Glossary — C

Glossary terms beginning with C.

class struggle: In Marxist terms, the conflict waged by the masses of the workers and the oppressed under the leadership of the communist party against the privileged, oppressive, and property-owning ruling class. Until late 1978, class struggle was the official line of the Chinese Communist Party.
clericalism: System under which a religious hierarchy exerts political authority. Historically, clericalism was common among smaller polities in Muslim areas of West Africa.
client, clientage: Clientage involves a relationship in which each party gains something. The client attaches himself to a prominent person to obtain protection, the possibility of advancement, and the like. The patron acquires a follower and, in case of need, the services of the client.
clientelism: Personal relationships that link patrons and clients together in a system in which jobs, favors, and protection are exchanged for labor, support, and loyalty.; Source: Library of Congress
Co Mat Vien: An advisory council set up by Emperor Minh Mang following the rebellion of Le Van Khoi in the 1830s.
CoCom (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls): Loose arrangement of Western governments formed in 1949 to prevent the transfer of military-useful (dual-use) technology from the West to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; the group (whose membership was almost identical to that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, q.v.) operated on the basis of informal agreements covering items having military or nuclear applications.
cognatic descent group: A group comprising those persons tracing descent from a common ancestor through both males and females, thereby differing from unilineal descent groups (q.v.), such as clans (q.v.) and lineages (q.v.). This entity is important among the Amhara and the Tigray as the one holding the block of land in which its members claim rist (q.v.) rights. The group has no other function.
collective farm (kolkhoz in Russian): Under the communist (q.v.) regime, an agricultural ""cooperative"" where peasants worked collectively on state-owned land under the direction of party-approved plans and leaders and were paid wages based partly on the success of their harvest.
collectivization: Joseph V. Stalin’s policy of confiscating privately owned agricultural lands and facilities and consolidating them, along with farmers and their families, into large collective farms (q.v.) and state farms (q.v.).; Source: Library of Congress
Colombo Plan: Founded in 1951 and known as the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia until it was expanded in 1977 and called the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in Asia and the Pacific. It is an arrangement that permits a developing member country to approach a developed member country for assistance on a one-to- one basis. Assistance may be technical or in the form of capital or commodity aid.
Colombo Plan for Cooperative, Economic, and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific (Colombo Plan): Founded in 1951, originally under a slightly different name, to coordinate and aid development among newly independent countries. Members include nations throughout the Asia-Pacific region (Nepal joined in 1952; Bhutan in 1962). Donor countries include Australia, Britain, Canada, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. The organization’s headquarters are in Colombo, Sri Lanka.; Source: Library of Congress
colon: El Salvador’s monetary unit, divided into 100 centavos. The colon was pegged by the government at US$1=C2.50 until November 1986, when it was officially devalued to US$1=C5 as part of an overall economic austerity package. As of late 1988, there was no parallel exchange market, but dollars could be traded at a higher rate on the black market.
colono(s): As used in the Dominican Republic, refers to a small independent sugarcane grower. In other Latin American countries, the word usually designates a settler or a tenant farmer.
colorums: Folk Christian religious communities derived from the 1839-41 Cofradía de San José movement, which spread through the islands thereafter and were the focus of resistance to American rule in the early twentieth century. Term derived from the phrase per omnia saecula saeculorum (world without end), which Roman Catholic priests used to close their Latin prayers.
coloureds: Those ""of mixed race,"" in apartheid terminology; usually referred to people with African and Dutch ancestry.
Comecon: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Sometimes cited as CMEA or CEMA. Members in 1987 included Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, the Mongolian People’s Republic, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Its purpose is to further economic cooperation among members.
Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance): A multilateral economic alliance headquartered in Moscow. Albania was effectively expelled from Comecon in 1962 after the rift in relations between Moscow and Tiranë. Members in 1989 were Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Comecon was created in 1949, ostensibly to promote economic development of member states through cooperation and specialization, but actually to enforce Soviet economic domination of Eastern Europe and to provide a counterweight to the Marshall Plan. Also referred to as CEMA or CMEA.; Source: Library of Congress
Cominform (Commmunist Information Bureau): An international communist organization (1947-56) including communist parties of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia (expelled in 1948). Formed as a tool of Soviet foreign policy, it issued propaganda advocating international communist solidarity.; Source: Library of Congress
Comintern: Short form for Communist International or the Third International, which was founded in Moscow in 1919 to coordinate the world communist movement. Officially disbanded in 1943, the Comintern was revived as the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) from 1947 to 1956.
