AP Comp Gov. Summer Journal
Post date: May 10, 2015 2:33:02 PM
The due date or deadline for this work is Tuesday, August 21.
An important component of the Advanced Placement Comparative Government and Politics test is having the ability to relate current events to the language of comparative politics. Your task over the summer is to collect and analyze several articles pertaining to the governments and politics of the six countries and one supernational union that we will be studying next year into a 7-page journal:
§ United Kingdom§ Russia
§ China
§ Nigeria
§ Iran
§ Mexico
§ The European Union system, e.g. the Commission, Parliament, ECB, etc.
In your journal, be sure to connect information from the article to these six concepts. MEMORIZE THEM FOR A QUIZ ON THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS:
§ Sovereignty: the final authority over inhabitants of a given territory.
§ Authority: the right to rule over the inhabitants of a jurisdiction.
§ Power: the capacity to get others to do what they would not otherwise do.
§ State: a politically organized territory that recognizes no higher authority (sovereignty).
§ Nation: a group of people who have such a strong mutual identity that they want to be ruled as an exclusive group in the form of a state or a relatively autonomous jurisdiction within a state, often on the basis of common culture, ethnicity, religion, language, and/or race. E.g. The Russian Federation is a state of many nations while Chechnya is a nation without a fully-sovereign state.
§ Citizens and Society: citizens, social movements and interest groups that have relations with the state.
About the Journal:
Please collect at least 2-3 articles on each country and at least two on the European Union. Put these articles, arranged by country, in a binder. You should therefore have a total of 14-21 news articles from BBC News, The Economist, the Guardian, the Independent, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Al Jazeera, NPR, der Spiegel, Fox News, or any other reputable source. English-language news produced in all the countries we will study can be found here at the big project. Click the map to drill down to a continent.
For each nation including the EU, please write "a 1-page synthesis journal entry." Here's what that includes:
- A hook and a non-obvious thesis. Consult the models in #1 & #2 in my "20 Common Problems In Student Writing" page to see how it's done.
- Briefly summarize each article in no more than two or three sentences, covering all the 5Ws. Introduce the articles in an order appropriate to your narrative purpose.
- In the first of those sentences, please build in a seamless NON-parenthetical citation. Don't use APA. Consult the models in #7 in my "20 Common Problems In Student Writing" page to see how it's done.
The bulk of the page should be analysis consisting of proven insights:
- Each journal entry should be a unified, persuasive piece using details from the two or three articles to prove one central point. In other words, if you merely A. list and report facts or B. just assert opinions without proving them with short quotations and analysis from the articles, you will fail.
Stumped for a thesis? Find worthy insights using any or all of these strategies:
- Connect each story to a Comp. Gov. concept listed above. This is a MUST.
- Compare and contrast the three articles to one another and to stories you've read about concerning other countries or history you've learned in West Civ, East Asian Cultures, Debate, American Gov, U.S. History, Madman, Anthropology, Psychology, your literature & science classes, or other stuff about the past that you just happen to know.
- Conclude: Ask questions and postulate responses. Explain why the events matter. Explore and explain ironies, contradictions, or "the incongruities of the human spirit." What's the next logical question? Focus on issues of significance and substance. Look for a useful lesson we can apply to our politics. See #17 in my 20 Common Problems for advice.
- The more daring among you might attempt narrative, satire, or criticism.
- Be prepared to discuss the articles and defend your insights on the first day of class.
Still stumped for a thesis? Then try a provocative prompt. After having read the three articles, explain whether or not you believe the American journalist and critic H.L. Mencken was right in any of these incendiary assertions about government:
"The state — or, to make the matter more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
"All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."
- The Smart Set, December 1919.
Please organize your binder with your seven-page journal at the front with articles sorted by nation and turn it in on the first day of class. You can make your binder physical (paper) or digital (on a shared google.doc) as you please, provided that you 1. have access to the material in class for discussion and 2. I get access to it, too.
Also, please share your journal with me on a google doc, shared with rsmith@er9.org. You will use this information in the first week of school, explaining and defending your findings.
Remember that participation in this course in contingent upon having satisfactorily completing the summer work and meeting the assigned due dates. Failure to complete the summer work assignment will result in your immediate removal from the course.
Questions? Email me at rsmith@er9.org if you have any.
VALUE: TEST/PROJECT GRADE
Smith's favorite recent stories:
To be fully prepared to ace the AP exam next spring, DO NOT just focus on what happens this summer. A careful analysis of past test questions reveals that the current events material that will appear on the AP test typically happened THREE YEARS AGO, so the events of 2014-15 would be got to focus on. Still, reading up on Brexit will surely help you for later work.
