The quality of governance is not strained

Prof. Bo Rothstein of Gothenburg's University's Quality of Government Institute  is a supporter of the Glorious Blues. Not Chelsea, but sixteen times Swedish champions FF Malmo. His presentation to SSEES's politics centred on Anti-Corruption Indirect Big Bang Approach  was, however, strictly Premier League stuff. The issue, as he explained to our medium sized but on-the-ball audience, was in fact one less one of politicians taking the occasional (or not so occasional) backhander as of institutions in much of the world delivering or not delivering basic public goods such as clean water and  health, which left some people literally dying of corruption  - and of repeated failed attempts to find a magic bullet to slay corrupt, inefficient institutions and the informal structures that underpinned them. 

Both marketisation and democratisation had failed in this role, often merely transforming the problems into slightly new guise (or even aggravating them). As Robert Putman had realised individual-level incentives  based on expectations of other people locked in corrupt (and non-corupt) behaviour - although unlike Putnam he did not think that associationalism was related to social capital., meaning there was no easy  macro- institutional fix - or even a not-so-easy cultural one. Sadly, therefore corrupt, dysfunctional institutions were in many ways the norm and well governed Weberian states in Europe and North America the exception: why it should be asked was Sweden with large bureaucracies and large welfare programmes was not (as it should be) a cesspool of corruption and patronage-driven instability ?

Rally backing Indonsia's anticorruption committee - Photo Ivan Atmanagara

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The answer his research (and new book - forthcoming with Chicago University Press later this year) suggested he key he argued - awkwardly from a normative point of view - was, rather than (electoral) democracy,  liberal state impartiality (and/or citizens' sense of it) constituted the most effective means of dealing a 'big bang' blow (over a 10-20 year timescale). Delving into the Swedish (and British/Scandinavian)  experience to find how corupt tax-farming and aristocratic rent-seeking in public office turns into squeaky clean public admininistration (Swedish foreign arms sales excepted) through historical case studies had proved inconclusive: several historians sent into the archives to do the job had (intellectually speaking) disappeared iwithout trace and drowned in the mass of documentation. It seemed, however, that an indirect strategy, partly triggered by political choices and partly by the imperatives of technological modernization was the key

Questions centred on whether his understand of democracy was not, in fact, a diminshed subtype (along the lines of Zakaria's notions of democracy-as-elections) and whether the British colonial legacy played a role. As for patriotic Brits it did not: the new book contained a paired case study of Singapore and Jamaica in the new book (also available here as a working paper) examined how - despite seemingly better prospects Jamaica had sunk into corruption and stagnation, while ethnically divided Singapore had prospered although as one questioner suggested with a population the size of Brighton and Hove, the island state was an outlier rather than blueprint for the development of good governance.

All in all, big answers to big questions with a refreshingly wide range of cases and mehthods, rather than political science navel gazing we usually too often go in for.

The EU: Viable or friable?

I should know better. I should only, only read books that generate immediate research outputs, the life blood of contemporary academia and never, not ever succumb to the temptation to read things that are simply interesting, But somehow this is one New Year’s resolution I never keep. So as well as reading Scandinavian crime novels and a book about the fall of the Roman Empire – actually rather instructive on issues of statehood for your average contemporary political scientist, I thought – I’ve also a soft spot for what Giovanni Capoccia recently termed the ‘historical turn in democratization studies’ , so it wasn’t the greatest of holiday chores to have to read Andrew Glencross’s  What Makes the EU Viable?: European Integration in the Light of the Antebellum US Experience.  

The book adds to a small but growing literature comparing the emerging EU political system with the experience of US federalism. However, Glencross says, the best period for such anachronistic historical comparison is not the early constitution-making of the Founding Fathers or the functioning  of modern US federalism, but the antebellum period – ie. the decades between the foundation of the American Republic and outbreak of the Civil War – when the relationship between member states of the union and political centre was most ambiguous and contested.

Such a comparison Glencross argues, means we need an expanded concept of ‘viability’ embracing not only the formal allocation of institutional and legal powers and ‘competences over competences’, but also actors’ understandings of the purposes of the union and whether popular sovereignty is ultimately invested in the centre, the member states, or both. Applying this framework, he identifies two distinct approaches to achieving viability in a semi-federal, semi-confederal state unions like the EU or the early US: ‘1) voluntary centralization’ where the different actors negotiate their way to a stronger, more integrated state; and 2) ‘dynamic equilibrium’ where institutional and political ambiguity – far from being a problem to be solved – is the key to viability.

The viability of the antebellum US, he argues, was in the end fatally undermined by an emerging politics of ‘voluntary centralization’, while the EU has survived precisely by sticking to a pattern of ‘dynamic equilibrium’. In this light, projects to fix the European Union through various forms of democratization and constitutionalization appear best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. There are, Glencross acknowledges, important differences between the two cases: the US was created through a constitutional instrument, the EU through an inter-state economic treaty; the US had a nationwide party system with a dominant cleavage (slavery) dividing member states, the EU has only an embryonic party system with many cross cutting divides between states. Nevertheless, he argues, the parallels are sufficient to merit serious rethinking about the reform of EU governance.

What Makes the EU Viable? is, admittedly, an uneven book given, in places, to opaque and overlong and over-defensive theoretical asides as books-of-PhD-dissertation often do. It would also benefit from more simply explained engagement with mainstream EU studies literatures and the burgeoning subfield of historical democratization. However, at bottom, I thought it succeeded in its objective of asking a big and timely question and deploys anachronistic comparison to deliver some genuinely unexpected and worrying answers. Academic viability, if ever I saw it.

