points,
fewest number of decision
makers
(e.g. Japan, UK, Spain,
Sweden)
Thus far the discussion has focused on the institutions that
structure government. Within each
set/combination of rules, however, the number of actors is also
a critical ingredient:
These are critical issues, as the number of players can add an
additional layer of complexity in the
system. In some democracies, there may coalitions of parties
that control the legislature. In others there
may be a single party that controls the legislative and executive
functions.

The next section discusses how parties interact with governing
institutions in democracies to create
specific kinds of results.
III. Party Systems and Election Rules in Democracies
Central Question: Why does the number of parties differ across
democracies?
The number of parties in a democracy has implications of the
question for the number of choices/options
that voters have, the level/quality of public debate, and the
ability of voters to ensure oversight/
accountability over government
Types of ‘Party Systems’: over time, a democracy may develop
a relatively stable ‘set’ of parties
every election and governs
continuously. e.g., Mexico’s PRI until 2000; Japan’s LDP until
1990s, the ANC in South Africa
since 1994
Two-
compete. e.g., UK, U.S.
votes but not enough for majority,
which requires coalition with a smaller third party e.g.,

Germany, Canada
Multi-
and must govern in coalition
e.g., India, Israel, most of Western Europe
2 Explanations for the number of parties in a democracy
Sociological Explanation
divisions between classes (in the
UK and Germany) or between regions/culture/languages (e.g. in
India, Canada, Nigeria)
Institutional Explanation
shapes the party system. ‘Duverger’s
of two parties; other systems lead
to multiple parties in the legislature
Election Rules in Democracies
2 most common systems for legislative elections: ‘First Past the
Post’ (FPTP) or simple majority vs.
Proportional Representation (PR)
The First Past the Post, ‘Simple Majority’ or ‘Majoritarian’
Election Rule (e.g. the US, UK, India,
Nigeria) (also known formally as the ‘single member district
plurality’ election system)

Basic Rules
majority of the votes wins election/seat
lection in a geographical
district (hence a ‘single member district’)
the 2 likely winners in a district
(and controls the legislature)
(the two biggest parties dominate)
both of the 2 likely winners (not
third parties)
a ‘horse race’ of the 2 front runners
(not third parties)
Two Scenarios of a “Winning” Candidate under FPTP election
Rules
1. Simple (absolute) Majority winner
2. ‘Plurality’ Winner (not an absolute
majority)

Advantages of the FPTP election rule
parties make efforts to reach out to
many voters, and representation of groups lies within parties
each district, and a single party
controlling the legislature): voters have a clear focus for
accountability
-to-follow system for voters, media, interest groups: low
information/skill burden for voters
Problems of the FPTP election system
The FPTP system has been observed to create several important
problems: it often results in a legislature
or government that does not reflect the choices of a majority of
voters (a core principle of democratic
government)
necessarily the most votes. It may
thus lead to unrepresentative government and legislation (a
violation of the basic goals of
representative democracy).

(and thus depresses voter turnout over
time).
icts
and very highly contested ones will be
“battleground” districts in elections. Parties will spend most of
their efforts trying to win in those
districts, and may make special appeals to voters there in order
to gain their support (even
though those districts have less than half of the total voters).
are effectively excluded. They may
have had good policy ideas, or be the representatives of a
marginalized group. They have no
chance of winning a seat or control of the legislature. Their best
option after the election is to
merge with a larger party and so gain some representation in the
legislature.
election system reduces voter’s
choices to the two front runners and their policies. The
candidates of the two ‘viable’ parties
contesting elections at all levels seek to maximize their share of
the vote in many varied districts,
so the leaders of these parties have an incentive to offer broad
programs that appeal to all.
Proportional Representation (PR) Election system (e.g.
Germany, Sweden, Brazil)
Basic Rules of the PR system

