SSEES student breaks the blogjam

One of SSEES’s soon to be final year politics students has a blog with references and resources to Ukrainian and post-Soviet politics. It’s something of a first for SSEES student blogs I have come across as completely avoids the what-my-flatmate-did-last-night-can-I-get-my-essay-in-on-time genre in favour of a diet of up-to-date and interesting political links.

That's the Volunteer Fire Department...

For reasons that are not entirely clear, a camper van with the markings of the Volunteer Fire Department of a small German town, Stickenbuettel is somewhere near the North German seaside resort of Cuxhaven near the mouth of the river Elbe.has appeared in our suburban street. It’s UK-registered but left-hand drive so presumably someone as bought it as a cheap way of going on holiday in Europe (Europe outside the British Isles , I mean.

The Cuxhaven Fire Department, you will be pleased to hear, has its own exhaustive Wikipedia entry (in German) which tells us everything you need to know including the fact that they have their own cadet force, but not why they are flogging their surplus vehicles to suburban mid-Sussex.

Slovakia 15 Years On - or how we learned to stop worrying and love populism

Somehow without quite realising I agreed to co-organise a one day conference at SSEES on Slovakia 15 Years On. However, with the help of the British Czech and Slovak Association, the Slovak Embassy and colleagues from SSEES and elsewhere, this turns out to be a whole lot less onerous that I had feared and on the day the event itself both interesting and successful and we are even lucky enough to get a keynote address from the current Slovak Ambassador to the UK, Juraj Zervan.

The ambassador, suffering (like me) from hay fever, reviews Slovakia’s development as a small Central European nation bringing it up to date with a discussion of the current ‘dynamic and stable’ government, which he says is building upon earlier reforms while developing a less passive foreign policy than the previous government and not losing sight of the social side of economic development. My scribbled notes also say that he stressed the importance of using state monopolies to forward the development of the economy, but it is not clear (at least from my notes whether this means using existing state holdings, or actively developing them.

Over lunch I hear less sanguine views about the current government from others: it has no real interest in foreign policy and is mainly interested consolidating its domestic position (very successfully so far) in controlling the finances of ministries and doing advantageous deals with the Russians over gas without much of an eye to longer term energy security. On the other hand, Tomáš Valášek of the Centre for European Reform reminds us the afternoon session, Slovakia has an excellent corps of EU-minded diplomats and previous Slovak governments’ focus in democracy promotion in SE Europe (while successful) overlooked the question of Ukraine, whose future Slovakia a more direct interest in as far as its own security is concerned.

The rest of the politics session centres on the question of populism in Slovak politics. As Tim Haughton notes, this is less related to the EU, whose influence on domestic politics is somewhat tangential and ad hoc than the general trend of democratic politics across Europe to ‘go populist’. As Kevin Deegan-Krause explains in a presentation that is theoretical, accessible and witty, populists appeal tend to move around the political landscape depending on who is in power (and part of the establishment) and who is not and can use various bits of kit from the toolbox of populists appeals (there are many). Holding government office tends to wear down populist lustre and new parties therefore do best as populist insurgents. The big exception to this rule, is of course, Fico’s Smer, which has bucked the trend and remained popular and populist in office. The reason, as Karen Henderson highlighted, in her presentation on the disarray of the Slovak opposition, is that populist parties reflect social and electoral demand. It matters little that the opposition can depict Fico as a semi-democratic ‘Mečiar lite’ (my phrase, not hers) and win international support, when they lack any coherent unifying political project - either for themselves or society - and Slovak voters are elsewhere. Interestingly, although some Slovak officials and politicians can rather sensitive about discussion of the current government - seemingly fearing an outbreak of Fico bashing as soon as any Western political scientist takes the floor - intellectual undercurrents seem to be shifting towards taking Smer much more seriously.

The day it should be said also included a morning session on culture: presentations on the refraction of Slovakia’s transformation to a consumer capitalist society through fiction with an outwardly trashy and sensational edge; a clever and interesting sounding novel with a mentally handicapped narrator, which, again, offers a skewed, satirical perspective on Slovak society and reveals much more going on than first meets the eye; and the work of the Slovak composer Eugen Suchoň, the centenary of whose birth is rapidly approaching.

In the margins of the conference I also learn that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico ate a lot of kangaroo steaks whilst a visiting scholar at SSEES in 1999; that a Slovak designed the dollar bill; that (allegedly) a fifth of Slovaks are of aristocratic descent and that some Slovaks may be allergic to the metals in the new Euro coins and will need to watch out for skins complaints when the single currency is introduced in Slovakia in 2009 (now a source of predictable anguish in parts of the Czech press - the fact that the Slovaks are ahead in European integration, that is, not the skin allergies). And for anyone who can't work out the puzzles of Slovak politics or culture, there is always the rather neat (and rather cheap) Slovak-themed puzzle I came across from Puck Puzzles, which illustrates this post.

