Interesting Story

So, I found this story very interesting.

I’m less interested in the comments on the gaffes as with the last few paragraphs about reporting in the United States. Agree or disagree with Obama on FP, John Fund makes a point none-the-less.

Amnesty International Human Rights Report

The latest edition of Amnesty’s global human rights report is out and available online in several langauges here.

Georgia result

Via IFES, the AP reports “a nearly complete vote count from Wednesday’s election indicates Saakashvili’s party will hold about 120 of the Parliament’s 150 seats.”

Last week I wrote that electoral “reforms” in Georgia were not actually reformist. While March legislation lowered the threshold for entering parliament from 7 to 5 percent, simultaneous decreases in the total number of seats and proportion of them elected under PR would be new hurdles for small parties. Reform, in other words, would benefit Saakashvili, not his opponents.

Now the main opposition party is threatening to boycott its mere 14 seats. Coverage of protests keeps pointing at fraud, but the electoral rules appear to have been the main source of opposition squeeze.

Glancing at preliminary results from the nominal tier, the ruling United National Movement is the clear leader in most districts. Yet it frequently has less than a majority, and other parties sometimes have sizable vote shares. In the list tier, the UNM is reported to have won 61 percent of votes.

Recall that one “reform” reduced the share of PR seats from 100 to 75. If one considers that no election was held under original provisions for the 150-member parliament, “reform” actually reduced the PR share from 150 of 235 seats at the 2004 election to 75 of 150 today.

The net effect of “reform” was less proportional representation and more first-past-the-post, regardless of what Saakashvili did to the PR threshold. That’s how he’s winning 80 percent of seats on 61 percent of votes.

Georgia votes: lower threshold but lower magnitude

RFE/RL optimistically reports that Georgian president Saakashvili has reduced the threshold from 7 to 5 percent for the list tier of that country’s parliamentary elections. Of course, today’s elections are for a much smaller parliament with far fewer seats elected under PR rules than in 2004. Despite the optimism, this probably will result in a smaller opposition seat share.

Since winning reelection, a seemingly humbled Saakashvili has taken pains to show that he understands the mood of both the electorate and the opposition, enacting a series of electoral reforms his supporters say are meant to boost confidence in the elections.

What “humbled” Saakashvili was his “close call in [a] snap presidential election four months ago,” according to the news service. Yet he won with over 53 percent, 18 points ahead of the runner-up. Such is his standard for competitiveness.

As usual, the details of the new system depend on the source. The overall picture since 2004 is fewer seats in general and fewer elected proportionally.

According to the electoral law, last updated 17-12-07, 50 members are elected in single-member districts and 100 are elected from party lists (Art. 91). The threshold was 7 percent, and seat allocation is by Hare quota with largest remainder (Art. 105).

IFES’ Election Guide says the 2004 elections proceeded with 75 single-member districts, 150 list seats and 10 seats reserved to “displaced persons.” Via ACE Project, the same organization says this is the system in place. The 2008 Election Guide entry, however, reports a 150-seat parliament with 75 list and 75 district seats. That is consonant with RFE/RL’s report and others.

Angus-Reid has a good description of the politics of the electoral law. Saakashvili’s allies in parliament approved the 75-75 system on March 21, with opposition leaders balking in favor of the 50-100 system, which is the one on the books as published.

Reuters, via the Washington Post, says opposition leaders accuse the president of “rigging” the elections. More problematic than outright fraud, it seems, is a lack of basic agreement (even clarity?) on the details of seat allocation.

It flies in the face of cynical reason to think the president would increase opposition prospects in response to his own electoral “close call.” More important than reducing the threshold to 5 percent, an opposition-inclusive reform, is reducing the PR tier from 150 to 75 seats, which is opposition-exclusive. A glance at the 2004 results-by-region at Electoral Geography shows why. Saakashvili’s National Movement polled an average 69.4 percent. The median share for his party was 71.8 percent. The overall effect of “reform,” I suspect, will be to further weaken opposition. The more small districts, the more seats for Saakashvili. Reducing average district magnitude is what matters here. Lowering the threshold is an empty gesture.

Moving Government from “Spectacle” to “Spectacularly Great Entertainment”

Without in any way endorsing anything McCain has said today, particularly moving the goal posts yet again in Iraq to 2013 (conveniently enough JUST after his presumed re-election against a candidate urging to “cut-and-run”), I do have to say that I like his urging to bring UK-style question sessions to the President. Aside from my belief in the necessity of such things for the health of a democracy, I also believe this type of procedure makes for fantastic television.

I have come to believe that one of the greatest tragedies of the Bush 2 presidency has been the complete transformation of the presidency into a carefully controlled photo-op. While this has helped to reduce unfortunate gaffes by this particularly prone president, it has also turned the most powerful democratically elected office in the world into a complete spectacle. I believe that this has had two harmful consequences:

1) It leaves the American public feeling cut off from their elected leaders, thus reducing government legitimacy and public participation.

