Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance
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Tom Friedman steals my idea
At least I’d like to think so. Here’s the key language:
Specifically, the Obama team needs to make sure that Iraq’s bickering politicians neither postpone the next elections, scheduled for January, nor hold them on the basis of the 2005 “closed list” system that is dominated by the party leaders. We must insist, with all our leverage, on an “open list” election, which creates more room for new faces by allowing Iraqis to vote for individual candidates and not just a party. This is what Iraq’s spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is also demanding. It is a much more accountable system.
If we can get open list voting, the next big step would be the emergence of Iraqi parties in this election running for office on the basis of nonsectarian coalitions — where Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds run together. This would be significant: Iraq is a microcosm of the whole Middle East, and if Iraq’s sects can figure out how to govern themselves — without an iron-fisted dictator — democracy is possible in this whole region.
H/T to Barak of the thoughtful new blog Democracy & Society.
Update: Ranj Alaaldin at the Guardian is on board, and now is a good time to recall Ayad Allawi’s November 2007 op-ed that effectively called for a more candidate-based system.
4 responses to to “Tom Friedman steals my idea”
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[...] Jack responds like a gentleman [...]
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There is no doubt that open lists are more competitive (within parties, that is–pretty much by definition), more personalized (again by definition). Whether they are more “accountable” is very highly debatable.
I must say that it is very gratifying to see mainstream reporters talking about list type, and to see people protesting on the streets over such matters! But one suspects it will be a while for what the academic community knows about these systems to filter on out. And granted, we are still learning, as the research on these sorts of questions is very under-developed. But the accountability aspect does not look so good, mainly because in any open-list system of moderate district magnitude, the typical pattern in a party is a few utterly “safe” legislators (with huge preference vote totals) and then a smattering of candidates with vote totals very similar to one another and thus few votes separating winners from losers. It is hard to hold legislators accountable in that context.
I will be posting some papers on this at my site in the near future, and there are already the works of David Samuels and John Carey on related themes.
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And, of course, my comment and implicitly the argument of Friedman and Jack assumes the lists really are open, rather than “flexible” (as the governorate election lists apparently were)
I have often thought that flexible lists could be designed to offer a “best of both worlds” between open and closed lists, but in practice I doubt that has been achieved. Most actual flexible list systems require such high thresholds of preference votes to change the list order that few get elected who would have lost without the preference-vote provision. Then again, maybe that is not a bad thing (see first comment).
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[...] who agreed to this are unlikely to lose their seats under the new arrangements. See MSS’ comment in the Tom Friedman post [...]
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