Committee for Coordination of Investigations of the Lower Mekong Basin: Established in 1957 under the sponsorship of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Committee aims to develop water resources in the lower Mekong basin through improvements in hydroelectric power, irrigation, flood control, watershed management, and navigation. Its membership is limited to Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): First established in 1962, the CAP aims at ensuring the free trade of farm products within the European Union (EU--q.v.), guaranteeing the prices of these products, and maintaining protective tariffs against farm products from outside the EU.
Common Market of the South (Mercado Comum do Sul--Mercosul): An organization established on March 26, 1991, when the Treaty of Asunción was signed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay for the purpose of promoting regional economic cooperation. Chile was conspicuously absent because of its insistence that the other four countries first had to lower their tariffs to the Chilean level before Chile could join. Mercosul became operational on January 1, 1995. Chile became an associate member that month and agreed to join as a full member on June 25, 1996. Bolivia was admitted into Mercosul in March 1997. Mercosul is more commonly known by its Spanish acronym, Mercosur (Common Market of the South--Mercado Común del Sur).; Source: Library of Congress
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): Created on December 8, 1991, with the signing of the Minsk Agreement by Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The Alma-Ata Declaration, signed by eleven heads of state on December 21, 1991, expanded membership in the CIS to all other former Soviet republics except Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The CIS is a confederation of former Soviet republics in which ""coordinating bodies"" oversee common interests in the economies, foreign policy, and defense of its members.; Source: Library of Congress
Commonwealth of Nations: Often referred to as the British Commonwealth, the Commonwealth is formally an association of forty-nine sovereign, independent states that acknowledge the British monarch as symbolic head of the association. Commonwealth membership is expressed in cooperation, consultation, mutual assistance, and periodic conferences of national leaders.
communism/communist: The official ideology of the Soviet Union (q.v.), based on Marxism-Leninism, which provided for a system of authoritarian government in which the CPSU (q.v.) alone controlled state-owned means of production. It sought to establish a society in which the state withered away and goods and services were distributed equitably. A communist is an adherent or advocate of communism.; Source: Library of Congress
Communist International: Also called the Comintern or Third International, it was founded in Moscow in 1919 to coordinate the world communist movement. Officially disbanded in 1943, the Comintern was replaced from 1947 to 1954 by the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), in which only the Soviet and the ruling East European communist parties (except for Yugoslavia, which was expelled in 1948) and the French and the Italian communist parties were represented. The Cominform was dissolved in 1956.
Communist International (Comintern): An international organization of communist parties founded by Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) leader Vladimir I. Lenin in 1919. Initially, it attempted to control the international socialist movement and to foment world revolution; later, it also became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. The Comintern was dissolved by Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin in 1943 as a conciliatory measure toward his Western allies.
Communist Party of Malaya (CPM): Known as the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) until the 1960s. Founded in Singapore in 1930 with a predominantly Chinese membership, the party carried out armed resistance to the Japanese during World War II. From 1948 to 1960, its military arm, the Malayan Peoples Liberation Army, practiced guerrilla warfare in the rural areas of peninsular Malaya with the support of underground organizations in Malaya and Singapore. In the late 1980s, an estimated 500 guerrillas and the party leadership maintained themselves in the jungles of the Malaysian-Thai frontier.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU): The official name of the communist party in the Soviet Union after 1952. Originally the Bolshevik (majority) faction of a prerevolutionary Russian party, the party was named the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) from 1918 until it was renamed in 1952.; Source: Library of Congress
communitarianism: The Christian Democrats supported unionization of the peasantry through communitarianism rather than Marxism. According to political scientist Paul E. Sigmund, whereas in the early decades of their party Chile’s Christian Democrats preferred to describe their program simply as communitarian instead of as socialist, after the election of Salvador Allende Gossens as president in 1970 they described it as ""communitarian socialism,"" as opposed to Allende’s statist socialism.
Comoran franc (CF): One Comoran franc = 100 centimes; in June 1995 US$1.00 = CF363.98.
compadrazgo: Literally, copaternity. A system of ritual coparenthood that links parents, children, and godparents in a close social or economic relationship.; Source: Library of Congress
comparative advantages: The relative efficiencies with which countries can produce a product or service.; Source: Library of Congress
comprador: Vietnamese communist term (used originally in China to mean purchasing agent) applied disparagingly to the middleman who extracts a profit without engaging in economic production, that is, a ""comprador capitalist."" The term is also applied to an entrepreneur in Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City’s predominantly Chinese sister city.
