O’Neil-Chapter 6 – Page 2 – Clouds, Clocks, and Sitting at Tables

FDP Wins Plularity of Bundestag Seats in Mock German Election–Spring 2008

[UPDATE: I made a mistake when I was initially tabulating results, necessitating a slight change in the composition of the Bundestag. As it now stands, the problem occurred in West Land, where is seems some poll workers had imbibed a little bit too much of that noted Bavarian beverage, bier. A recount (which is easy given that paper ballots were used) results in the following change: one more mandate for the FDP in West Land–I’ve slotted in the 4th candidate from the FDP party list from that Land–and one fewer mandate for the SPD in the same Land. Therefore, the final results are FDP-6; CDU-4; Greens-3; SPD-3. The party leader of FDP will still be given the role of party formateur.]

[UPDATE 2: The aforementioned poll workers have been fired and are now in AA.]

[UPDATE 3: Please see below how the adviser roles have been distributed.]

Here are the results from the mock election to the lower house of the German Reichstag held this afternoon. Those of you who were not elected to represent your district or Land in the Bundestag will nonetheless also be actively involved (as advisers to your fellow party members) in the second part of the simulation–negotiations to form a government. I will send more instructions regarding that portion of the simulation later this weekend. As you can see below, the FDP has won a plurality in the Bundestag and will be given first crack at putting together a workable coalition, trying to reach a formal agreement with one of the other parties. Signing coalition agreements with either the CDU/CSU or the SPD are most likely (given that there is a total of 16 seats in our parliament) but don’t count out a coalition with the Greens either.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll have more information regarding the specifics of the coalition negotiations and also post a sample coalition agreement form on Blackboard later, but in the meantime think about the most important elements of the negotiation process:

Which party/parties will form the government? Remember you need a majority in parliament to vote the new government into power.
Who will become the Chancellor (i.e., the Prime Minister)?
What will be the general orientation of the government’s policy-making agenda? Given the campaign pledges you made (either to your district and/or your Land) can you plausibly vote for a government that is dedicated to carrying out this policy agenda?
What about some of the policy specifics? Changes to the citizenship law? Higher taxes on carbon emitting industries? Higher (lower) income/consumption taxes? Anything else of importance to you or your district/Land?
Who will get which Ministerial Portfolios? Who will become Foreign Minister? Minister of the Environment? Minister of Health? Minister of Finance? Minister of Justice? Minister of Labor?
Which individuals will be given these portfolios?

I will set up a new folder in the Discussion Board section of Blackboard so that you can all begin the “feeling out” process prior to the official negotiations on Tuesday afternoon.

Click here to see the current members of the German Federal Cabinet (which is the Chief Executive), which is made up of the Chancellor (currently Angela Merkel) and 15 Cabinet ministers.

NOTE: You will notice that some of you who ran for election in districts have nonetheless been elected to parliament on the basis of party lists. I had to do this, given the relatively small number of students in the class. In general, the party lists are much larger than the ones you saw on your ballots as there were simply not enough students and I wanted to have four SMDs. Therefore, where it was warranted, I moved non-SMD-winners over to party lists (i.e., when the proportion of votes generated a number of seats for that party in excess of the number of individuals on the party list. Of course, this would never happen in a real German election as the party lists always have many more candidates than the party will end up earning on the basis of PR. I’ll go over this on Tuesday.

Here are the advisers and the party member whom you will be advising over the course of the government formation negotiations on Tuesday.

Introduction to Comparative Politics–Second Paper

Here is the second paper, whose theme is “culture” (or not) and democracy.*”

Introduction to Comparative Politics Paper–Culture and Democracy

“In Islam, God is Caesar,in [Confucianism], Caesar is God; In [Eastern Christian] Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner.”

“The underlying problem for the West in not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam.”

“Contemporary China’s Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy, and supremacy of the collectivity over the individual, creates obstacles to democratization.”

The quotes above will serve as the inspiration for your second paper this semester. I would like you to argue in favor or against the claims made by Huntington quoted above. You can argue that they are basically true, essentially false, or some combination thereof2. Regardless, your task is to provide a reasoned, well researched response to the declarative statements above, using Chapters 5 and 6 in O’Neil, and the articles by Fish, Stepan, Perry, Zakaria, and any others we have read, as your starting points.