The European dog that doesn't bark

Yesterday sees me acting as discussant at a workshop on the Europeanization of parties in Eastern Europe at SSEES sponsored by the CEELBAS consortium, although as quickly transpires the story is actually one of non- or minimal Europeanization. The EU and ‘EU-related issues’ ) have not demonstrably changed party politics in CEE in the way that the EU has leveraged and shaped the region’s public administration and public policy.

The EU as an issue in domestic party politics in CEE has, however, been non-existent or at best a here-today-gone-tomorrow controversy which surfaces then quickly disappears around the time of accession. In many CEE countries, smallness and the consensus carried over from getting in to the EU couple with the public's standard lack of interest in the EU on the part of voters combine to make the EU a total non-issue, whose main impact is provide an occasional reference point for politicians berating each other's performance and an career option for politicians with an eye on the European Parliament or the European Commission.

As Agnes Batory’s excellent paper put it, as far as parties are concerned it Europeanization is, bluntly put, ‘the dog that didn’t bark. They haven’t changed very much or changed in obviously EU-related ways and the ‘anti-EU’ populist backlash that various academics and journalists have detected in various recent electoral upheavals can, looked at through different spectacles, be perfectly adequately explained by domestic factors - something I suspect that is also true of the coalition deals struck in 2005-6 with various dodgy minor parties in Poland and Slovakia most often cited as an EU-related, although as one paper rightly noted this seemed to fit in more to a process of the ‘de-Europeanization’ of party competition. I also Agnes Batory’s paper for tracking the ‘dog that doesn’t bark’ tag back to Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze - political scientists really should read more detective stories. I’ve heard there is one academic the US who bases his entire research methods course on episodes of Columbo- plenty of different modes of deduction and induction to study from the good Lieutenant

Back at the seminar, however, the €64,000 question is, of course, ‘so what’? What if Europe isn’t reshaping party politics in CEE, why should we care? I put both questions and got an excellent several-party answer from Stephen Whitefield: there may be implications for democratic governance in CEE; there is a puzzle to solve because we would expect the EU to be picked up and politicized by political entrepreneurs and emerge (but then disappear) as a political issue amid the electoral churning of the more volatile party systems of the region such as Slovakia, Poland or Estonia. The EU in CEE Stephen suggested - at least, as far as my illegible notes suggest (please correct me if you read this) was more part of a politics of democratic deficits and populism, whereas in Western Europe politics (and the way the EU played in domestic politics) centred on economic performance

Having exceeded my discussant’s brief and added to the mood of ‘Europeanization scepticism’, I had coffee and sandwiches courtesy of CEELBAS before leaving for the tropical heat of the fifth floor and a meeting of the SSEES post-graduate teaching committee.

Personality politics: Beyond our Ken?

When you start getting text messages from the Czech Republic asking you who voted for in the London mayoral election, you know that the Ken vs Boris duel really has caught the political imagination. The answer, readers may be disappointed to know, is actually I voted for no one because (thank God) I no longer live in London and can’t vote. I did, however, take a trip into the London Vote Match website to do their online quiz to find out, who I ought to have voted for. These type of political quizzes tend to place me all over the political spectrum, and this time apparently, I am squarely in the centre-left and should have voted for incumbent Ken Livingstone and, rather more worryingly, not a million miles from the far-left Left List.

This probably reflects the fact the questions were heavily loaded towards transport and ecological issues, rather than the economy more generally and didn’t ask about the mayor’s predilection for Hugo Chavez. Still, it looks like, in my own terms, I was right to text my friend back that view the Conservatives’ big personality candidate Boris Johnson je úplný šašek and that I preferred the existing mayor. I wonder if this is what Václav Havel had in mind when he argued that parties and ideologies should give way to forms of democratic politics based on personalities and personal qualities ... The Czechs, it should be said, studiedly avoid electing anyone to executive office , from President to local mayor, by direct election - the nearest thing to personality based politics in the Czech Republic being the ultra-low turnout elections to the Czech Senate. These tend to throw up a mix of worthy independent doctors-turned-politicians and dodgy small town populists

Ask a silly question....

The Czech Republic’s Centre for Public Opinion Research issues a regular series of press releases on its findings (all in Czech), which often find their way pretty much unedited into the Czech press. Some are, however, more informative than others: recent CVVM research tells us that, shock horror, many Czechs don't like with democracy.

Indeed, headline grabbingly 32% want (or tend to want) the abolition of political parties and the dissolution of parliament; 24% think they would be better off under an (unspecified) non-democratic regime and another 22% think authoritarianism would be allowable in certain circumstances (which we don’t know because this quanaitaive polling); 14% would like a return to Communist one party rule, with 1% more wanting a authoritaran rule who makes quick decisions. In keeping the Czech army traditionally apolitical role and lack of social prestige, however, only one percent want a military dictatorship.