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE): Furthers European security through diplomacy, based on respect for human rights, and a wide variety of policies and commitments of its more than fifty Atlantic, European, and Asian member countries. Founded in August 1975, in Helsinki, when thirty-five nations signed the Final Act, a politically binding declaratory understanding of the democratic principles governing relations among nations, which is better known as the Helsinki Accords (q.v.).; Source: Library of Congress
confessional, confessionalism: In its broadest sense, refers to adherence to a faith or religion, such as Christianity or Islam. In Lebanon, however, it more often connotes identification with narrower affiliations, such as sect or clan. Often used interchnagably with sectarian.
Confrontation (Konfrontasi): Indonesia’s 1963-66 effort to disrupt the new state of Malaysia, which Indonesian leaders regarded as a front for a continued British colonial presence in Southeast Asia.
Congress: See Indian National Congress.
Congress of People's Deputies: Established in December 1988 in the Soviet Union by constitutional amendment, the Congress of People’s Deputies was the highest organ (upper tier) of legislative and executive authority in the Soviet Union. As such, it elected the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. The Congress of People’s Deputies that was elected in March through May 1989 consisted of 2,250 deputies. The Congress of People’s Deputies ceased to exist at the demise of the Soviet Union.
Conservative Jews: Accept the primacy of halakah (q.v.) but have introduced modifications in liturgy and ritual.; Source: Library of Congress
Constantinople: Originally a Greek city, Byzantium, it was made the capital of the Byzantine Empire by Constantine the Great and was soon renamed Constantinople in his honor. The city was captured by the Turks in 1453 and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city Istanbul, but most of the non-Muslim world knew it as Constantinople until about 1930.; Source: Library of Congress
Constituent Assembly: A deliberative body made up of elected delegates who are charged with the responsibility of drafting a new constitution and, in some instances, electing a new president. Traditionally, after it has completed its work a Constituent Assembly reverts to a Legislative Assembly (traditional title of Salvadoran legislatures), which then serves as the country’s legislative body until the next scheduled elections.
Consultative Assembly: A body elected by various organizations in 1991/92 to debate the constitutional proposals drawn out by a government-appointed Committee of Experts. The document agree upon by the Consultative Assembly was accepted in May of 1992 as the constitution for the Fourth Republic to be elected to power later in 1992/93.
Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI): Formed after the March 1992 demise of the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI; q.v.). Except for the Netherlands, the membership is the same as IGGI.
consumer durables: Consumer items or durable goods (q.v.) used for several years, such as automobiles, appliances, or furniture.; Source: Library of Congress
consumer price index (CPI): A statistical measure of sustained change in the price level weighted according to spending patterns.; Source: Library of Congress
Contadora: A diplomatic initiative launched by a January 1983 meeting on Contadora Island off the Pacific coast of Panama, by which the ""Core Four"" mediator countries of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama sought to prevent through negotiations a regional conflagration among the Central American states of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In September 1984, the negotiating process produced a draft treaty, the Contadora Acta, which was judged acceptable by the government of Nicaragua but rejected by the other four Central American states concerned. The governments of Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil formed the Contadora Support Group in 1985 in an effort to revitalize the faltering talks. The process was suspended unofficially in June 1986 when the Central American governments refused to sign a revised Acta. The Contadora process was effectively superseded by direct negotiations among the Central American states.
Contadora peace process: A diplomatic initiative launched by a January 1983 meeting on Contadora Island off the Pacific coast of Panama, by which the ""Core Four"" mediator countries of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama sought to prevent through negotiations a regional conflagration among the Central American states of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In September 1984 the negotiating process produced a draft treaty, the Contadora Acta, which was judged acceptable by the government of Nicaragua but rejected by the other four Central American states concerned. The governments of Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil formed a Contadora Support Group in 1985 in an effort to revitalize the faltering talks. The process was suspended unofficially in June 1986 when the Central American governments refused to sign a revised Acta. The Contadora process was effectively superceded by direct negotiations among the Central American states.
Contadora Support Group: A diplomatic initiative launched by a January 1983 meeting on Contadora Island off the Pacific coast of Panama, by which the ""Core Four"" mediator countries of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama sought to prevent through negotiations a regional conflagration among the Central American states of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In September 1984, the negotiating process produced a draft treaty, the Contadora Act, which was judged acceptable by the government of Nicaragua but rejected by the other four Central American states concerned. The governments of Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil formed the Contadora Support Group in 1985 in an effort to revitalize the faltering talks. The process was suspended unofficially in June 1986 when the Central American governments refused to sign a revised treaty. The Contadora process was effectively superseded by direct negotiations among the Central American states.
Contra: Short form of contrarevolucionario (counterrevolutionary). Member of the Nicaraguan Resistance, an armed resistance movement in the 1980s supported by the United States and fighting against the national Sandinista government.