New FPC Research Associate Stephen Minas analyses the China’s evolving approach to climate change negotiations from Copenhagen to Cancun and beyond.

For the third paper in our Exploring Turkishness: Rights, Identity and the EU essay series, the Foreign Policy Centre is delighted to publish a new paper by leading Turkish academic and human rights campaigner, Professor Baskin Oran of Ankara University. In his new paper The Issue of “Turkish” and “Türkiyeli” he sets out his clear arguments for the creation of a new and inclusive identity that could cover all citizens of Turkey. (Translation provided by Deniz Ugur)

This third paper in the Kazakhstan at a Crossroads series explores some of Kazakhstan’s international relationships with the EU, Russia and China.

In the second paper as part of our Exploring Turkishness: Rights, Identity and the EU Essay Series Ziya Miral examines the state’s approach to regulating religion and its role in defining Turkish identity. He draws attention to the problems this causes for Turkey’s minority communities, with a particular focus on its non-Muslim minorities, and argues for an equal conception of citizenship that respects ethnic and religious diversity.

The Georgian President has heralded the constitutional changes, backed by a vote of 112-25 in Parliament on October 15, as “fully – and I emphasise on ‘fully’ – in line with the European tradition” of parliamentary democracy . However, his critics have accused him of seeking to maintain his influence for years to come, by taking up the strengthened premiership after his final presidential term expires in 2012. In a neat piece of political irony, this would be exactly the path trodden by Vladimir Putin, his Russian archrival.

Undoing his own work
The new constitution removes a raft of powers and influence from Georgia’s President and hands them to the Prime Minister and (to a lesser extent) Parliament. Much of this is simply President Saakashvili undoing his own work. After the peaceful Rose Revolution swept him to power in late 2003, he amended the country’s 1995 constitution to centralise power in the presidency.

His argument was that Georgia’s turbulence and instability made it vital to have a strong leader, an argument which President Saakashvili reiterated in September when he said that it would have been “a disaster” to have the new system, with multiple centres of power and a weakened presidency, immediately after the revolution .

Indeed the continued threats facing Georgia (read: Russia) have apparently led President Saakashvili to resist attempts to render the presidency impotent. A country, he said, which faced so many challenges needed a strong head of state . The instinct behind that argument is one of his critics’ main justifications for their claims of ‘creeping autocracy’ in Georgia.

In any case, the alterations will not affect his current powers. They will be phased in slowly and only take full effect when the new President comes into office in January 2013.

The biggest changes involve the shifting of power from the President to the Prime Minister. The government – headed by a newly powerful premier, with the power to appoint and dismiss key ministers – becomes more accountable to Parliament. The President will be unable to dismiss the government and will have greatly weakened powers over day-to-day policy . The President will also hand his power of appointing governors over to the prime minister.

Sidelining Parliament?
President Saakashvili and his ruling United National Movement (UNM) claim that the new constitution is increasing the distribution of power between different power centres, allowing for better checks and balances. However, critics argue that the changes have simply transferred political control from the presidency to the premiership (the prime minister can now, for instance, countersign presidential decrees). Either way, they allege, Parliament has been sidelined.

Their arguments have some weight. Parliament now has only one hearing for draft laws which have been used to justify a confidence vote, as opposed to three; it will lose its power to confirm presidential choices for ambassadors; more concerning is the removal of Parliament’s ability to directly monitor state spending and demand its suspension in the event of violations.

Replacing the newly bolstered Prime Minister and Cabinet will also become extremely challenging. A vote of no-confidence involves a long, complex procedure requiring a high level of support. Although 40% of MPs need to agree on a confidence vote and a new candidate for the premiership, 60% are needed to overcome a presidential veto of a new candidate. The whole process can take up to fifty days – a long time in politics to retain the necessary votes.

The increase in the powers of the prime minister is dramatic, and has raised serious speculation that President Saakashvili will simply take up the post in 2013, allowing him to maintain his domination of Georgian politics for years to come. He has never explicitly denied plans to run for the premiership after his presidency.

The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s constitutional-law body, has noted these concerns. In its final opinions on the new amendments, it waspishly referred to allegations that the increase in the prime minister’s power “is motivated by reasons of personal power and not by a genuine desire for improving the machinery of government, as should be the case” .

Critics decry timing, complexity
The attitude of the government has also attracted heavy criticism, particularly its somewhat dismissive approach towards the Venice Commission. The Commission has been closely involved in the drafting of the new constitution, on the invitation of the Georgian government. It expected that the Saakashvili administration would wait for its final recommendations before voting the constitution into law, but Parliament convened on the very same day (October 15) that the Venice Commission’s final suggestions were being discussed. A last-minute copy was sent through to Tbilisi, by which time the government was already pressing ahead.

