Free market government services

From Ken Wedding's Teaching Comparative Blog:

Margaret Thatcher promoted the privatization of public services, but public resistance was powerful. Perhaps Cameron and Clegg will be more successful.

Where Thatcher feared to tread

Across much of the public sector—from health and education to local authorities and prisoner rehabilitation—the provision of public services is increasingly being farmed out to private suppliers. The political risks are equally stark…

Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, are accelerating and deepening Tony Blair’s drive to increase choice and competition in the public services…

If sensitivity to market-based reform is particularly acute when it comes to the health service, in some other areas it has gradually become a fact of life. Local councils of all political colours now contract-out important services…

But there is potential for strife in areas besides the NHS. In education, the government wants to go farther than Mr Blair in challenging the dominance of comprehensive schools…

[A]dverse side-effects might well dominate the political debate before the benefits are felt, let alone appreciated by the public. The first symptoms of change will not be positive: the health reform and others will contribute to the imminent wave of redundancies in the public sector…

Market reforms involve stronger institutions taking over weaker ones. Yet even when some state schools are performing poorly, local parents often campaign against them being taken over, because they prize convenience and continuity over performance…

The history of reform since the 1980s shows that the public and professionals are often more flexible than instant cries of outrage suggest. The early rows over “contracting out” in the 1980s have subsided: the benefits of competition in areas from telecoms to utilities are now widely accepted...

No laughing matter, real filibuster reform dead

Congress Forgets How To Pass A Law



www.theonion.com/articles/congress-forgets-how-to-pass-a-law,18979/

I should cry, but it's healthier to laugh. So as any meaningful filibuster reform went dead in the Senate, the Onion News Network reported on how lawmakers may have forgotten how to pass laws even with big, or unanimous majorities.

For real, the Washington Post's Ezra Klien reports on how it will continue to be true that a simple majority will not get bills passed in the 112th Congress.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/wonkbook_filibuster_reform_dea.html

Yet, both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did make some changes in the stalling process. The broad agreement is the most significant change in the chamber's rules in 35 years. That's really saying something about the saucer chamber, because other than dropping the confirmation process for about 400 federal agency nominees, it seems like it will be more like business as usual than "Change We Can Believe In," on Capitol Hill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/27/AR2011012703379.html

Political Benefits of Economic Problems

From Ken Wedding's Teaching Comparative Blog:

The latest poll in the UK indicates that those in power during economic downturns get blamed.

Labour Still Leads in Britain, Even if Coalition Partners Run Together

The opposition Labour Party remains ahead of the Conservatives in Britain, while the Liberal Democrats have recovered from their poor showing in December, a new Vision Critical / Angus Reid poll has found…

Labour is practically tied with the Tories in London (38% to 36%) and holds a 20-point lead in the North (46% to 32%) and a four-point edge in Midlands and Wales (41% to 37%). The Tories are ahead in the South of England (43% to 34%). In Scotland, Labour maintains its eight-point advantage on the SNP (42% to 34%)…

Support for the Conservatives has remained stagnant, while the Liberal Democrats managed to get back to double digits after a severe drop in December. Labour has solidified its position as the most popular party at the moment…

//compgovpol.blogspot.com/

Egypt's Political Turmoil: Power, Authority and (il) Legitimacy

While not a country of comparative case study for us, we can benefit by watching closely the current political turmoil in Egypt. Along with Rule of Law, for a State to function it needs Power, Authority and Legitimacy. While 30-year President (not democratically elected) Hosni Mubarak is currently refusing to relinquish Power, the regime appears to have lost its Authority and Legitimacy.

