Continuing our series of election reports, we are pleased to welcome the following post-election report on today’s historic Tunisian elections from Professor Jason Brownlee of the University of Texas, Austin, the author of Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. Brownlee, who is in Tunisia observing the elections, is currently co-authoring, with Andrew Reynolds and Tarek […]
Article
Posted inArticle
Digital Cameras Reduce Electoral Corruption
Elections in developing countries commonly fail to deliver accountability because of manipulation, often involving collusion between corrupt election offcials and political candidates. We report the results of an experimental evaluation of Quick Count Photo Capture—a monitoring technology designed to detect the illegal sale of votes by corrupt election offcials to candidates—carried out in 471 polling […]
Posted inArticle
Weekend Frivolity: Bad (Political!) Tats
Once again, official Monkey Cage cartoonist Ted McCagg:
Posted inArticle
More on Qadaffi’s Death: Violent Leader Removal Increases Likelihood of Democratization
In response to my request for research on the effect of the death of dictators on the future prospects of the country in question, Michael Miller of the Australian National University sent along the following comments: You pose some very interesting and timely questions related to Qaddafi’s violent ouster and what this implies for Libya’s […]
Posted inArticle
What Class Warfare Really Looks Like
From The Atlantic’s comments section. Courtesy of Chris Albon.
Posted inArticle
Change from Within
In this dialogue with Matt Miller, Ezra Klein channels a lot of political science to poke holes in Miller’s case for a third party. Via Facebook, a political scientist friend adds this: Here’s a question for the third-party types: Why a third party, instead of capturing one of the two? Most third party boosters tend […]
Posted inArticle
Herman Cain’s Racial Hucksterism
To the extent that Georgia businessman Herman Cain has an identifiable rhetorical style, it relies on the regular use of racially inflected humor, as The New York Times notes in this story on Cain’s tenuous position in the Republican nomination contest: He has no qualms, for instance, about playing off black clichĂ©s: should he become […]
Posted inArticle
Republicans Only Hate 9-9-9 Because It Makes Their Goal Too Clear
After Herman Cain rose to the first tier in the latest polls, the other Republican candidates finally decided to pay attention to what has been his sole selling point: the catchy 9-9-9 tax plan. The results weren’t pretty at last night’s debate. “Herman’s well-meaning, and I love his boldness, and it’s great,” Rick Santorum said. […]
Posted inArticle
Blame the Supreme Court
Dahlia Lithwick explains that “Blaming Congress for the corporate takeover of American democracy is only half the fun; blaming the Supreme Court is almost better.” But Occupy Wall Street is lacking in ambition, she suggests, if it only focuses on Citizens United, she explains: Of course, if you want to focus the blame somewhere for […]