http://democraticpiece.com Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:41:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The BBC reports that Russia and China, among others, have voted against Zimbabwe sanctions in the UN's Security Council. There's probably no surprise here: the vote gives both countries the chance to exert their power in opposition to the hopes of their western opponents, the US and the UK. It ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/07/12/zimbabwe-sanctions-vetoed/ The BBC has reported that Britain has doubled aid to Pakistan to nearly $1 billion over the next three years. The three main recipient are the areas of education, poverty reduction, health care, including the North West Frontier.  It remains to be seen whether a new strategy will help build state ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/07/03/britain-doubles-aid-to-pakistanchange/ Via POMED comes a call by Scott Carpenter and Michael Rubin for MMP in Iraq's governorates. A candidate-centric system, they argue, could dampen sectarian tension by weakening the party system. Reforming Iraq's election system on the national level will be difficult... At the local level, however, there is real opportunity... Iraqis ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/06/09/another-candidate-centric-iraq-proposal/ The NY Times wrote an editorial today on The Seductive Charm of Term Limits, which bemoaned the fact that a competent leader such as NY Governor Bloomberg just might have to retire in 2010 due to existing term limits. I found the article interesting, but remarkably myopic in scope, ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/06/09/the-case-for-term-limits/ There are an array of reasons that Obama should not choose Hillary as his running mate.  But there is one simple reason that Obama cannot select Hillary for the ticket: she doesn’t share his world vision.  Through the course of the primary process, we have learned that Hillary subscribes to ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/06/04/hillary-cant-be-the-vp/ Erica Bonanno of our sister Conflict Resolution MA program is in Sierra Leone doing a program assessment for Search for Common Ground. From the first post to Erica's blog: My project here is to do an evaluation of the radio program dealing with children and youth issues, called Golden Kids News ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/06/04/colleague-blogs-from-sierra-leone/ 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.ShareThis http://democraticpiece.com/2008/05/30/interesting-story/ The latest edition of Amnesty's global human rights report is out and available online in several langauges here. ShareThis http://democraticpiece.com/2008/05/28/amnesty-international-human-rights-report/ 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 ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/05/28/georgia-result/ 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 ... http://democraticpiece.com/2008/05/21/georgia-votes-lower-threshold-but-lower-magnitude/