2) It leaves the American government cut off from the American people, and worse, cut off from even the most marginal inquiry.

While #1 is unfortunate, I believe that #2 has been disastrous. Perhaps the reason why we’ve seen policy after policy which should never have been implemented is that nobody was ever actually able to ask the President a meaningful question about the policies he wanted to implement. Instead, we received a classic case of cabinet groupthink and, well, we see what we’ve ended up with.

I’m not sure that a “Questions” session is the perfect answer to this problem, but it’s a great place to start. If a President can’t be bothered to learn enough about why a policy should be implemented to defend it to the lawmakers who fund it at the taxpayers expense, well, then maybe that policy shouldn’t be pursued any further. It may not actually bring information feedback back to American government, but it should make for some great entertainment.

A closer look at 2007′s “democratic recession”

Thomas Friedman in last Wednesday’s NY Times argued America’s oil dependence and declining soft power – but mostly oil dependence – are driving a global “democratic recession.” I’m sympathetic to the concern about oil but not the logic. One, state weakness has raised the costs of freedom in some places. Two, autocrats are simply more sophisticated when it comes to keeping power. Three, and most important, the ‘developed’ democracies have not consistently supported democrats abroad. My working conclusion: soft power is indeed waning for reasons both structural and intentional.

Friedman cites the Freedom House index for 2008. Attention to where and why ratings fell reveals a more complex causal narrative.

Military interventions in democratic politics drove down ratings in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Faulty, stolen or generally unfree elections affected the Comorros, Kenya, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Russia.

Political violence rocked Sri Lanka, Somalia, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Insurgency or generally rising insecurity eroded freedom in the Central African Republic, Mali, Niger and Afghanistan.

Media crackdowns drove down ratings in Georgia, Mali, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Lesotho, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela and, arguably, the Solomon Islands, where governing authorities refused to address criticism related to a cabinet appointment.

Restrictions on freedom of assembly and organization increased in Burma, Lesotho and Venezuela.

Whether by violence, intimidation or dubious institutional reengineering, executives eroded checks and balances in Malawi, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan and Egypt.

Overt opposition crackdowns took place in Congo-Kinshasa, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria.

Corruption and the entrenchment of economic oligarchies diminished freedom in Chad, Latvia, the Philippines, Tunisia, Burma, Madagascar and Somalia.

In Switzerland, the election of overt racists merited demotion.

Government paralysis earned negative points in Lebanon.

The infiltration of state and military by drug cartels drove down ratings for Guinea-Bissau.

While Freedom House’s executive summary does mention oil in two other places, only in Chad does it cite falling transparency in the “management of oil revenues.”

Next year’s report no doubt will cite eroding executive-legislative relations in Russia, a(n attempted?) stolen election in Zimbabwe, and whatever dubious constitutional amendments, opposition crackdowns, exiles and media shutdowns the remainder of 2008 brings. It will be interesting to see how Chinese ‘foreign aid’ packages and the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation figure in.

Overall, freedom declined in 38 nominal democracies. The dominant sources of backslide were corruption, media and opposition crackdowns, state weakness, deliberate election mismanagement and entrenchments of executive power.

Oil dependence is a big problem for the US and even the rest of the world, but it is not the principal driver of “democratic recession.” Alongside more structural problems of uneven economic development and state capacity are growing gaps between flagship democracies’ missions to spread freedom and their wills and means to do so. On one hand, emphasis on stability is replacing their post-Cold War emphasis on democratization. On the other, aid conditionality loses efficacy as rising authoritarian states like China and Russia reach out to Africa and Central Asia.

If democracy is to boom in the last seven months of 2008, the old democracies need to (1) renew their commitment to democratization and (2) cooperate to balance the soft power of authoritarian alternatives.

EFDP: A ‘Benign Hydra’

Fifteen European democracy assistance organizations recently launched the European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership. By pushing for democracy assistance to become a pillar of EU policy, EFDP hopes to rescue the good name of democracy assistance by offering a no-invasion-necessary European variant. The website is only nominally up and running, but check out the brochure here.

The EFDP aims to work in “countries on all continents where EU funding does not reach partners and where there is not sufficient funding available for democracy promotion.” EFDP will also “focus on working with partners that are most necessary in building democracy, but which do not receive funds from other sources.” (They go on to a list of pretty usual suspects, but “political society” comes last.) Anyway, Timothy Garton Ash hopes it will be a “benign European hydra to advance the cause of democracy.”

Overdone

According to her own advisers, Hillary can’t win even by changing the rules:

In a Clinton campaign conference call with reporters on Wednesday, three top advisers acknowledged that even if all the delegates from disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida were seated at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton would still not have enough delegates to claim the nomination.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign, estimated that in a best-case event, where the Michigan and Florida delegates were apportioned according to each state’s popular vote, Mrs. Clinton would still be about 100 delegates shy of the number needed. Delegates in those states have not been counted, the penalty for holding early primaries.

