One way to model dictatorship

Says the BBC:

Iraqi politics is still a zero-sum game, and one in which the Sunni Arabs feel themselves doomed to be the losers.

Last week I analogized the situation to repeated games of Chicken.

Failing to Meet Expectations

The NYT carried a story about Ukraine’s economic collapse and the results for Ukraine’s young democracy.

Basically, the economic collapse, coupled with the inability of the political system to effectively deal with rising unemployment, rising debt obligations, inflation and bank runs, has disillusioned Ukrainians.  One Ukrainian stated, ironically standing in the same place where the Orange Revolution began, that: “There will be a revolt,” he said. “And people will come because they are just fed up.”

The problem for democracy promoters is that the Ukrainian people blame the political system – the democratic political system – for their current predicament.  As the artcle makes clear, Ukraine’s proximity to Russia makes the crisis, and the subsequent loss of government legitimacy, more worrisome as Russia will undoubtedly seek to take advantage of any opportunity to undermine the pro-Western, democratic government on its doorstep.

Finally, the situation highlights the need for democracatic systems to overcome partisan divides and provide tangible  improvements in their citizens’ lives.

Update   I felt Jack’s comments should be highlighted as he raises a good point:

And, in the interim, the need for the old democracies’ heads of state to pressure Ukranian leaders to stick with democratic institutions through the crisis.

Backslide, American-style

Monday’s Supeme Court upholding of Indiana’s voter ID law deserves comment on a blog about comparative democracy.

The short story: you cannot vote in Indiana unless you present valid, state- or federal-issued photo identification. The longer version: there is a fairly narrow list of accepted forms. If you don’t have one, you can fill out a provisional ballot and sign an affidavit as to your identity. If you want that vote to count, you have to go to the county seat within 10 days and sign another affidavit.

I have nothing against voter ID, even if solves a problem that doesn’t really exist. Except for people who don’t want their pictures taken, there nothing intrinsically wrong with voter ID…

…as long as the state accepts responsibility for issuing IDs to all citizens in an equal and accessible manner.

The social inequality of the policy as-is will be clear to anyone with SES columns in his spreadsheet. To vote without ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and considerable free time to dance with bureaucracy. To get a free ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and a valid birth certificate, which, if you don’t have one, means you need a car and/or public transportation and the free time to go get all this stuff.

This certainly will not increase turnout in the world’s most low-turnout established democracy. Especially among the poor and elderly – those without cars, mobility, free time, money or jobs that give them time to vote.

But these old arguments will be familiar to TDP’s Americanist audience. Rather than rehash the projected effects and underlying methodologies, I want to make three comparative points.

One. If the US constitution contained an equal and affirmative right to vote, no amount of judicial balancing would have produced this outcome. Unlike in the world’s other, established democracies, no such right exists. As such, SCOTUS has opened the door to similar policies in states itching to promulgate them.

Two. Even right-to-vote countries risk social inequality spilling over into political inequality. That’s why Canada’s electoral management body goes to people’s houses registering voters. With its policy of compulsory voting, Australia is similarly proactive about filling its rolls.

Three. Some say voting is a right, not a responsibility. If you want to vote, get off your lazy duff and make the preparations. That argument is a mask – one that secures buy-in among libertarian-oriented masses – for systemic efforts to steal elections where technology and learning make overt fraud obsolete. Around the world, parallel vote counts and international pressure have forced authoritarian leaders to “upgrade” their methods. By squeezing participation, restrictive electoral laws let dictators steal elections long before election day. As the number of competitive federal jurisdictions in America drops, state-level entry barriers make electoral conclusions more foregone in all but the most competitive years.

American democracy will survive voter ID, but it’s a step in the authoritarian direction. The short-term solution is affirmative state action to issue those IDs. In the long term, we need a federally guaranteed, equal right to vote.

What to watch for in Pakistan

Commentators are putting faith in Pakistan’s election on Monday.¹

Mort Kondracke of Roll Call stresses the stresses the importance of Pakistan’s parliamentary elections on Monday, which will determine if the U.S. ally will move towards democracy or authoritarianism… Paul Wiseman of USA Today suggests that this exercise of democracy could result in the weakening of President Pervez Musharraf’s hold on the country…Thus, Wiseman reports that the United States stands to lose as well in the election.

