The Democratic Piece

According to trickling election results, Nepal’s former rebels have outdone their own expectations under the country’s mixed-member electoral law. In the spirit of prediction, Nepal’s numerous small parties are likely to hold sway in the coming Constituent Assembly.

UPDATE: April 22’s Reuters backs my rough projection of yesterday. Headline: “Maoists lead as Nepal heads for hung assembly.”

Of 601 seats in the coming constituent assembly, 240 are elected under first-past-the-post, 335 under nationwide closed-list PR, and the Council of Ministers appoints 26 “from amongst the persons of high reputation who have rendered significant contribution in national life.” There does not appear to be a PR threshold.

Late last year, Maoist leaders began threatening to boycott the elections a third time unless status quo parties agreed to use closed-list PR nationwide. I speculated that they might even benefit from FPP rules given their rural base, but Bob in the comments noted a poll indicating they’d lose handily.

With all but one seat counted, however, Maoists have taken 120 of 240 seats in the FPP tier.

As of yesterday, PR tier results were still pending in 23 districts.

Deputies from the country’s southern Madhesi community are also poised to win a sizable share. Shortly after the Maoists agreed to the mixed system, Madhesi groups issued similar demands for PR rules.

I have done some rough calculations with current data from the election commission. If PR seats were allocated using a Hare quota/largest remainder formula based on results downloaded 13:30 eastern time:

Maoists: 101 seats
Nepali Congress: 72 seats
United Marxist-Leninist: 69 seats
Madhesi (2 lists): 30 seats
Other: 63 seats

Two Madhesi parties hold 29 and 9 seats, respectively. Assuming the Maoists and Madhesis form a coalition of sorts, they would be at 289 seats by these calculations. 301 is a majority. This scenario would give the 63 elected from “other” parties kingmaker status.

Based, of course, on assumptions about the allocation rules.

As I write, democracy assistance groups are helping lawmakers develop an electoral system for Iraq’s 18 governorate councils. Some creative electoral engineering could take the sectarian sting out of Iraq’s party system. One proposal worth serious thought is using the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) with open endorsements in governorate-wide districts.

Reuters last week claimed that “Iraq’s local elections could reshape power structure.”

Major players — such as the movement of populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Arab tribal groups — will be competing for the first time and are expected to make gains at the expense of those now in power.

“New alliances will form, old ones will fall. Everything will change. It will redraw the political map of Iraq,” said a senior Shi’ite government official on condition of anonymity.

Really, Reuters means reshaping a balance of power, not an underlying power structure. A party system that continues to revolve around sects will not help consolidate Iraqi democracy. Luminaries from Lipset to Lijphart have taught that stable democratic politics are about more than race, religion or language. The challenge is to get Iraqi elites talking about more than sectarian interest. What candidates need are incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Campaigns need to be about what’s-in-it-for-me: jobs, schools, roads and, as a colleague quipped, a shawarma machine in every kitchen.

Thankfully, beltway rumor has it that the chosen system will be candidate-centric. This is a major step away from the closed-list PR systems that blew open Pandora’s box in 2005.

That leaves us with a few basic options:

First-past-the-post: As long as parties don’t control who gets on the ballot, this system might work. Yet the number of votes needed to win is fairly high, meaning current parties likely would fare best, unless there were numerous candidates in each district, in which case outcomes would be wildly unpredictable. Ultimately, the lack of reliable census data would make fair apportionment virtually impossible.

Open-list PR: Basically, the system modifies list PR so that voters control who ends up being a party’s most popular parliamentarian. While it gets around the apportionment problem, it is unlikely to change much. The list logic would preserve current parties, the logic of party discipline would remain the same, and we would expect the most popular person under such circumstances to be a sectarian leader.

STV: For all its virtues, this is not appropriate for the context. Illiteracy and innumeracy are likely to cause widespread voter error. The only way to get around the apportionment problem is to use one big district in each governorate. Can we really ask Iraqis to rank up to, say, 200 candidates?

Bloc vote: Two words. Palestine 2006.

SNTV: With open endorsements, of course. If the parties controlled who got on the ballot, there would be little chance for a shawarma machine in every kitchen. The system would stimulate hyper-personalistic campaigns, party fragmentation and pork-barrel politics at its finest. On one hand, these are ugly dynamics. On the other, they’re just what are needed to break the grip of sect on Iraq’s party system.

Using SNTV in governorate-wide districts would obviate the apportionment problem. If each council were the cube root of its respective governorate’s population, council sizes (and district magnitudes) would hover around 100, meaning each candidate would need about only one percent of votes to win.