UK:
Snap elections in June went badly for Theresa May and her task of negotiating a Brexit treaty with a 2019 deadline to work out all the details. Ireland has always been a challenge in UK politics, but the question of the future status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has complicated this immensely, and the last election made it a lot harder to solve:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/ireland-brexit-171213121309274.html
For our cousins across the pond, lately it’s all about elections with four big polls in the last three years. The most recent and important was the UK Parliamentary election or 2015, Scottish independence, election of MEPs, Brexit, and then another Parliamentary election in 2017.
The UK is an advanced democracy, but votes don't seem to translate to seats:
http://m.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32601281
Did you know this election comes a year after another nationwide poll? The UK had an election for the EU parliament in 2014. Note how radically the results differ from 2015. Why is that?
http://www.bbc.com/news/events/vote2014/eu-uk-results
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs&v=r9rGX91rq5I
Any of these will give you some context with which to answer that question. You can bet that many core Comp Gov terms will be invoked here but not explicitly:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/vote2014
Oh, and don’t forget that failed referendum on Scottish independence!
Iran:
Iran's having a Presidential election, one that actually might be competitive. There was a framework for a deal over Iran’s nuclear program reached two summers ago. In American media, there's been lots of bloviating about whether or not to support it but precious little discussion about what’s actually in it:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32166814
ALSO, Iran had a presidential election in 2013:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22841145
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22916174
And Iran had a parliamentary election this spring...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_legislative_election,_2016
Mexico:
As President Trump's wall and NAFTA gets debated, it's interesting to take a closer look at the U.S.-Mexican economic relationship.
An amazing political scandal has been unfolding there for over a year. It’s becoming more spicy:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/the-big-money-scandal-rocking-mexico.html
We like to make fun of our elections, but it could be worse...
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/mexico-elections-2015-results-and-trends
Given the religious history, I didn't see this coming...
Nigeria:
Nigerian rapper, Falz has a viral video that summarizes a large number of his country's problems. NPR annotated it for our convenience.
But not all the news is bad:
https://www.icirnigeria.org/nigeria-marks-two-years-since-last-polio-case/
Like with Mexico, stories of terrorism and abducted students grab the headlines, but like the UK, Nigeria had a highly significant election. Here’s a great roundup of the issues and the sides:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31111572
More…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32280676
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32139858
A caustic barb from just before the election...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/nigeria-election-democracy-deferred/385341/
China:
Lots of interesting stuff happening here. Xi is now President for life, a big shift from the term limits that came on line after 1989. Check out the "Great Cannon" and recent stories about using AI to calculate citizenship scores. Even Mr. Orwell would be surprised, I reckon.
It was three years ago now, but the process of selecting Xi Jinping to replace Hu Jintao and choosing the current Politburo’s Standing Committee will be essential to know:
Since you all are fully immersed in the American college admissions process, you might well find this article by a former student of mine illuminating. He's the guy currently on the front page of my site:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gavin-newtontanzer/a-particularly-chinese-di_b_7238616.html
Chinese racism is fascinating, too, reviving uncomfortable UK & US history.
Russia:
There's more to Russia than hacking. The winter Olympics in Sochi were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of the news coming from the Russian Federation. Of course you want to get up to date with process that has lead to the annexation of Crimea and the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, one that prognosticators are promising will become a full-fledged war and possible invasion this summer. Putin allows for one press conference a year, usually a 3-5 hour affair. Alas, for the journalists who died.
Free press? Not anymore!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/16/russia-putin-direct-line-live-updates
And there's so much more! Don’t forget the collapse of the ruble, an ongoing economic crisis, increasingly draconian social policies toward foreigners, homosexuals, and perceived enemies, the Boston Marathon bombing, political murders of opposition leaders and journalists, their choice to harbor Edward Snowden, and the renewal of the power of my favorite living client despot, a real-life Bond villain, Ramzan Kadyrov!
The EU:
It's all about four freedoms, but not FDR's. Brexit is a thing, but what will it mean in terms of actual policy? 2019 is the deadline to finalize the terms of leaving, but precious little about the future relationship between the UK and EU seems to have been settled. Tories have dreamed of the UK leaving the EU for years, but will the reality match the promises? After the Brexit referendum, Euroskeptics narrowly lost races in Austria, the Netherlands and France, and Italy. Authoritarianism is on the march in Hungary and Poland, areas where Putin's Russia may gain more influence. Can or should the European project survive? In response to these challenges, Macron has a robust agenda for EU reform and Merckel is serving one more term to help him along.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/04/economist-explains-29
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/08/david-cameron-eu-referendum-ministers-vote
Also, the EU's failure to come up with a coordinated policy response to the Syrian Civil War and the growing migrant crisis it has occassioned will dominate headlines through the coming year. And ISIL isn't making it any better, either.