received
parties get representatives elected
government
PR election systems operate with what are called “multi-
member districts”: each district would have
several representatives from each party. The PR system thus
increases the number of legislators who
represent voters in each district to more than a single majority
‘winner’.
Who ‘wins’ a PR election? Answer: Coalitions of parties.
“What if many parties get only a small percentage (say, 1%) of
the total vote”? Answer: Hurdles or
Thresholds. Many countries operating the PR election system
have a ‘minimum required share of the
national vote’ (a hurdle): parties have to get a minimum of 5%
(a random number, it could be set at 2, 8,
or 10%) of the total vote to get their first seat. The effect:
reduction of the number of very small parties in
the legislature. Parties that can only muster less than 5% have a
strong incentive to merge, and to form a
larger vote-winning group.
Advantages of the PR system

voting choices of the public
urnout, and encourages an active and informed
public
that voters can choose from
s
chances for accountability
of explicit deals between parties, and
directly ties to voters demands
Problems of the PR Election rule
ion of
politics: small parties rewarded
blame, or to evaluate various policies
even factions within parties
ns can lead to unstable government

options
attention than national issues
Election Rules Compared: ‘First Past the Post’ vs. ‘Proportional
Representation’
FPTP PR
Main focus of system geography/district centered Program/party
centered
# of competitive parties 2 more than 2
Need for coalitions generally low generally high
Impact on small parties negative, unless small parties
have strong regional support
base
positive, encourages their
formation and organization
Voter turnout
tendency to decline or be low tendency to be high
Combining Political Institutions Part 2: We can now integrate
the governing institutions with the
number of parties: the result is a more fine-grained comparison

of politics across democracies
Executive-Legislative System
Presidential
Parliamentary
Election system PR FPTP PR FPTP
Federal
Brazil (most
fragmented, most
veto points)
US, Nigeria
Germany*
India, Canada
Unitary

Peru
France
South Korea
UK (least
fragmented,
fewest veto
points)
Summary
The ‘payoff’ of investigating how institutional “rules of the
game” shape politics:
politicians
of laws/policies
executive branch politicians
(presidents vs. prime ministers)
-arranged. New
democracies especially have the
opportunity to create constitutions that combine different
institutional rules.

he range of choice and
options open to voters
have over their representatives
by understanding how institutional
rules affect the number of players and their degree of
cooperation or competition
INSTITUTIONS and PARTICIPATION: List of Key Terms and
Concepts
Unitary

ntary sovereignty
-presidential system

-party system
the post (FPTP) (simple
majority/single member district plurality)
election system
election system
-list PR election system
-list PR election system
-member districts
nout

POL 190 Globalization and Development
Development Policies
Combinations of economic policies have been used by state
officials to foster growth and economic
change. Most state leaders see an interest in fostering economic
growth, but this is a challenge that may
not be completely within the control of the leaders of
developing countries. In addition, the policy
measures that they take may not actually lead to the desired
outcome.
Development policy has been a central element in addressing
the gap (in wealth, income, industry,
technology, health/education, life expectancy, etc) between
states.
There are two broad approaches: the market/neoliberal/laissez
faire, and the state-led/interventionist
approaches. Note the way that these ‘schools of thought’
provide different explanations for the problems
facing developing countries and opposed strategies:

Policy Type Market/Neo-liberal
development policy
State-led/Interventionist
development policy
Does Economic policy matter? Yes
Yes
What causes development? Free markets Strong states/high-
quality state
interventions
What causes
underdevelopment?
Too much state involvement Weak or poor/low-quality state
intervention
Main policy recommendation Reduce the state’s economic role
Build the state’s economic
capabilities
Cases that confirm the
recommended policy approach
UK, US South Korea, Singapore, Japan
Test case: Why has China been
successful?
After 1979, opening to the market
has led to economic success

After 1979, strong state remains
active in managing China’s
economy
Test Case: Why has sub-
Saharan African been
unsuccessful?
Too much state intervention,
corruption
Weak states, low capacity for
decision making or provision
good public policy
Economic policy has shifted away from the state-led approach
towards the market approach since the
1970s. Developing countries have made this shift in economic
policy through two processes:
international organizations
political reasons
Over the last 40 years, economic policy and differences in
economic growth/wealth have also been
profoundly shaped by a larger process: ‘globalization’.
‘Globalization’: Basic Features

