MA in Democracy and Governance student Elizabeth Cutler has a very insightful post on the constellation of forces within the USG that seek to undermine the work of USAID and their reasons for doing so at Budget Insight. She left out an important part of the problem: she blames everyone in the USG except USAID. Part of the agency’s problem is that it does a terrible job of justifying its own existence. USAID does not operate as a single agency, but is more like an umbrella organization for lots of different development projects (health, education, environment, democracy/governance, etc.). USAID has been unable to frame why it exists, so others have chosen to do so – to the detriment of USAID.

MA program co-Director Dan Brumberg argues that the Obama administration can’t rely on supporting civil society alone to foment democratic reform in the Middle East.

Blog, twitter, and now we’re on facebook. Thanks, Mariel.

Guest post from David Jandura, a student in the MA in Democracy and Governance Program. David takes a look at Sudan’s electoral system:

In the world of electoral system design, there are advantages and disadvantages to the many types of systems that exist.  It would probably be incorrect to say that any one system is “better” than another, because better is dependent upon what your priorities are.  One of the many advantages of a proportional representation, or PR system, for example, is that it does a relatively good job of ensuring that electors’ votes accurately translate into who is elected with less “wasted votes.” While it may be wrong to say which system is better, however, I don’t think it’s wrong to look at a system and question what its priorities are.  Sudan is a good case in point.  The nation claims to have a parallel system, which includes a significant amount of PR seats, yet the Sudanese have managed to create a PR tier that doesn’t actually deliver any of the advantages the system is designed to provide.

Read the rest of this entry…

CFR’s Bernard Gwertzman interviews MA in Democracy and Governance co-director Dan Brumberg. Brumberg argues that Obama must engage Israel if he hopes to have any success in negotiating a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Should the U.S. military use humanitarian and development aid to further its security interests?

As a U.S. Army Civil Affairs specialist, my whole job is based on the premise that the answer to this question is “yes.”  Civil Affairs soldiers use development projects and aid distributions – mostly on a small scale – to achieve a number of objectives, such as improving relations between the U.S. military and a local population, or enhancing the capacity and credibility of the host nation government. Read the rest of this entry…

Still more from Deborah on the election as seen from Juba:

Today was supposed to be the final day of polling, but because many polling stations opened late or not at all on the first two days, the government decided to extend voting through Thursday, April 15. I’ll be staying in Juba for the remainder of polling, but will only catch the beginning of counting here.

Read the rest of this entry…