Iran
This is the title of Iran's supreme religious and political leader, who holds ultimate authority over all branches of government.
Supreme Leader (Ayatollah)
Both Nigeria and Mexico use this type of governmental structure that divides power between a national government and regional state governments.
Federalism
UK's parliamentary system, this is the title of the head of government who must maintain majority support in the House of Commons
Prime Minister
Russia's lower house of parliament, elected through a hybrid system combining single-member districts and proportional representation, is called this.
The State Duma
What is the name of the institution that elects the president of China
The National Peoples Congress
This unelected body in Iran vets all candidates for elected office, ensuring they meet Islamic and constitutional requirements.
The Guardian Council
This economic policy zone, used in both Nigeria and Mexico, reduces taxes and regulations in designated areas to attract foreign corporations and investment.
Export processing zones / Maquiladora zones (Mexico) or free trade zones (Nigeria)
The UK uses this electoral system for House of Commons elections, where the candidate with the most votes in each district wins, regardless of whether they have a majority.
Single-member district plurality (first-past-the-post)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, this economic process transferred state-owned industries to private ownership in Russia, though it largely benefited a small group of oligarchs.
Privatization
China created these designated coastal areas beginning in the 1980s where foreign investment was welcomed, taxes were reduced, and market reforms were piloted before being applied nationally.
Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
Iran is a rentier state whose economy heavily depends on exports of this natural resource, making it vulnerable to international sanctions and price fluctuations.
Oil
This Mexican pre-reform political party dominated the country for over 70 years by controlling civil society through state-sanctioned organizations in a system known as corporatism.
The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional)
This 2016 referendum resulted in the UK voting to leave the European Union, raising major questions about sovereignty, trade, and immigration policy.
Brexit
Under Putin, Russia re-nationalized much of its oil and gas sector. This is the name of the dominant state-controlled energy company that became central to Russia's political economy.
Gazprom (also accept Rosneft)
This domestic registration system in China ties citizens to a specific hometown region, historically limiting their access to public services like schools and hospitals if they migrate to cities without authorization.
The Hukou system
These international measures, imposed largely due to Iran's nuclear program, restricted its oil exports and access to global financial markets, causing inflation and economic hardship for ordinary Iranians.
UN and US economic sanctions
Nigeria's presidential electoral system requires candidates to win not just the most votes nationally, but also at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of all states. Explain why this rule exists and what political problem it is designed to solve.
The rule is designed to prevent any single ethnic or regional group from dominating the presidency. Given Nigeria's deep ethnic and religious cleavages between the Hausa-Fulani north, Yoruba southwest, and Igbo southeast, the rule forces candidates to build broad cross-regional coalitions rather than winning on a narrow regional base.
Explain how the UK's first-past-the-post electoral system affects the representation of minor parties in the House of Commons.
disadvantages minor parties because a candidate must win a plurality in a specific district to earn a seat. A party like the Liberal Democrats can win a significant share of the national vote but win very few seats because their support is spread across many districts without being concentrated enough to win individual contests. This tends to reinforce a two-party dominant system between Labour and the Conservatives.
Explain how Vladimir Putin has used electoral rules and media control to limit genuine political competition in Russia while maintaining the appearance of democracy.
Putin's government has used multiple tools to suppress competition. Opposition candidates are frequently disqualified on technicalities or jailed. State media dominates the information environment, limiting opposition visibility. United Russia benefits from government resources and access. Electoral commissions are controlled by loyalists. This creates a system of managed democracy — elections occur but the outcome is largely predetermined, giving the regime a veneer of legitimacy without genuine accountability.
China's one-child policy successfully slowed population growth but created a serious long-term demographic problem. Describe this problem and explain how the government has responded to it.
The one-child policy created a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce — often described as a "4-2-1 problem" where one child supports two parents and four grandparents. This threatens China's economic growth model and pension system. The government responded by relaxing the policy to two children in 2015 and three children in 2021, though birthrates have remained stubbornly low because the cost of raising children in urban China has become very high regardless of policy.
Explain how Iran's theocratic structure creates a tension between democratic participation and clerical authority, using at least one specific institution as an example.
Iran holds elections for president and parliament, suggesting democratic participation. However, the Guardian Council can disqualify candidates it deems insufficiently Islamic, and the Supreme Leader holds final authority over all major decisions, meaning elected officials operate within strict clerical limits. True democratic accountability is undermined by these unelected institutions.
Both Nigeria and Mexico have struggled with the resource curse. Compare how oil dependency has affected the political development of each country differently.
In Nigeria, oil wealth concentrated in the Niger Delta has fueled corruption, ethnic conflict over resource distribution, and undermined democratic institutions — the government relies on oil revenue rather than taxation, reducing accountability to citizens. In Mexico, the state oil company PEMEX was a symbol of economic nationalism, but oil dependency slowed diversification. Mexico's recent energy reforms opened the sector to foreign investment, unlike Nigeria which still relies heavily on a state-dominated oil sector. Both show how resource wealth can weaken governance, but Mexico has moved further toward liberalization.
The UK has undergone significant devolution since the 1990s. Explain what devolution means, identify two regions it applies to, and explain how it challenges the idea that the UK is a purely unitary state.
Devolution is the transfer of certain legislative and administrative powers from the central government to regional governments, without fully federalizing the state. It has been applied to Scotland (Scottish Parliament), Wales (Senedd), and Northern Ireland (Assembly). While the UK remains formally unitary
Russia is often described as a petro-state. Explain what this means and analyze how dependence on oil and gas revenue has shaped both Russia's domestic politics and its foreign policy behavior.
A petro-state relies on natural resource exports as its primary source of government revenue rather than broad taxation. In Russia, oil and gas fund the federal budget, allowing Putin to distribute benefits without building accountable institutions — citizens receive services without demanding political rights in return. This reduces pressure for democratization. In foreign policy, Russia uses energy exports as leverage over European neighbors, threatening to cut gas supplies during political disputes. Its aggression in Ukraine is partly driven by protecting its sphere of influence over energy transit routes and maintaining great-power status tied to resource wealth.
China has achieved remarkable economic growth through globalization while maintaining strict authoritarian political control. Explain how the CCP has managed this apparent contradiction, and whether economic liberalization has led to political liberalization.
The CCP has pursued a deliberate strategy of economic opening without political opening — using SEZs, WTO membership, and FDI to fuel growth while tightly controlling political expression, media, and civil society. The government argues that economic development provides performance legitimacy, substituting rising living standards for political rights. Predictions that economic liberalization would inevitably produce political liberalization have not materialized — the CCP has used economic growth to strengthen its grip on power rather than loosen it, through surveillance technology, nationalist messaging, and the suppression of any organized political opposition.