Political Science

Americas paralyzed political system is in crisis and not showing signs of improvement.  Despite President Barack Obamas personal popularity and party majority in both houses of Congress, he still has difficulty passing his basic programme (i.e. healthcare, climate change and financial reform).  Rather than improving under his administration, the countrys ideological divisions are worsening.  These divisions are evident in recent statistical data from November 2009

The Presidents approval rating was 84 among Democrats, while only 18 among Republicans.
58 of Democrats agreed with the countrys current direction.  A mere  9 of Republicans agreed.
57 of Republicans supported deploying more soldiers. 18 of Democrats supported this deployment.
60 of Democrats favored the decrease of military presence in Afghanistan but only 26 of Republicans.
These considerable dissimilarities between party lines reflect an increasingly polarized society, where the gap of political division has broadened over many religious and socio-economical facets.

The brokenness of the political system, itself, is also contributing to Americas governance crisis of paralysis.  Things like filibusters are stalling the progress of policymaking in Senate, especially on more controversial initiatives.  The role of big money also plays a part in warping and stalling the policymaking process as lobbying and private corporate negotiations take place outside the accountability of the public eye.

Finally, there is the federal budget, which may be the leading contributor to Americas crisis situation.  While the U.S. public definitively opposes a tax increase and clings to the Presidents campaign promises against increased taxation, the U.S. government desperately needs the funding to accommodate the core functions of government operation and to provide basic public services.  This standing divergence between the people and their governing body has resulted in unmet needs and a furthered national deficit. 

In order to avoid worsening these paralyzing factors and to restore effective governance, improvement must be made in the growing division over the war, in party relations and in the taxation of Americans. 

The Xinhai Revolution also known as the Revolution of 1911 totally brought the two thousand year dynasty to its end. The revolution was a big blow to Chinas condition and it caused several political commotions to arise. But the May Fourth Movement was the event that roused the birth of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It was led by thousands of students from Beijing. They rallied and protested against the Versailles Conference that will award Japan the leasehold of Shandong province. Soon the students elicited the same response from workers, businessmen, and students from other parts of the country. After the historical May Fourth Movement, another event shook the mending state of Chinathe Japanese invasion. The Japanese occupation of China began at 1931 causing numerous resistance wars that killed thousands of people Japan surrendered in 1945. One of the early leaders of CCP was Mao Zedong. He fought in the Xinhai Revolution and became an important figure in the rise of the CCP to the government. He overthrew Chiang Kai-shek who was then the leader of Kuomintang. Mao is a Marxist and he applied it in his leadership. The mass consisted of the nationalists intellectuals, peasants and workers participated well in Maos endeavors for the country. Gaining the support of the mass, Mao brought the CCPs power to the peak.

Maos revision of Marxism can be observed through his reliance on the peasants rather than the industrial workers. He empowered the peasants by delegating them as the forefronts of revolution. Mao focused on the needs and grievances of the underprivileged people who were oppressed by the warlords. He also stressed political volunteerism that means only our human will is capable of achieving social change and not through reliance on material changes. The use of propagandas, campaign, and ideologies like the Little Red Book and the banding of the Red Guards and the so-called Cult of Mao are some examples. Another manifestation of Maos adaptation of Marxism is the mass-line. He states that  the right way to lead is from the masses to the masses which means that leaders should listen and understand the concerns of the masses, concentrate and study about it until they can produce a systematic and complete idea, and disseminate it to the masses until they accept it wholeheartedly and bring those ideas into life.

The Great Leap Forward aims to solve Chinas economic problems by utilizing the countrys dense population through intensive labor. But the campaign was hastily executed, leaving ample rooms for errors. A series of natural disasters followed the campaign including the degradation of agriculture. It was the primary cause of the largest famine in Chinese history.  The GLF also caused the Soviets to withdraw their support from China. In the Cultural Revolution however, violence was rampant as the Red Guards who were banded by Mao went to numerous rebellious bouts. Because of this, the country faced another struggle to end the large number of deaths. The Red Guards were also held responsible for the destruction of ancient artifacts. The economy struggled because of the 12 decline in industrial production. Social life and entertainment were also condemned. The cult of Mao was extremely felt during the revolution where Maos ideas are to be exalted.