Open endorsement SNTV is not a magic bullet. Its efficacy depends on federal-governorate linkages, ballot access rules and the (in)abilities of current parties to coordinate in local contests, to name just a few variables. Iraq nonetheless faces a tradeoff. As long as its electoral rules stimulate disciplined, programmatic parties, sect is likely to be the dominant cleavage. Legislative politics will remain zero-sum with negative implications for the country’s future. On one hand, electoral engineers can reinforce the nasty equilibrium that is Iraq’s party system. On the other, they can try to force it open by stimulating fragmentation and clientelism.

A quick thought on the Italian election.

There is reason to believe we are witnessing a seismic shift in the Italian party system. The next time a center-left coalition comes to power, it has a good shot at finishing its term.

Division on the Italian left has been persistent. While more extreme factions were not the most proximate cause of Prodi’s most recent fallen government, the outgoing PM had been governing by confidence votes in order to squelch ideological polarization in his coalition. Indeed it was the Communist Refoundation Party that brought down Prodi’s last government in 1998. Speaking at the Brookings Institution on April 10, La Stampa’s Maurizio Molinari noted moderate/extreme leftist compromise had been a staple since 1921 and perhaps as far back as 150 years. Many locals during my trip to Italy last month told me the electoral law, which centers on a “majoritarian prize,” was una truffa [a scam] designed by Berlusconi to exploit the left’s internal division.

Berlusconi’s anticipated victory in both houses may belie growing unity on the left. MSS in the comments of his blog suggests this second election under majoritarian rules has reduced the number of parties in Italy. And Tom Round in the same notes no Communist was elected to either house for the first time in a very long time. Where did the hard left go?

Walter Veltroni’s decision to shut the hard left out of his apparentement was telling. At Brookings, Molinari pressed the historical significance of the decision to stop accommodating this faction. While doing so hurt Veltroni’s (not very good) chance of winning in the short term, it may mean more cohesive leftist governments in the long term, under two conditions:

1) Voters did and will continue to strategically desert hard left factions for the center-left;

2) Veltroni’s decision to marginalize the hard left sticks.

Berlusconi has long stressed how his “majority prize” electoral system is meant to bring Italy closer to a two-party system. Scam or not, maybe it will.

I’m keeping an eye out for it. According to a personal contact, the electoral system for provincial elections will be candidate-based. That leaves four likely suspects: STV, SNTV, bloc vote and FPP.

I suspect it will be either SNTV or bloc vote with sectarian quota. Reuters implies the institutions are designed to provide some level of minority representation:

New alliances will form, old ones will fall. Everything will change. It will redraw the political map of Iraq,” said a senior Shi’ite government official on condition of anonymity.

And:

Washington says the elections will foster national reconciliation, focusing on how they will boost the participation of minority Sunni Arabs in politics. Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last local polls along with the Sadrists, are under-represented in areas where they are numerically dominant.

Bloc vote systems with gender and/or sectarian quotas are common in the Arab world. STV is rarely adopted, most likely due to numeracy and implementation concerns. SNTV (or some other limited scheme) would provide minority representation. It might also weaken parties at the local level, which one could consider a virtue in light of the strong sectarian parties that formed around Iraq’s federal closed list PR system.

The Iraqi cabinet apparently transmitted a draft electoral law to parliament yesterday. According to the Voice of America, this law was forthcoming when the Presidential Council on March 21 issued a Provincial Powers Law, which calls for elections by October 1. The body rejected a first draft on February 26.

Last week, Vermont governor Jim Douglas vetoed legislation to elect the state’s congressional delegation by instant runoff voting.

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a good critique of Douglas’ veto message. Hendrik is probably right that partisan calculations decided the matter, but the governor gave other reasons. Some were factually incorrect (e.g. the current system is 200 years old). Others were tired spin (e.g. bastardized understandings of “one person, one vote” that IRV somehow violates).

One novel argument stood out:

Moreover, voters should not be asked to cast their ballots based on a wide range of hypothetical, theoretical or imaginary outcomes.

I take it to mean: IRV raises the information costs of strategic voting. Douglas earlier had fed this argument to the Burlington Free Press, which editorialized against IRV on March 25:

While backers tout instant runoff voting — IRV for short — as a way to increase the voters’ say, what it really does is mess with the process of marking the ballot, forcing people to vote in both a real election and, as the governor said, a hypothetical one [...] Many voters might play the “what if” game in choosing whom to vote for when there is more than two candidates in the race, but that kind of conjecture has no place on the official ballot.

While technically correct under certain conditions, this is a bad argument against reform for at least three reasons. One, those conditions are rare. Two, no voting system is strategy-proof. Three, strategic voting is less important under IRV than under plurality.