Other detractors have pointed to the timing of the new constitution. The debates on it took place in August, the country’s holiday month, and there were no publicly televised discussions of the issue. The Georgian Young Lawyers Association has accused the government of ignoring suggestions made by civil society and NGOs . These were more or less the only alternative voices, since the UNM dominates Parliament and most opposition factions have, in any case, boycotted proceedings.

Opposition groups do bear some responsibility for the one-sided deliberations. Failing to provide a dissenting voice, or to fire up their supporters against the amendments, gave the UNM free rein over the process. Some analysts have ascribed the lack of energetic opposition to “a vast reserve of popular political apathy” which has taken hold since the fadeout of long-running street protests in July 2009.

It is difficult to deny that there is a sense of exhaustion in Georgian politics. Attempts to unseat President Saakashvili after the disastrous war with Russia in August 2008 have failed, largely because the opposition movement had no credible, unifying figure it could coalesce around. Accusations of being too close to Moscow (with undertones of being a Kremlin agent) have stuck to some of the most prominent, such as ex-Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze .

A wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Whether the muted reaction to the constitution is a good thing or a bad thing depends on one’s attitude towards President Saakashvili. For those who still support him, the political sluggishness in Tbilisi reflects the UNM’s popular support and the genuine desire of ‘Misha’ to transform Georgia into a European-style democracy. If he stood for the premiership in 2012 this would enable the continuation of his policies, and would – in any case – be a perfectly democratic manoeuvre.

For his critics, the new constitution is a further warning that President Saakashvili is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, an autocrat who plays at being a democrat to please his Western backers. The man who has crushed street protests with rubber bullets, rashly invaded South Ossetia and silenced Georgia’s independent media is now seeking to prolong his regime through underhand manipulation of the constitution.

This view is too alarmist. It ignores Russia’s complicity in the build-up to the August war, as well as the genuine plurality, prosperity, and freedom which now exists in Georgia as a result of the Saakashvili government’s drive against corruption. In late October the international watchdog Transparency International announced that Georgia ranked 68th in the world on its Corruption Perceptions Index, just below EU member Italy and above heavyweights such as Brazil. Russia, by contrast, came in 154th place . The lack of a meaningful political alternative owes more to squabbling and weak leadership by the political opposition than to political intimidation on the part of the UNM.

Nonetheless, Georgia’s democratic deficit is real. President Saakashvili’s bombastic nature and impatience with political opponents are unaffordable in a country with such a young democracy. And political leaders could easily use the ongoing threats facing the country to completely erode its fragile plurality. Russia has completely annexed South Ossetia and Abkhazia; Russian military forces remain just a few hours from Tbilisi.

The danger is that Mr Saakashvili will use these threats to consolidate his own rule, arguing that a strong leader – whether sitting in the Presidential Palace or the Prime Minister’s office – is essential to lead the country through its crisis. The platitudes about balancing powers under the new constitution would be rendered meaningless.

President Saakashvili should realise that he will gain more support from the West, and thus a better shield against further Russian threats, by buttressing his democratic achievements, not by undermining them in pursuit of personal power. Changing the constitution was legal and does indeed address the country’s political imbalances. But standing for Prime Minister in 2012 would make a mockery of his claims to be a force for democratisation in Georgia. When his term as President expires, he should retire with good grace.

The last decade or so has been a golden period for international development, including efforts by the UK. Indeed, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recently judged the Department for International Development under Labour’s stewardship as having gained “national and international recognition for its professionalism and ability to deliver its aid programme effectively”.

But in opposition, it now falls again to the centre-left to develop ideas for delivering global justice in a political and policy context changed, fundamentally, in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.

That global economic crisis accelerated and further highlighted changes and challenges that politicians and policy makers are still struggling with. We need to do more than just have the right arguments about moral duty and common interest to explain to the public why we should continue funding overseas aid at a time when we are being asked to cut budgets at home.

We now face not only a question of balance sheets, but a question of shifting global balance.

And in this changing context, international development must be driven by more than a quest for value for money. It must also be driven by values.

Market failures

The “charitable” approach of the right to international development appears becalmed alongside narrow concepts of national security and commercial interest, a continuing hostility to the role of the state, and a superficially empowering but ultimately laissez-faire approach to the role of civil society.

The whole world – rich and poor alike – is still living through the consequences of the food, fuel and financial crises: collectively, the greatest market failure of the last 60 years. And we are already being faced with the growing impacts of climate change, the greatest market failure in human history.

A further effect of the financial and economic crisis has been to highlight and accelerate the rise of Asia. Countries like China, India and Vietnam have grown enormously in recent years. The G20 has arisen to take on new responsibility in this changed global economic and political context. China in particular has undergone a remarkable transformation from poverty to significant global donor. India has experienced remarkable growth. Many African countries have shown growth despite the global recession. Many countries are rapidly graduating from low income to middle income status.