The concept of fragmented authoritarianism is very important if we are to analyze Chinese politics today. Mao Zedong stands as the reference point of the height of communism in China. His attempts to establish Chinas growth had led to deaths, disorders, and destruction. Leaders worldwide have learned from Maos ideologies. An example to this is Maos successor, Deng Xiaoping, who abandoned most of the orthodox communist doctrines and became an effective reformist by free-market economic system.
The February 28 Incident in Taiwan serves as a reminder to all the Taiwanese people of the inhumane and unjust treatment of the authority to the citizens. The insurgency that day started when a woman who sells smuggled cigarettes died at the feet of a policeman when he hit her on the head with his revolver. More people were killed as the case goes along. But the people in Taiwan did not surrender from searching justice. Taiwan became a democratic country because of the brave and courageous people who emancipates their rights. The February 28 Incident caused the people to form a movement towards Taiwans independence.

The land reform occurred when the Kuomintang took control of Taiwan after its defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. The Kuomintang redistributed the lands to solve economic problems and to carry out Sun Yat Sens economic strategies. The land reform served as a starter of the industrialization phase.

Aside from the February 28 Incident, there were several incidents that followed in the 1970-1980 that made people create movements to attain democracy. The following incidents are the Chungli Incident of 1977 where the supporters of the Hsu Hsin-Liang, a former candidate for magistrate in Taoyuan County rioted when he was defeated. It was followed by the Formosa Magazine Incident of 1979, considered as the force that moved Taiwan to democracy. The said incident took place on December 10, 1979 where the celebration of the Human Rights day closed with disruption when the police incited violence over the peaceful mob. The incident deemed to be fruitful when Chiang Ching-kuo lifted the 50 year old martial law.

Law refers to a set of rules set by a society in order to maintain order and safeguard the interests of individual persons and their property within that society. Historically, law developed long time ago and many rules were used to reconcile disputes and in decision making earlier then any physical courts or written laws came to existence. The first recognisable law is that which was contained in the Code of Hammurabi which was written by a king of ancient Babylon at around 1760 BC.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Moral Obligation of the Law
According to Kant, law should form a good pedestal on which morals of a society cab be best expressed. Though he did not practise law to a large extent, he was greatly influenced by philosophy of explanation where he incorporated an empiricist approach with rationalism. He emphasised arguments through deduction and conceptual clarity. In essence, law is applied to judge between morality and immorality which should involve a sense of rationality rather than irrationality. His argument is centered on an unconditional moral obligation of the law which applies to rational beings and is independent of any personal motive or desire. He argued that, there is a big role played by personal will in conformity to the law that is being imposed to that person which he strongly argued in his moral philosophy of thought. He based this requirement on a standard of Categorical Imperative (CI) which is a non-instrumental principle as compared to the other instrumental principles.

In this view, he drew a line of separation between immorality and violation of this categorical imperative. He argued that, law should be based on a basic principle morality where the will of person should have autonomy in reasoning so as to give a meaning in abiding to the laws set. There should be a certain level of free-will in obeying the law than coercion. Such person would acquire a sense of selfgovernance which gives the subjects a crucial ground to view self as a feeling of having an equal respect by being worthy and equitable to others. Kant purposed to eliminate the legal fictions that were hindering the practicality of law. His main concern was in the giving of clarifications and justifications in order to avoid the use of legal terms that were causing confusion on the face of the law. 

In this view, the law should contain a moral focus in the sense that human beings tend to associate their actions to the goodwill invested in the laws that are governing them. Such goodwill gets its determination from moral demands which should match with those in the moral law. In most cases, there is a possibility of human beings viewing this moral law as obligating them to certain conformities and therefore become a constraint to their desires. In such a case, a will that is based on a moral law becomes decisive and tends to be motivated by the sense of duty other than goodwill.

An action in law may only maintain a moral worth if it expresses a goodwill from its inception to practical application. The conformity of ones actions to the law should not be related to obligation but rather to a persons content of self-will. In this context, if a person is motivated only by happiness, then conditions that do not lead to happiness would not entice one to performing a given duty. In contrast to this, the absence of these motivations to a motive of fulfilling a duty is where the lies the morality of action which helps one to act dutifully in all forms of circumstances. Kant, argument in the role of morality tries to strike this balance.