CBS News posted this piece from Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. In it he analyzes how decades of economic stumbles have set the stage for the crumbling of the U.S. ally's regime in the Mid-East:

"On Sunday, there was some sign of the Egyptian military taking on some security duties. Soldiers started arresting suspected looters, rounding up 450 of them. The disappearance of the police from the streets had led to a threat of widespread looting is now being redressed by the regular military. Other control methods were on display. The government definitively closed the Aljazeera offices in Cairo and withdrew the journalists' license to report from there, according to tweets. The channel stopped being broadcast on Egypt's Nilesat. (Aljazeera had not been able to broadcast directly from Cairo even before this move.) The channel, bases in Qatar, is viewed by President Hosni Mubarak as an attempt to undermine him.

Why has the Egyptian state lost its legitimacy? Max Weber distinguished between power and authority. Power flows from the barrel of a gun, and the Egyptian state still has plenty of those. But Weber defines authority as the likelihood that a command will be obeyed. Leaders who have authority do not have to shoot people. The Mubarak regime has had to shoot over 100 people in the past few days, and wound more. Literally hundreds of thousands of people have ignored Mubarak's command that they observe night time curfews. He has lost his authority.

Authority is rooted in legitimacy. Leaders are acknowledged because the people agree that there is some legitimate basis for their authority and power. In democratic countries, that legitimacy comes from the ballot box. In Egypt, it derived 1952-1970 from the leading role of the Egyptian military and security forces in freeing Egypt from Western hegemony. That struggle included grappling with Britain to gain control over the Suez Canal (originally built by the Egyptian government and opened in 1869, but bought for a song by the British in 1875 when sharp Western banking practices brought the indebted Egyptian government to the brink of bankruptcy). It also involved fending off aggressive Israeli attempts to occupy the Sinai Peninsula and to assert Israeli interests in the Suez Canal. Revolutionary Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970) conducted extensive land reform, breaking up the huge Central America-style haciendas and creating a rural middle class. Leonard Binder argued in the late 1960s that that rural middle class was the backbone of the regime. Abdul Nasser's state-led industrialization also created a new class of urban contractors who benefited from the building works commissioned by the government. "

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/30/opinion/main20030008.shtml

Welfare State Analysis

Today's assignment (due Wednesday 2/2) is to review and analyze the British Welfare State:

1) Review the notes in your packet.

2) Click on the BBC link:Among the features, read:

3) Breadline Britain (timeline), Hard Times & Poverty in UK

4) Blunket on Welfare State & State of Welfare (charts) and

5) 1st Time Buyers & Then & Now: A Hospital's Story

When done reading and taking notes, write your own 10 question BreadlineBritain quiz (with questions & answers).

Do Not just copy the quiz that is on the page, although you should take that when you are done. Quiz must be typed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2005/breadline_britain/default.stm

Part Two

In a one-page social and economic analysis, take a side on what the UK should do about its economic slump. From the The Times (UK): "Over the next five years, public spending is set to fall to an eight-year low as a proportion of national income, while taxes rise to a 24-year high."
Inflation in the eurozone hit 3.2% in January 2009, the highest in the decade.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article3300955.ece

In your position paper, back one of two famous ecomonic thinkers.

John Maynard Keynes. Regardless of what other economists say, Keynes' brand of interventionist fiscal and monetary policy have trumped times like these since the Great Depression. The influential writings of Keynes, the British liberal who died back in 1946, still hold court in both Democrat and Republican circles in America and have been foundation of the British Welfare State. Central to his economic theory was the importance of deficit spending. The government is to play an important role in "priming the pump" of the national economy. Laissez - faire is out, active intervention is in. This is now economic dogma here in America. Not quite that far out in the UK.

Milton Friedman. Friedman’s view was that inflation, at the time a serious problem in many countries, was caused by governments pumping too much money into the economy.
At the same time Friedman was convinced that private individuals and companies should be given as much freedom as possible to carry out economic activities. Friedman became the most outspoken economist of his time, promoting small governments, low taxes, free markets and privatisation.He attacked even the dominant theory of the time, developed by the British liberal thinker John Maynard Keynes among others, who espoused capitalism with a softer, more human face.Friedman promoted capitalism in its basic and less human forms, centring on a fundamental belief in the working of markets and privatisation: market fundamentalism.
In 1976 Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, which gave him the status to impress not only generals like Pinochet, but others including British prime minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-90) and US president Ronald Reagan (1981-89).