At this point the traditional anguished response would be to say what shallow roots democracy has in the CR, how exaggrated its democratic tradition is etc etc… However, the polling is frankly meaningless, as no such alternative regime choices or party-less democracy is on the agenda and most respondent obviously knew it. A mere 9% thought it likely that parties and partliament would be wound up in the next five years and only 1 per cent though one-party rule or dictatsorship would return. In other words the responses are simply an expression of frustration and general pissed-off-ness pretty much common to all democracies. Predictably, it is the poor, old, less educated and Communist Party voters who are most ‘undemocratic’ in their views.

In other, slightly more meaningful polling CVVM measures Czech attitudes towards foreigners and tolerance towards minority and disadvanatged groups. Most Czechs, quite sensibly do not want to live next door to alcholics or drug users, people with a criminal record or mental illnesses. Gays are the next least favoured group of potential neighbours (29%) followed by black people (26%), although dislike of gays next door has dropped sharply from 42% in 2003. Tellingly, Roma do not seem have been mentioned in the survey, but the suspicion must be that they would the poll pretty high up the Czech list of undesirables.

Czech views on foreigners living in the CR are stable and lukewarm to hostile. Public opinion on allowing foreigners to saettle the country have softened slightly over the past five years, but are evenly divided, but - as five years – the overwhelming majority (68%) want immigrants if they come to adapt to Czech customs not ‘partly’ but ‘as much as possible’. Interestingly, a clear majority are against (49%: 37%) are against favouring EU citizens over other foreigners, although this a little more welcoming to fellow EU-ropeans than in 2003. Most – in the best West European traditions – see immigrants as a threat to local workers and what them restricted to shortage professions or barred from working in areas of high unemployment.

Romanian electoral reform: bitter fruit?

Alan Renwick posts the following explanation of the new Romanian electoral system as a ‘seed’ (comment) on the Fruits and Votes electoral systems blog, which has picked up the story. There is some very interesting clarification of the seat allocation mechanism for the PR stage:

“The new Romanian electoral system really lives up to the old cliché, 'a complex form of PR'. Here is an attempt to make sense of it, for which Marina Popescu takes primary credit.

In autumn 2007, following years of popular pressure fomented by an NGO and the press for improving accountability and strengthening the linkages between citizens and elected representatives via the shift to a ‘uninominal’ (i.e., single-member-district) electoral system, the Romanian government proposed a mixed-member system. This would have been similar to the one used for the Italian Senate from 1993 to 2005, but would have ensured proportionality by having a variable number of at least 50 per cent of seats reserved for compensation, rather than just 25% as in Italy.

This bill passed through parliament, but the President did not sign it. Instead, he called a consultative referendum, which unexpectedly proposed introducing a French-style two-round majoritarian system. Following a campaign appealing to concerns with improving accountability and aversion to party lists, 83.4 per cent of the voters supported the initiative but the turnout (at 26.5 per cent) fell short of the 50 per cent quorum required. The President then appealed to the Constitutional Court, which annulled the government’s electoral reform legislation arguing that the anticipated use of a national list amounted to an indirect election and was thus anti-constitutional.

The current electoral system was adopted in February-March 2008 by parliament and is based on SMDs [Single Member Districts] only in the limited sense that the pre-1993 Italian Senate was. All 42 counties of Romania are divided into single-member districts and each citizen has a single vote to be cast for a candidate. Candidates win the seat automatically if they obtained over 50 per cent of the constituency vote. Nevertheless, the overall composition of parliament will be proportional: the two-tier seat allocation method used in the old closed-list system is retained, using the Hare quota at the county level, and then d’Hondt for nationally cumulated votes and seats remaining after the county-level allocation, with a five percent legal threshold applied throughout. Parliament can vary in size to guarantee each party the number of seats due to it proportionally. But parties may end up with more seats than that if they win enough seats with an absolute majority.

Now here’s the really complicated bit. Besides the SMD outright winners, a party’s seats are allocated to candidates in decreasing order of the ratio between the absolute number of votes they received and the quota in the county where they ran. However, the seat allocation mechanism assures that every SMD is assigned a representative who actually ran for election in that district, and this goal is consistently prioritized over rewarding the highest vote getters. How will all of that work in practice? We don’t have to wait too long to find out: elections are due by the end of November.
Seed planted by Alan Renwick — 16 April 2008 @ 01:16”

What I’m still left wondering about is a) whether – perhaps that should be, how in a Romanian context - SMD boundaries will be gerrymanded to maximise certain parties’ chances of winning seats straight off (thus presumably reducing those to be distributed by PR, although there seems to be some confusion of this - Alan Renwick's explanation above clearly assumes this will not happen, but as other Fruits and Votes posters note, there is a constitutional stipulation abut population per depputy and not doing so would result in some SMDs having 2 representatives ; and b) whether the new system will create incentives for local notables to deploy heavy duty patronage and rule-bending.