On his view, the single most important aspect that law should try to achieve is the motivation by duty which entails unhidden respect to the law and obedience to its statutes. The law should try to focus on the minds of the subjects in what comes naturally from the minds of a person. In most cases, obligations come as a result of rules in form of laws of one form or another. The obedience of law just because we are obliged to do so does not make sense at all. In addition, the obedience due to a motivation of avoidance of the repercussions also does not help the law in meeting the intention of a good law.

Kant relates moral of a given society to its vices and virtues. Such virtues would encompass all the moral efforts that are employed by peoples will in meeting their duties. Vices contradict all the gains of morality. His acknowledgement of vices lies on assumption of existence of a moral duty in the mindset of people upon who these laws are being administered. He looks at virtues as unambiguous if they are based on moral behaviour rather than a treating them as acts of good and bad conduct in a character. Such behaviour is guided by the pre-existing principles.

Otherwise, this would mean that by not being virtuous, human beings lack the power to overcome such challenges that present themselves in their lives. The law should emphasise on morality as a duty that should be fulfilled by the society because they have the will and capacity to do so. Reliance on the interests and demands of a person to fulfil our duties as a motivator will always lead us to contravening the law. By setting all the laws to conform to our morality, then the challenge would therefore be in the trimming the desires and interests that do not conform to the moral law. Such a balance is always a challenge that is faced by the law.

He believed that, the law should guide the actions of a person by delivering the motive of the underlying duty to meet the moral value intended by the law. According to him, the final result has a lesser significance compared to the feeling a subject has when carrying out an action. This is what carries a lot of value in law. Therefore, the law should embody itself on the way we perceive, identify and reflect upon issues and objects which would in this aspect form a make-up that is reflected from our experience. This concept is very important in helping us to make decisions that comply to the law.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) Utility Principle
Bentham argument was based on the conviction that all laws whether traditional or modern should be based on a singular principle of utility. From the view of general population, a law is perceived as a bad law or a good law depending on whether it increases or reduces the overall happiness of a population. He is famed for his work Introduction to the Principles of Morals which later became the foundation document to the British utilitarianism. He opposed the natural law on how it applied its language and in interpretation of principles. He opted not to conform to the common ideology of existence of a separation between the state and the laws of the land in applications of such laws by the state which is always represented by the government. He therefore laid a number of obligations on the hands of the state.

First, he felt that, it was the sole obligation of the government to reduce the sufferings of its people and it would be very immoral for the state to allow its people to suffer needlessly. The state is therefore required to guarantee its citizenship with a minimal level of income. In addition, the state is obligated to provide adequate security against individuals and from other nations. Bentham also argued that, the state is obligated to ensure that there is a given level of abundance in terms of wealth and population. His conviction led to his introduction of differentiation between an individual and other social aspects. He recognized an individual as a hedonic calculation whose most important determination came from maximisation of individual utility as a major contributing g factor in his behaviour. He argued that, humans strive to maximize their happiness which he defined as the surplus of pleasure over pains. This leads to the idea that, the actions of human s comes from hedonic analysis. In this aspect, Bentham believed that, the presence of pleasure and pain explains the essence of action and the moral ethic behind it. He therefore based the calculus of value on these two basic principles of pain and pleasure. The fundamental nature of a person is therefore reliant on his or her well-being and reasoning. 

He therefore went ahead to reduce Altruism, love, duty, desire for freedom, faith and obedience off the law to an individuals calculation of pain and pleasure. He continued to draw a similarity between happiness and the means applied to achieve that happiness. However, he sought to focus on the effect of unlimited control of search of this utility on morality of a society. He settled on the ethical principle that, increment of general happiness yields good results while reduction of the general happiness of a person is equally bad.