eliminated
barriers to investment and speculation.
Firms became globally mobile/diversified
organize production around global
supply and manufacturing chains
become ‘globalized’:
environment, labor, product standards,
financial risk, etc
How? Historical Process of Contemporary Globalization: 1970s-
2000s
The modern global economy is a product of deliberate state
policy actions (and is not a ‘natural’ or
inevitable outcome of market forces)
POL 190 Globalization and Development 2
1970s: states have largely
abandoned efforts to control the value of currencies which are
now left up to global investors
transactions: 1970s-2000s: global financial
flows become greater than global trade flows by early 1980s

have been based on a global
supply of labor and differences in regulations: lower wages and
lower regulations have attracted
higher levels of investment and industry
export/import of goods), and
communication costs (impact on services) have accelerated
global trade. These reductions have
been sped up by state investment in infrastructure across the
globe
alternative economic models, and towards the
adoption of relatively uniform economic policies in developed
and developing countries after 1980s.
Outcome: globalization (should) lead to Convergence
Impact of Globalization
-industrialization: global shift in
industrial process. From high cost/wage
older industrialized regions to low-cost, low regulation regions
of the world
use/demand
regions
Problems created by globalization

terrorism, human error.
f wealth and power in the hands of
corporations
of lower wages.
Basic Questions for the Future of Globalization
o Can the negative consequences by avoided or corrected?
o Is there a role for the state/politics? Does globalization
weaken/erode democracy?
o Is globalization a ‘race to the bottom’ (wages, standards etc
undermined by economic integration
with China, while global firms maximize profits)?
o Will social policies (e.g. those in welfare states) become
obsolete?
o Are international economic organizations the way to ‘govern’
globalization, or will they always be
just promoters of globalization?
o Is globalization sustainable? What will be the environmental
and resource cost of expanded
global production and consumption?

5 EXAMPLE CASES:
The three largest ‘emerging markets’ in the era of globalization
(China, India, Brazil) have been important
engines driving the expansion of production, and have been the
largest targets of global investment. Has
this experience been the result of similar/common policies?
What might slow the further expansion of
these economies? Has globalization led to problems/challenges
in those countries?
China
Economy and Economic Policy setting pre-1978
-1978): Heavy industry, mixed
collective and small scale agriculture;
central planning; experimental phases in development
Globalization era: post 1978
global trade
Results

investment, rising role in global
manufacturing, trade, R&D; Capital surplus
of basic socialist era safety
net
external markets
growth
workforce
India
Basic Economic Policy: pre 1991
-rural, and regional differences

policies
Globalization and India after 1991
1991
investment increased, rising
role in global manufacturing, and
services
-scale firms: Infosys, Arcelor/Mittal,
Tata
Results
-tech vs. traditional economy
-owned assets
Brazil
Political Economy in Brazil pre 1990
-led industrialization (ISI policies)

Brazil and Globalization since 1990
ansition to neoliberal policies/ globalization since 1990s
Impact/Results:
ence on agricultural
exports
Oil/Mineral Exporters: Globalization has expanded the demand
of raw materials and energy sources.
Has this had a positive or negative impact of this the
producing/exporting countries? What have been the
similarities between raw material/energy exporters?
Nigeria
Economic Policy setting
e employed in

government. Agricultural exporter in
1960, early oil development.
Nigeria becomes net food importer. Oil
revenue contributes to corruption
-80s: neoliberal policies adopted. Little
positive impact
Impact of Globalization, rising demand for oil
revenue, exchange rate
nances, provision of social
services
-oil sectors of the economy
Russia
Economic Policy since 1991
1990s: transition to a capitalist economy (elimination of the
communist economic system)
Immediate result: economic decline, collapse
of industry
state autonomy
y,

rising internal debt
growth/investment
Oil economy since 2001
l demand for oil/gas. High
growth, investment
rate
-centralization of
economic power
y
POL 190 Notes on Regimes: Non-Democracies 1
POL 190 Non-Democratic Regimes
Overview/Summary
• Basic Features of Non-Democratic Regimes
• Variants/Types of Non-Democratic Regimes and their
Ideologies
I. What are ‘Authoritarian’ or Non-Democratic regimes? Why

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