Assess the arguments in light of what you know about the requirements (institutional, cultural, structural) of democracy and the nature of authoritarianism. Your outside research will most likely focus on understanding more about Islam, “Asian values,” and/or Christian Orthodoxy (as it is practiced in Eastern Europe).

While the main focus of your paper will be in setting up an argument for or against the claims above, I would like you to then use two states–one “predominantly Muslim”, and one Asian (or Eastern Orthodox)–to illustrate your main arguments and to act as supporting evidence for your claims. Please use chapters 5 and 6 of the Essentials and of Readings as the main source for the paper. For information related to your specific states, you will have to consult at least 4 other academically reputable sources. Note that this means Google is not your friend here!! This will entail a trip down to the library by foot, or a virtual trip to the library’s electronic resources.

Your paper should be 4-5 pages long, double-spaced on 8:5X11-inch paper, with 1-inch margins on the top, bottom, and the sides. The paper must be written in Times Roman 12pt. font. In addition, please cut and paste the “Paper Evaluation Sheet” from Blackboard to the end of your paper (after the works cited page). The paper is due electronically via Digital Dropbox in Blackboard by the beginning of class on Tuesday, April 15th.

Good luck, you kings and queens of comparative!!

*Note: See the version of this assignment posted to Blackboard as it has informative (and helpful) footnotes.

From CSM–In Turkey, Secularists Escalate Fight Against Ruling AKP

Amongst the readings we’ll be addressing tomorrow in introduction to comparative politics is Alfred Stepan’s “The Twin Tolerations”, which analyzes the necessary mutual respect between religious society and political society that democracy demands. Please read this recent article from the Christian Science Monitor on the battle between Turkish secularists and the Islamic-oriented ruling party in Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is headed to Turkey’s court system. The secularists argue that the Turkish Constitution’s strict separation of church and state has been violated by the religious nature of the ruling party. Please bring this article to class tomorrow. Be prepared to discuss how well the “twin tolerations” are working here. Here are some excerpts:

Under scrutiny: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party are facing heightened criticism for straying from the Constitution’s secular principles.

Umit Bektas/Reuters

After protesting the AKP’s presidential candidate, precipitating new elections, and then losing out to the AKP at the polls last year, hard-line secularists are now taking a new tack: trying to shut down the party for “expunging” the Constitution’s secular principles.

Turkey’s highest court is set to decide in the coming days whether to allow the motion, filed by the country’s top prosecutor on March 14, to go forward. If the Constitutional Court decides to allow the case to proceed, it could plunge Turkey into a deep crisis, threatening the country’s emerging political and economic stability and further jeopardizing its already troubled bid for European Union membership.

“This would definitely hinder the government in many ways. There are so many things to be done, such as issues relating to the EU, Cyprus, and the economy, and the government would no longer be in a position of authority,” says Sahin Alpay, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University. “What the people going after the party are doing is really shooting the country in its own feet.”

EU officials have criticized the closure move, calling it antidemocratic.

“In a normal European democracy, political issues are debated in parliament and decided in the ballot box, not in the courtroom,” said EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn in response to the prosecutor’s unexpected call to shut down the AKP. “It is difficult to see that this lawsuit respects the democratic principles of a normal European society.”

24 parties closed since 1963

Turkish law gives the judiciary broad powers to shut political parties down. The Constitutional Court has closed 24 parties since it was established in 1963. The court is currently deciding on a motion to close the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), accused of promoting ethnic separatism.

Join Me in Welcoming the World’s Newest Democracy

The Himalayan state of Bhutan has become the world’s newest democracy, upon the completion of elections there on Monday. As this Washington Post story notes, the change from monarchical to democratic rule was initiated by the benevolent monarchy. Bhutanese were reticent about what this would mean for Bhutan’s social cohesiveness and some lamented the potential danger of faction, with various political parties competing for the political allegiance of the newly-minted voters:

TOKTOKHA, Bhutan, March 24 — Without revolution or bloodshed, this tiny Himalayan kingdom became the world’s newest democracy Monday, as wildflower farmers, traditional healers, Buddhist folk artists and computer engineers voted in their country’s first parliamentary elections, ending a century of royal rule.