Bentham emphasis lay on the importance of reason over the custom and tradition especially in the interpretation of legal terms. He therefore set to champion for legal reforms that would guarantee absence of legal fictions in its reality. He viewed that, considering any part of a thing in concept away from that thing tends to bring about the risk of confusion or in other terms causes a positive deceit. In such a time such fictional that related to relation, right, power, and possession had a lot of application though their original source could have been of less importance. Their survival in application resulted from prejudice, or lack of proper attention. He believed that, the nature of human can be well expressed through the expression of his social relationships. In addition, the term relation is viewed as a fictitious entity. In his explanation of human existence in scientific view, he referred to one person as an atom. Where there is no self or an individual but there is always a close relation with others in close relationship. This brings up the point of human relation where the measurement of pleasure and pain can be calculated in terms of their intensity, certainty, fecund city duration and proximity in comparison with other persons.

Benthams moral philosophy reflected the greatest happiness principle or the principle of utility which should be the greatest focus of law. He based this on three principles of principle of happiness, universal egoism and the ability of an individual to artificially identify his interests away from those of others. He campaigned for usefulness of the principle of utility which endorses or disapproves actions that are seen to diminish the happiness of people and society. He sought to separate actions which do not maximize the happiness as moral wrongs. Bentham asserts that, the principle of utility is an act that in acting refers either to explicit or implicitly and this is a fact that can be ascertained through simple observation. Therefore a moral strive by a person to pursue pleasure is accepted as a lead in the objectives of a person. He went a step father to clarify that these laws should be based on a moral principle.

In summary, the two philosophers views the law in its form as that which requires reform in the moral obligation and utility. Kant argues that, there is the possibility of achieving everything through freedom. The uncorrupted laws cannot be achieved through sumptuous conditions but are held in correspondence to the universal law of casualty of moral laws. Through his invention of critical philosophy, we are able to acknowledge our ability to decipher and explore the any possible limits to our ability to know through philosophical reasoning. His work is based on the moral philosophy. He recommends for the law to employ the moral duty in order to attain the oral value. On the other hand, Bentham sees the need of establishing a principle that would mean the good for the larger population in a society.

Democracy implies a system of leadership that guarantees citizens freedom to decide their desires. In the third world countries, efforts aimed at founding democracy are still shaky because of the absence of a number of preconditions. Research shows that democracy in developing countries, such as Latin American countries, African countries and some Asian countries, such as Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea among others has failed thus there is need for greater commitment by developing countries to put into place appropriate measures that will help them attain democracy.
 Some of the factors that have hindered attainment of democracy in developing world have included the following differences in culture, religion and language have hindered attainment of democracy.

Research shows that the split of countries on the basis of culture, linguistic and religion has undermined the stability of many governments in developing countries because such  difference cause greater rifts among people from different regions of the country2. In Africa for instance, it is argued that cultural and religious differences have hindered efforts aimed at founding unified and stable governments. The most important thing to be realized by citizens of developing countries, most especially the leaders is to look for ways of addressing tribalistic kind of leadership and this will ensure that developing nations are unified.

Poor leadership is yet another factor that has hindered democracy in developing countries. Developing nations have been characterized by dictatorial or authoritarian leadership, corruption as well as leaders that have no interests in the welfare of citizens, thereby leading to high rates of poverty in developing world. The trends are worsened by inequitable distribution of resources where leaders have located major industries, improved infrastructure and other vital services in areas where they come from. This makes other regions to lag behind in terms of development and acquiring their share of national cake. Such happenings have caused rifts in many developing countries governments because leaders from all angles of the countries keep on fighting each other in their bid for proper leadership that guarantees all citizens equal opportunities2.

Similarly, lack of free and fair election is another obstacle for attaining democracy in third world countries. It is believed that elections that have been conducted in most parts of developing countries have always been characterized by violence, rigging and bribery, thus failing to guarantee free election exercise. Research shows that in sub Saharan Africa most nations have held very competitive elections exercise for many years. It is also indicated that its difficult for opposition parties to win elections in Africa 3. The existence of such hostile environment where the ruling government cannot concede defeat in elections has been a great obstacle to attaining democracy in third world countries. Some of the recent examples indicating absence of free and fair elections in developing countries are the 2007 disputed elections in Kenya and 2008 disputed elections in Zimbabwe where the government failed to accept defeat and instead manipulated the electoral commissioners to announce results in their favour.