Yet this “rise of the rest” masks a complex and conflicted world – where billions remain in poverty and are denied their basic rights.

Twenty years ago, more than 90% of the world’s poorest people lived in low-income countries. But as Andy Sumner of the Institute of Development Studies has revealed in ground-breaking research this month, a staggering three quarters of the world’s poorest people now live in so-called middle income countries like India and Brazil – what he calls a “new bottom billion”.

At the same time, others, like Paul Collier, have emphasised the importance of focusing on the “bottom billion” who find themselves in the bottom fifty or so states affected by fragility and conflict.

What some have called a “new geography of poverty” poses fundamental questions for the future of international aid and development.

These new times demand not old orthodoxies, but new responses, grounded in a fundamental belief in justice and universal human rights.

It is easy for politicians to say that, since India has a space programme, we should have no concern for the millions of Indians still living in abject poverty, or indeed those in any emerging middle income country. The reality is, of course, far more complex.

Inequality remains a crucial factor in this new world. Despite the reduction in poverty associated with growth in countries like China and India, and despite the improvements to child welfare around the world, inequality remains pervasive on a global scale. As Kevin Watkins pointed out in a recent article for the Guardian, the impacts of inequality can be stark:

Inequality remains the most potent destroyer of opportunities for education. In Nigeria, the average male from a wealthy, urban home can expect on average about 10 years of education. Meanwhile, poor girls in rural northern Nigeria average less than six months in school.

It is not only a matter of social justice that should concern us about high levels of inequality, but also the impacts in terms of sustainability, security and stability – both for those people directly affected, and globally.

So we need to ground new approaches to the challenges posed by state fragility, the new geography of poverty, and extreme inequality in clear, progressive principles.

A responsibility to the poor

In the same way that the responsibility to protect has driven us to think about how the world responds to genocide and crimes against humanity, beyond narrow notions of state sovereignty, I believe we must now develop a responsibility to the poor to guide our actions in international development, lest many of the poorest become ignored behind national borders and statistical categories.

What is our responsibility to one girl who lives in abject poverty in India, versus that of another who lives just a few miles away on the Bangladeshi side of the border?

A responsibility to the poor must also go further. It must drive us to higher standards across all our broader actions. Rich countries are often part of the problem. Unfair international rules of trade, like agricultural subsidies and restrictive intellectual property rules; irresponsible arms exports; weak controls over international companies which engage in bribery overseas; not clamping down on stolen assets from developing countries, which are then laundered through western financial institutions and tax havens; and climate change driving emissions that hit the poorest the hardest – all should be treated with the same seriousness of purpose as we have shown in our fight to protect the aid budget and its poverty focus.

We must continue doing what works well in the poorest countries. Well applied, targeted and effective aid can and should be used to achieve progress on challenges such as health, education, water and other basic services.

But we also need new approaches when it comes to the over 60% of the poor now living in middle income countries, alongside the traditional aid, debt relief and other approaches Labour successfully used in government to deliver results.

A global “big society” is not enough to deliver – in the same way that it is not sufficient here in Britain. We cannot simply take a laissez-faire approach to citizen empowerment, urging everyone to do their bit. We should make no apology for saying that where market failures exist, the state must step in alongside the citizen. And when those market failures are global – as in the case of climate change, or extreme poverty and inequality – then global action must be taken.

At the same time, we must recognise that action by governments alone is insufficient. Our model must be one of true partnership between the state, citizens and other actors, including the private sector.

We must fight against any suggestion that Britain’s role in international development should slip back into well-meaning but colonial-style charity for poor people, with policies driven by public populism, political expediency and narrow national interests.

The great Archbishop Desmond Tutu, retiring this week at the age of 79, once exhorted us, in a plea for humanity and the recognition of both moral and physical interdependence:

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

In this more unequal, hotter, unstable and interdependent world we cannot now settle for charity. We must recognise our responsibility to the poor and continue the long march to justice.

Link to original article http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/oct/08/douglas-alexander-responsibility-poor-justice

The Foreign Policy Centre is delighted to publish the first in a new series of short papers as part of a new project, Exploring Turkishness: Rights, Identity and the EU. In this first paper Senior Research Associate Zeynep Dereli makes the case for a broader, more inclusive approach to the idea of citizenship of Turkey, addressing some of the challenges facing Turkish women and minority groups.

Marc Herzog’s new briefing gives a fascinating insight into the statistics behind Turkey’s recent constitutional referendum and examines what the result means for Turkey’s future.

This FPC Briefing by Hema Kotecha explores some of the major challenges facing the Otunbaeva-led interim government and the international community in Kyrgyzstan after the April uprising and June’s ethnic violence.