If Barak is right, that faith is misplaced.

Second, the election is not going to be free and fair; the bar is a credible election. I think credible means an outcome that does lot lead to more chaos than currently exists.

We can make reasonable assumptions about the outcome of this election. The important question is how key actors – the Taliban, those calling themselves Taliban, the military, an enraged public – will respond in the aftermath.

1. The POMED does a faithful, reliable and comprehensive job aggregating news on Middle East democratization and foreign aid. Put their blog in your newsreader.

At least they vote on weekends

Kyrgyzstan had a fraudulent parliamentary election on Sunday, according to the OSCE. As in Russia, the strongman’s party won a lion’s share of seats under a new list PR system (5% threshold).

Russia dumped its mixed system for list PR before elections earlier this month. Kyrgyzstan recently passed constitutional amendments, one of which abolished a single-member district plurality system.

Like Russia, Kyrgyzstan also made it harder for small parties to get on the ballot.

Unlike in Russia, the supreme court is reviewing changes to the electoral law.

Kasparov can’t contest Russian presidency

Steven Taylor blogs an AP report that Garry Kasparov can’t run for president. Other Russia can’t find a place to hold a nominating convention. Because Kasparov isn’t a registered party member, under Russian law, he has to be nominated in person.

So, no space for a meeting, no meeting. No meeting, no nominee.

Kasparov spent five days in jail last month for campaigning.

Why is Mr. Putin so scared?

Other Russia’s blog reproduces Garry Kasparov’s WSJ op-ed here. From rigging the election system to tossing out OSCE poll monitors, Putin has made December 2’s Duma elections as competitive as a US presidential nominating convention.

So why is Mr. Putin so scared if things are going so well? He is a rational and pragmatic person, not prone to melodrama. He knows the numbers, so why the heavy and heavy-handed campaigning if he knows he and United Russia are going to win? The answer is that he is very aware of how brittle his power structure has become. Instead of sounding like a Tsar, high above the crowd, he’s beginning to sound like just another nervous autocrat. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.”

Kasparov spent 5 days in jail this week for demonstrating. He leads The Other Russia, a conglomeration of opposition parties contesting next week’s parliamentary elections. Over the past few months, the situation for parties like Other Russia has gotten gradually worse – from an engineered voting system to prohibitive ballot access rules to outright repression.

Kasparov leaves jail, fights on

The Other Russia blog reports Garry Kasparov is out of prison. Kasparov leads Other Russia, a coalition of opposition parties aiming to surmount new institutional hurdles in next week’s Duma elections. He was arrested for protesting last week.

According to the blog, Kasparov says the arrest was a signal of Putin’s commitment to crack down if the opposition pushes back. But the former chess champ isn’t fazed; he’s writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Russia jails chess champ for protesting

Garry Kasparov is spending five days in jail for protesting Russia’s new ballot access law, Richard Winger reports. Kasparov is leader of The Other Russia, a confederation of opposition parties.

He’s in near total isolation, unable to see relatives and colleagues or even make a phone call.

Other Russia runs a blog on a dot-org, so we’ll still hear from them after thugs shut down the .ru page.

High-five to the Russian opposition. Responding to an earlier post by Danny, I asked how parties would respond to the new institutional environment – especially a 7% threshold and needing 50,000 members for ballot status. What’s more, Putin rendered retail politics nearly useless by eliminating single-member districts last summer. Other Russia is clearly a strategy for dealing with these hurdles.

TDP redux: US reform, Russian backslide and some neat elections

Sorry we’ve been so quiet. The end of semester looms, and it’s been a week for catching up, especially after last weekend’s Claim Democracy conference. I attended some sessions, reconnected with old colleagues, met a reader and had dinner with one of Election Day’s IRV victors.

Russia meanwhile has refused visas to OSCE election monitors. Not that being able to announce fraud would matter much. The electoral system – from party registration to seat allocation – is basically rigged.

Denmark last week held an election combining list PR with SMD-style nominations.

Slightly dated but no less important, a report out of York University asks why Ontarians rejected MMP last month. The so-called “bads” (evil list tier, bigger legislature) outweighed the goods (especially the citizens’ assembly process). A model predicts MMP would have won with 63% (well above the mandated threshold) had information been more full.