Why do governors even bother explaining vetoes of election reform bills?

To honor the first graduating class of Georgetown’s Democracy & Governance program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has requested 1,100 new State Department Jobs and 300 new USAID positions. Per ‘Leezza:

“We are also requesting in this budget 1,100 new positions for the State Department and 300 new ones for USAID. This represents a rebuilding, if you will, of our civilian capacity to manage programs, to engage in diplomacy. I felt that it was important that we first do some important reallocation and redeployment of our people to demonstrate that we were prepared to make tough choices. And by moving close to 300 people out of Europe and into places like India and the further reaches of China, I think we’ve demonstrated that we are prepared to do what we can with the resources that we have. But the truth is that the diplomatic corps is stretched, USAID is even more stretched. We went through a period in the ‘90s of almost six years where we didn’t hire, didn’t bring in a single Foreign Service Officer. And so we do need to rebuild.”

In fact, the USAID staff has seen tremendous staffing cuts over the past two decades.   And with the inclusion of USAID into the State Department, foreign assistance has become a pretty unwieldy bureaucratic endeavor, although the new framework for foreign assistance (known as the F-Process) seems to be a pretty good start to sorting it out.

Since proposing that the U.S. political parties implement codes of conduct to provide their officials a disincentive for engaging in corrupt and illegal behaviors, I’ve taken the question of politicians’ sense of immunity around Washington. My formulation of the question usually goes sort of like this:

“Recently, we’ve seen a number of U.S. politicians get into trouble - and even ruin their political careers - by having sex with people other than their spouses and getting caught in the cover-up. How can we put an end to this practice? These acts – and I’m talking about the cover-ups – fuel the perception of the power-hungry politician serving his own interests at the expense of his constituents. And yet, the true victims in this game are the political parties and the political system, which become the target of the people’s frustration and despair. Meanwhile, ‘legal’ law has done little to deter politicians from this type of conduct. [This is where the question deviates depending on the intended respondent]. So what can the political parties do to prevent their officials and operatives from engaging in such behaviors? Can they provide a credible disincentive by enacting and enforcing codes of conduct to withdraw party support from those who hurt the party? What is the role of the primary/campaign system in recruiting people who seem time-and-again to make the same mistake? Does our political system attract certain personality types? Where does responsibility lie for the persistence of this phenomenon?”

DNC Chair Howard Dean thought a code of conduct unnecessary. He argued that Nancy Pelosi had established a credible threat by pulling Representative William J. Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee after he was investigated by the FBI for corruption. I intervened stating that such disciplining may have some effect, but that it did little to institutionalize such standards within the fabric of the party. Moreover, I suggested, there could be an electoral benefit for the party that takes concrete steps toward ending the sense of impunity that characterizes the political culture. Dean retorted that codes of conduct need teeth and that the Republicans’ Contract with America failed because it was unenforceable. My Democracy & Governance colleagues then protested that establishing enforcement would require hurting the party in the process. Indeed, this would be an unfortunate but necessary consequence; although one that could pay off in the long run.

Continue Reading »

Illinois’ governor today signed the interstate compact to elect the President by national, popular vote.

Illinois is the third state to ratify the agreement, joining New Jersey and Maryland. NPV’s website reports the compact now accounts for one-sixth of the electoral votes needed to bring it into effect.

Here is what the governor said:

“This nation is built on the principle ‘for the people, by the people.’ By signing this law, we in Illinois are making it clear that we believe every voter has an equal voice in electing our nation’s leaders.”

Another upcoming event of interest, courtesy of our friends at Georgetown U’s Professionals in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Affairs:

Medvedev’s Russia: Political and Economic Perspectives Under The New Administration will be held on Wed. April 9th, from 11-1pm at the Copley Formal Lounge on campus. This is a very timely event, with president-elect Dmitry Medvedev slated to be inaugurated on May 7th.

The conference panel includes Andrei Illarionov of the Cato Institute, former chief economic adviser to Vladimir Putin (2000-2005); Trevor Gunn, SFS Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University; Edward D. Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow; and Andrei A. Piontkovsky of the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC and Executive Director, Strategic Studies Center, Moscow.

For those at the low end of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, lunch will be provided. Please RSVP with your name and organization to rsvp@preea.org.

Ammar Abdulhamid chats with students and faculty on April 10 about his work in Syrian political reform. Abdulhamid is Executive Director and Founder of the Tharwa Foundation (formerly known as the “Tharwa Project”), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to supporting democratic principles and practices in the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and has served as a non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy and as a Fellow at the International Institute for Modern Letters. He also publishes A Heretic’s Blog at the Tharwa Community.