In a historic event for the country of 700,000, entire families took to winding mountainous roads, traveling sometimes for days in minivans, on horseback and on foot to cast their ballots, marking Bhutan’s transition to a constitutional monarchy.

Despite concerns that Bhutanese would be turned off by the rough-and-tumble world of politics, more than 79 percent of the estimated 318,000 registered voters turned out at polling places.

It was the king, as well as his father and predecessor, who ordered the subjects to vote, in the belief that democracy would foster stability in a geographically vulnerable country wedged between China and India and known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon.

Here’s an informative news report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on politics in Bhutan.

40th Anniversary of the Prague Spring and Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

This Spring marks the 40th anniversary of the Prague Spring–a domestic, Czech-led liberalization and democratization movement in the former Czechoslovakia–and the subsequent Soviet military invasion of that former communist state. As Czechs sang and wrote their way towards a regime Czechs would describe as “Communism with a human face”, Leonid Brezhnev–the leader of the Soviet Union–rolled Soviet tanks onto the streets of Prague to put an end to Alexander Dubcek’s reforms. This was the first concrete foreign policy manifestation of the “combating of anti-socialist forces,” which came to be known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Euronews has an interesting report on the commemoration of the Prague Spring, which has been uploaded to youtube. I encourage you to take a look.

It’s Spring, so how is your Bracket Doing?

Well, it’s that time of year again. Has your bracket been busted? How many of you can honestly claim that you predicted the upset of Yousaf Raza Gilani becoming Pakistan’s new Prime Minister? Now I realize that most of you were predicting a victory for Ma Ying-jeou in Taiwan’s recent presidential elections. But did you honestly think that he would win by 15! (He won 57.5% of the vote.) Mr. Gilani almost busted my bracket, but I think that I may be able to redeem myself with my pick for the winner of the upcoming Serbian Parliamentary elections (given that the Balkan Conference is a mid-major, that group of countries has not been followed very closely and I have a little bit of an advantage in prognosticating the outcome there).

Current Prime Minister, Vojislav Koštunica, disbanded his coalition government on March 13 due to tensions within the governing coalition as a result of the declaration of independence by the former Serbian province of Kosovo. New elections are slated to be held on May 11 of this year, with Koštunica’s conservative and nationalistic Democratic Party of Serbia will find its strongest challenge from Serbian President Boris Tadić‘s bloc of pro-democratic and pro-Western parties and the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party. It will be interesting to observe how much the apparent loss of the Kosovo (the “Serbian Jerusalem”) will help the ultra-nationalists and hurt Koštunica.

And finally, my surprise pick to get to the Final Four from the East Region is the tiny Himalayan state of Bhutan, which has been flying under the radar but has been getting its democratic game together. As Agence-France Presse reports, democracy is marching inexorably onward in a fit of Fukuyaman glee:

THIMPHU, Bhutan (Agence France-Presse) — Bhutan stands poised to become the world’s newest democracy on Monday with elections ordered by its revered royal family to end its absolute rule.

The tiny Buddhist state, wedged in the Himalayas between India and China, will elect members for a lower house, ending the century-long rule of the hugely popular Wangchuck dynasty.Bhutan’s Oxford-educated ruler, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, 28, made a forceful last-minute appeal over the weekend to his subjects — some of whom were initially reluctant to bring in democracy — to vote.

“As you approach the duty of voting at the elections that will bring democracy, do so with pride and confidence of a people that have achieved so much,” he said in a statement published in the nation’s newspapers. “First and foremost, you must vote. Every single person must exercise his or her franchise.”

The king is the fifth ruler in the dynasty, in power since 1907. The path to democracy began in 2001, when the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, handed over the day-to-day tasks of government to a council of ministers, and finally stepped down in favor of his son in late 2006.

Since then, father and son have traveled the country to explain to its 670,000 people why the nation should embrace democracy.

Wow! I think we have one of those rare instances of enlightened despotism.

Russian Journalist found Murdered

Freedom House, a prominent NGO that monitors and assesses the level of civil and political rights and freedoms in the world, downgraded Russia’s status in 2004 from Partly Free to Not Free. This is part of the legacy of Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. Another part of the legacy has been the dramatic number of journalists killed in Russia over the last decade. Most of these journalists had either been working on, or had reported stories about, corruption in the government and business elite.