What did he say?

So just what did the President say in his State of the Union Address?

Fast Company did a nice job breaking down the speech, and the response rhetoric through the use of wordle word clouds. The winner People (30 times), followed by Jobs (25).

Last night President Obama gave his State of the Union address, and how could we resist? We had to run his words through our usual text analysis process and dig into the speech.

The annual presidential address to Congress is key for each incumbent: It reveals their stance on recent news items and hot-topic issues, and its reception by politicians and the public can be regarded as a barometer of how well the President is doing--both from a political and personal standpoint. What were people expecting Obama to say? There was anticipation he'd make a call for more "civility" in U.S. life, as several presidents have done before him, in the wake of the Tucson shooting. And he did: "Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater -- something more consequential than party or political preference."

Speculation also surrounded how Obama would tackle the healthcare issue--forever embroiled in a bi-partisan political war.

But what were Obama's most used words throughout his speech? One was "People," people. He said it 30 times--clearly the people of the U.S. are on his mind, and he wanted to personalize his address to appeal to the population. "New" beat "people" by with a count of 33, but that's nothing new--presidents like to talk about the new changes and improvements they've made, and are going to make...if they can.

Then came "jobs," with 25 uses. Employment and unemployment are hot-topic items, and Obama obviously wanted to highlight his stance on the matter with his fellow politicos and the public. The U.S.'s "workers" popped up just six times, but "work" was used 21 times--things have to work, as do people, if Obama is to win re-election, eventually. "Make" is prominent in the wordcloud too--probably because you have to make changes to make things work.
Interestingly "government" popped up 18 times, suggesting Obama is acutely aware of the responsibilities, frailties and issues of the governing machine. "Years" was a prominent word, suggesting that Obama was trying to distract listeners from being critical about short term government slip-ups, or political news that's just of the moment.

And then we glance at the rest of the wordcloud and see something interesting: There's no real standout phrase other than these fairly unexciting words. We don't see "defense" or "Afghanistan" or "Iraq," and there's no "need" or "must" or "sorry" or even many "promises." "Innovation" barely gets a look in, and only slightly beats "technology." We're missing the word "science," which is a shame as Obama piqued our interest by promising a science-friendly term in office, and a future-focussed one too. "Future" did get used 15 times, but "tonight" was used 13 times, which devalues the promise of futuristic thinking somewhat. Even "healthcare" isn't prominent in the wordcloud.

Compare the wordcloud to Obama's SOTU from last year:

You can see that in 2010 Obama was happy to talk about "America" and his fellow "Americans" as well as generic "people," but that he also mentioned the "economy", "businesses," "families" and energy. "Health" and "reform" are in the mix too. A more resolute, issue-centric speech.
Then glance at this, the wordcloud of the response to Obama's 2011 SOTU speech from Minnesota's Michele Bachmann (a key Tea Party figure, let's not forget):

Comparing UK & US Constitutional Principles

Constitution Smonstitution. Much the U.S. Constitutional Principles were derived from the British system, which does not have a formal written constitution. Your assignment, due 1/28 will be to creatively chart the comparisions and contrasting principles and Rule of Law and instituions of the two leading, and longest surviving constitutional democracies in the world.

For example,

US Constitutional Principle -- Federalism, the shared power between national and state and local governments.

UK Constitutional Principle -- Devolution, the transfer of Whitehall powers in areas like education and health - but not, for example, defence - to the UK's nations and regions.

Does a State need to have a written constitution to follow Rule of Law?

Use the following for help in your research:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/UKgovernment/Centralgovernmentandthemonarchy/DG_073438


http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/wstate.htm

http://www.virtualclassroom.net/tvc/gov/constitution/