Failure of democracy in developing world has also been enhanced by lack of strong civil societies such as labour unions. The existing societies are very weak and are easily influenced by the ruling governments thus becoming difficult for the civil societies to single out the inefficiency of such governments4. The efforts towards attaining democracy requires civil societies that encompass the potential to influence political and economical elite to organize themselves into stronger unions that can pinpoint all the inefficiency within the government and this will help developing countries head towards attainment of democracy. Lastly, to reach commendable level of prosperity in terms of democracy, there is greater need to first ensure that education has reached all categories of people.

Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a united states from 1922 to 1985 when it started to disintegrate into individual countries. Several factors and reasons have been put forward as the causes of the collapse. The most important reasons were political and economic which was the consequence of the traditions of war. The instantaneous reason of the Soviet fall down was monetary, as the Soviet Union was overtook by the West in the weaponry contest and international rivalry. After period of Soviet armed upsurge at the expenditure of domestic growth, financial growth was languishing.

Unsuccessful efforts at development, a dormant economy, and conflict in Afghanistan paved way for a universal feeling of dissatisfaction, particularly in the Baltic republics along with Eastern Europe. Larger political and communal freedoms, founded by the final Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, formed an impression of open disapproval of the Moscow administration. The spectacular fall of the cost of oil from 1985 to 1986, plus resulting insufficiency of foreign trade coffers in subsequent years to procure grain overwhelmingly predisposed proceedings of the Soviet headship. Principally, Afghanistan overpowered Russia, which resulted to the Soviet Union to falling down. A number of Soviet Socialist Republics instigated refused to go along with central control, furthermore escalating democratization paved way to dwindling of the central administration. The USSRs buy and sell gap increasingly emptied the reserves of the union, resulting to ultimate economic failure. Economic issues were connected to political and psychosomatic aspects. An additional feature was the deficiency of candid and straightforward information the concealment and misinformation that was fundamental to the customs of battle. As disagreements accumulated, the Soviet citizens turned out to be more and more contemptuous about the misinformation of government -restricted media. Concealment and misrepresentation of information encompassed catastrophic economic over and above political effects.

Economic pointers were more often than not covered up or inaccurate to the position that when the ultimate economic fall down was forthcoming, there were no available statistics to point out the spots of fault. In 1991, the Soviet Union finally malformed and collapsed.

There are two major electoral systems currently used worldwide. These are the single-member district system and the proportional representation system. The former is a winner-take all system whereby political districts consist of geographical subdivisions, the constituents of which get represented by the candidate garnering the highest vote. The latter, on the other hand, use multi-member districts whereby several candidates win in one district as determined by the proportion of votes the party receives. A party receiving 50 of the votes in a 10-seat district would get five out of those ten seats.

What makes the proportional representation or the PR system better than the single-member district system There are three main advantages of the PR including ensuring minority representation, eliminating gerrymandering and the relatively higher vote turnout whereby no vote gets wasted as opposed to that in a single-member district system.

Minority representation is best served under the PR system since it allows a representation based on the proportional votes in a district. In other words, a 20 vote for one candidate gets a 2-seat representation in a large district where 10 seats are allowed. Thus, avoiding an outcome in which some people win representation and the rest are left out making each and every vote count (Amy, 2002). Since PR is essentially a multi-member district, it is even possible to have as many representations for several groups of minorities within a single district. Take for example a case where a 10-seat representation is allowed and the womens sector comprising 30 of the votes cast voted for a party with a womens rights advocate as candidate, the gay constituents comprising 20 of the votes cast voted for a party with a gay advocate as candidate, while another 20 votes went to the party advocating agricultural reform, and the last 30 of the votes cast was received by the party advocating health insurance reforms. Amy (2002) believes that many in the voting rights community including Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, have concluded that proportional representation would be the best way to give minority voters fair representation.