So it’s difficult to see where she has a case to stay in the race (I’m a rapper) if she can’t even win via a coup d’etat.

In Defense of Voter ID

So a lot of dirt is being thrown at the voter ID decision by the Supreme Court (keep in mind, the decision was 6-3 so it wasn’t the wicked R’s on the panel making up law as they went).

I feel like the commentary so far has been reprehensible. While I am appalled that a reference to Jim Crow made it on to the blog, I think addressing the issues will prove more worthwhile than “indignation”.

First issue: this is a partisan attempt to decrease voter turnout. I will accept that the party that gains to benefit most from this move is Republicans. However, I think most people forget that both parties are affected by the decision, especially if it is taken to a national level. Think about the incentives. For a Democrat-majority state, Voter ID is legal disenfranchisement. Thus, until there is a national law, I wouldn’t expect to see “Democratic strongholds” passing similar laws.

So who will enact Voter ID legislation?  Republican-majority states. But, in a lot of Republican-majority states, the lowest social classes are the “hick, playin’ my bango on the porch of my broken down house in a dirty wifebeater” (or so the generalization goes), Republicans. Methinks then, that Republicans would end up depressing their own turnout, since those individuals would be just as likely as “minorities” or “the poor” to not have a legal government ID.  I doubt the Democrats will be too saddened to hear of these people’s plight.

Furthermore, there is already a national system in place to get voters registered: they’re called political parties.  If the democrats are really worried about depressed turnout of their likely voters (because the only way they’ll lose the election is dirty Republican tricks to decrease turn out), then the local party offices can organize GOTV campaigns. Get a van, a driver, round up people and go to the DMV or another state office that gives state ID’s.

This leads to the second issue: Democrats feel they are unfairly burdened by the decision.  While they are putting resources into GOTV, Republicans can spend money on attack ads. I honestly believe this is a non-argument. First, I’m sure that Democrats can find volunteers to perform these GOTV tasks. just consider: 4 people from Georgetown (one guy wasn’t even a U.S. citizen) drove to Pennsylvania (a 2 hour drive) to canvas for free.  Why did they do it? Because they wanted to be involved. The news is constantly emphasize the record turnouts in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Obama’s ability to raise money hand over foot is touted as another example of how “ordinary people” are making an effort in this election (let’s not forget that Hillary isn’t far behind Obama in fund raising lately). Lastly, volunteers for both candidates flood the streets when their state is holding its primary.  And you’re telling me they couldn’t find people with cars willing to shuttle other people to the DMV in hopes of helping their candidate? (Let’s not forget, they have till November).

If the incentives are there, the parties will act on them. And FYI, Republicans (who tend to have lower volunteerism as a whole) would have to get their supports the same ID’s as well, so they’ve got their work cut out for them as well.

Voter ID might not be perfect but it’s not a malicious attempt to disenfranchise. Is the Democratic parties opposition to splitting the electoral college votes in California an attempt to “disenfranchise” people? I wouldn’t say so – splitting CA’s votes would give Republicans an unfair advantage nationally since similarly important and diverse states (like Texas) will maintain the unity of their electoral college votes.

I guess my point is that there are legitimate problems with American democracy, but I wouldn’t consider this one of them. To attack any kind of Voter ID system as an attempt to disenfranchise voters without putting forward a better plan for ensure the integrity of the system seems ridiculous.  More than ridiculous, it plays right into Republican propaganda that Democrats simply want to bolster their turnout by allowing the votes of illegal immigrants. I don’t buy that line of reasoning but I think the reckless attack of Voter ID is akin to Republican propaganda just from the Democratic side. It’s the same knee jerk politics with the same righteous indignation. The problem with that is that It doesn’t help get anything done.

Russia on Parade

New delicious nuggets about Putin’s Russia emerge almost every week. Dimitri Medvedev is set to assume the Russian Presidency this week and there is much speculation about how the power-sharing arrangement between Putin and his successor will play out. As the media focuses on the transition, or lack thereof, there are always little items that I notice about how the Putin government has revived many Soviet-era traditions. Many of these items seem pretty innocuous, but they can tell observers a lot about how the regime views itself and its form of governing.

Radio Free Europe noted in their daily e-mail digest that the Russian military will parade through Red Square on May 9th for Victory Day. Money quote:

he parade will include 171 pieces of military equipment, including T-90 tanks, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery, and antimissile defense systems. For the first time, Topol mobile strategic nuclear-capable missiles will also be on display, as will some 30 aircraft. The event marks the first time military equipment has participated in a Red Square parade since November 7, 1990, newsru.com

Makes me almost nostalgic for my childhood. Other Soviet-era practices adopted by Putin include the reintroduction of the Soviet anthem, the reemergence of single-party rule, and sham elections. This is aside from the decreases in media freedom and repression of opposition political parties and civil society.