Here is the report from Euronews about the latest Russian journalist to be killed:

A Russian journalist has been assassinated in Moscow. Ilias Shurpaiev, who worked for the state-run Channel One, was found dead in his flat. He had apparently being strangled with a belt and suffered stab wounds. Shurpaeiv, a native of the mostly Muslim Dagestan province, was the author of several reports on the Caucusus region.

More than a dozen journalists have been killed in contract-style killings in Russia since 2000.

Resource Dependent Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Jensen and Wantchekon (2000) have created an index of resource dependence and determined the level of the same for the states of sub-Sarahan Africa. The scores range from 1 (no resource dependence) to 4 (extreme resource dependence). They use this as an important independent variable in determining democratic transition, consolidation, and government effectiveness. How much of an effect does resource dependence have on each of these dependent variables? You’ll have to read the paper to find out, or attend my class in intro to comparative tomorrow.

Chinese Conceptions of “Rights”: From Mencius to Mao–and Now

Elizabeth has written the above-titled article, which has been published in the most recent issue of Perspectives on Politics. I will be adding this to the readings under the topic of democracy. I’ll adjust the syllabus on Blackboard accordingly and provide an electronic link to the full-text article on the electronic version of the syllabus. You can also link to the article here. [Updated: The link doesn’t work; go to Blackboard for the link.]

We will address the implications of “Asian values” for democracy and seek to understand the moral underpinnings of Chinses society (remember that we are not equating “Asian” with Chinese; Asia is a vast and heterogeneous continent), and whether western conceptions of democracy and human rights are necessary. How is political authority legitimized in Chinese society, according to Mencius, Confucius, and Mao? Here is the abstract to Perry’s article:

The recent explosion of popular protest in China, often framed as a demand for the fulfillment of “rights,” has captured widespread attention. Some observers interpret the protests as signs of a “moral vacuum.” Others see the unrest as signaling a powerful new “rights consciousness.” In either case, the protests are often regarded as a major challenge to the stability of the political system. In this article, an examination of Chinese conceptions of “rights,” as reflected in the ethical discourses of philosophers, political leaders, and protesters (and as contrasted with American understandings of rights), provides the basis for questioning prevailing assumptions about the fragility of the Chinese political order. For over two millennia, Chinese political thought, policy, and protest have assigned central priority to the attainment of socioeconomic security. As a result, the meaning of “rights” inChinese political discourse differs significantly from the Anglo-American tradition. Viewed in historical context, China’s contemporary “rights” protests seem less politically threatening. The Chinese polity appears neither as vacuous nor as vulnerable as it is sometimes assumed to be.

Social Impact and the Decision to Vote

In continuing with today’s theme of the impact of the “social” in political science, we note that political parties the world over have spent a lot of money and developed various ideas and hypotheses regarding what motivates voters to go to the polls and exercise their most basic democratic right. In the most recent issue (which is behind a pay wall) of the American Political Science Review–the flagship journal of the American Political Science Association–a group of political scientists, led by Donald Green at Yale, has demonstrated that social shaming may be a way to increase overall voter turnout.* Here is the abstract, with a sample of the letters sent below:

Voter turnout theories based on rational self-interested behavior generally fail to predict significant turnout unless they account for the utility that citizens receive from performing their civic duty. We distinguish between two aspects of this type of utility, intrinsic satisfaction from behaving in accordance with a norm and extrinsic incentives to comply, and test the effects of priming intrinsic motives and applying varying degrees of extrinsic pressure. A large-scale field experiment involving several hundred thousand registered voters used a series of mailings to gauge these effects. Substantially higher turnout was observed among those who received mailings promising to publicize their turnout to their household or their neighbors. These findings demonstrate the profound importance of social pressure as an inducement to political participation.

Would you be susceptible to being shamed into voting? Well, the authors find that the overall impact of threatening to publicize your (non)-voting behavior to your neighbors was to increase turnout by 8.1 percentage points. That’s an astounding impact. Here are the letters:

This letter increased the rate of voter turnout by 4.9 percentage points, a much stronger effect than appeals to civic duty alone (which raised turnout from between 1.8 and 2.5 percentage points.

This is the letter that produced an 8.1 percentage point increase in voter turnout.

*For a web site that tracks voter turnout rates worldwide, please see this post.

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