Another advantage of the PR system is that it eliminates gerrymandering or the practice of apportioning in one geographical districts the portion of the population which would probably turn out a more favourable result for a party or a candidate in the elections. This practice is a basic disadvantage that is often utilized as a cheat mechanism in a Single-member district system. Gerrymandering has little or no use in the PR system, hence, it is almost certain that incumbent parties will not resort to this practice.
The fact that voters know that the votes they cast would not go to waste has been significantly associated with the high turn out of votes in a PR electoral system.  This is not hard to understand since as voters, we would know that it is always a consideration in the exercise of our right to vote that the vote we cast will more or less get counted by choosing a candidate who has a higher chance of winning. Otherwise, even if we like a party or candidate, the fact that we know that there will be a low turn out of votes for that party or candidate would make us opt to vote for a second choice that will most likely have a higher chance of winning. This is normally the set back in a winner take-all single-member district system resulting to a low turn out of votes.

The above-discussed are just several of the many advantages that the PR system has proven in western democracies. It is gaining a worldwide impact and has managed to provide more likeable changes in the electoral system in the countries which have adopted it. There is no reason why the United States or the remaining western democracies still using the single-member district system should not shift to the better electoral system, that is, the proportional representation system. After all, an electoral reform towards better governance is something that everyone should be advocating for.

In a single-member voting system, a predetermined constituency elects a single person to a particular office (Curtis, 1994133). This is in contrast with proportional representation, known as full representation, where the aim is to secure a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates obtain in elections and the percentage of seats received. In a single-member voting system, each district elects a single person to a single office, which is carried to the national assembly. In proportional representation, if one party garnered 60 of the electoral votes, then 60 of the seats in the national assembly are allocated to such party.

Single-member voting system has the following advantages 1) constituency link is maintained, that is, the votes of small constituencies directly affect the distribution of seats in the national legislature 2) the elected candidate is held accountable for hisher actions, in short, the voters can easily replace himher 3) this system does not give excessive power over politicians and voters and 4) polarization effect (promotion of a two-party system) gives way for stability in government (Curtis, 1994150). In general, this voting system promotes public accountability and stability in governance.

Proportional representation has some advantages. First, winners of the election reflect the distribution of votes. If the party garnered 30 of the votes, then 30 of the seats in the national assembly is reserved for the party. Second, no votes are wasted in the electoral process. All votes are carried to the national level. Third, party and group interests are directly reflected in the votes. In short, interest aggregation is a smooth process. Lastly, this system prevents gerrymandering  redistricting to distort election results by enclosing party voters in one electoral district. In general, this voting system promotes full representation and smooth interest aggregation in policy-making (Curtis, 1994159).

In order to choose the better electoral system, we need some criteria for evaluation. The criteria for evaluation are as follows 1) degree of representation, 2) level of interest aggregation, 3) stability, and 4) vote distribution.

Based on the degree of group representation, it is clear that PR is superior to the single-voting system. In PR, the national legislature is often composed of more than three electoral parties. Each party has a set of public policies which can be enacted into law. In a single-voting system, polarization effect ensures that only two parties are fully represented in the national assembly. The system itself influences the voters to choose between two dominant political parties. The smaller parties are squeezed out of the electoral process.

Based on the level of interest aggregation, PR is again superior to the single-voting system. As each party is represented in parliament, interest aggregation becomes a prima facie rule for forming coalitions (Curtis, 1994172). To form a majority, coalition governments are necessary. In the process, the interests of each party are incorporated in the platform of the coalition  hence, in policy-making. In a single-voting system, this is almost impossible since the interests of the majority party dominate policy-making.

Based on political stability, the single-voting system is superior to PR. Coalition governments are fragile  hence susceptible to political disunity. In a single-voting system, this is almost impossible. Because the majority party has more than 50 of the parliamentary seats, it can enact policy with or without the cooperation of the other party. In short, governments formed under the single-voting system are more stable than coalition governments (formed under PR).

Based on vote distribution, PR is superior to the single-voting system. Note that, under PR, there is a close match between the number of votes received and the number of seats acquired. In a single-voting system, it is possible for a party to receive 51 of the electoral seats while only garnering 34 of the electoral votes.

Based on the above-mentioned criteria, the PR is superior to the single-voting system. Note that representation and vote distribution carry more weight than stability. This is so since in liberal democracies, voter preference is assumed to be above political stability, as far as representation is concerned (Curtis, 1994186).