Post-communist democratization: Is your name.. Rumpelputin?

Late at night I’ve been sitting up reading: reading Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World (Cambridge University Press) edited high-powered US specialists on communism and post-communism. McFaul is now a senior advisor to the Obama presidency at the National Security Council. This new collection – available in paper and hardback and Kindle – basically tries to regime change in the former communist world into a new perspective by linking the collapse of one-party rule in 1989-1991 with more recent experiences of democratisation in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. As the editors argue in the opening chapterswe should think of postcommunist democratisation as three overlapping phases: 1) the breakdown of Communist Party rule in the late 1980s; 2) democratisation processes in 1990s driven by the prospect of EU membership, which stopped some new democratic states in Central and Eastern Europe sliding into semi-authoritarianism; and 3) more recent ‘coloured revolutions’ in the former USSR, which were triggered by electoral fraud in states without any clear prospect of joining the European Union.

And what’s more Michael McFaul suggests, theses three phases underline the role of the international system as a missing (or at least, under-played) variable which has shaped the different waves: the collapse of Soviet power and  its later re-emergence under Putin; the EU’s decision to enlarge Eastwards; and a growing US preoccupation with the ‘War on Terror’ after 2001. However, contributors differ in their views of precisely how – and how strongly – international influences have come to bear. Milada Anna Vachudova sees EU leverage on CEE's more problem atic states as a key motor of liberalisation and reform, while– despite making points similar things in a slightly different language - Alina Mungiu-Pippdi at bottom claims that the EU’s political conditionalities were easily bypassed by anti-reform elites. Horizontal economic integration and broader European norms were, she claims, the important factors. Sadly, this is the type of domestic vs. European factors arguments that no one has convincing really worked out how to settle. Similarly, in his finely-researched chapter on Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution, McFaul is unable to conclude more than that US and international influences were indirect, although here one detects a certain politically inspired pulling of punches. There seems plenty of evidence in McFaul’s thoroughly researched chapter for arguing the case one way or other and if I was in the opposition in a semi-authoritarian state, I surely as hell would want USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy training my youth volunteers and election monitors and bunging a bit of cash to friendly NGOs.

As Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik note, changes the geo-political environments mattered because they altered the incentives of domestic actors and changed patterns of diffusion between states. Diffusion mechanisms – while always at work- evolved over time. Would-be democratic revolutionaries in Eastern Europe have been copying tactical innovations; drawing parallels between national contacts; and forming of collaborative networks since at least 1980, if not 1848. However, as various lcase study chapters on ‘electoral revolutions on  Slovakia (1998) and Serbia (2000), Georgia (2004), and Ukraine (2004) make clear by the millennium the transnational activist networks and election monitoring had become the key paths  for change.

However, post-communist authoritarians too have been learning lessons. As Kathryn Stoner-Weiss and Vitali study on Putin’s Russia and Lukashenko’s Belarus - and Lucan Way’s comparison of post-Soviet authoritarianisms - show, an effective formula for blocking democratisation is at hand:  the key ingredients are well trained, well paid security forces; regaining  Soviet-era levels ofcontrol of the media and the economy; a well organised new ruling party backed by some kind of an ideological claim to legitimacy s Nevertheless, extreme weakness of post-Soviet state institutions can be a still more fundamental obstacle to democratisation: Scott Radnitz  illustrates the point bluntly in a chapter arguing that Kyrgyzstan’s repeated ‘electoral revolutions’ are more a sign of failed statehood than social pewssures for democratisatio.

As the book shows, despite the Year of Miracles in1989 - the dominant image of regime change for Western obsevers - post-communist transition  has most often been a story of failed or partial democratisation creating semi-democratic ‘hybrid regimes’, whose closed political systems, semi-open societies and corrupt public adminstration set the scene for further democratic upheavals. The net effect of such waves, however, has been a gradual polarisation of the region's initially weak democratisers into consolidated (if low quality) democracies (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovakia) and consolidated autocracies (Russia, Belarus, Armenia).

As you would expect, Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World offers a wide-ranging and sophisticated overview of South East European and post-Soviet democratisation By joining up Europeanisation, ‘electoral revolutions’ and transitions from one-party rule in 1989-1991, it offers an original perspective highlighting the unfolding of a kind of Kondratievian long wave of democratisation across a single region. However, I found explanation and description in the book were too often blurred. Many of the causal factors its contributors highlight beg more questions than they answer. Why were some authoritarian elites more united in the face of opposition? Why were some security and police apparatuses more cohesive? Oil, victory in neighbourhood wars and timing all seem to be part of the bigger story. Too often, however, we are left with accounts where wily authoritarians like Putin or Lukashenka appearing Rumpelstiltskin-like at the wrong moment.  If only they would disappear as easily.

CEE: A democracy of no qualities?

Notions of ‘democratic quality’ have become increasingly widespread over the past decade in the study of both new and established democracies. However, Andrew Roberts notes in his excellent new book The Quality of Democracy in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2009) the concept remains fuzzy and ill-defined Scholars, who have used the notion, he rightly notes have basically tended to define it in three ways: 1) superabundance of the basic components that make up the procedural minimum of liberal democracy; 2) a set of favourable social and cultural prerequisites standing outside the political system; or 3) a set of desirable or efficiently arrived at policy outcomes promoting the public good, loosely overlapping with the concept of ‘good governance’ championed by many international organizations and NGOs.

However, he convincingly argues, all are unsatisfactory either because they conflate the attributes of high quality democracy with those of democracy in general, or because they confuse democratic quality with things such as social structures or policy outputs that, strictly speaking, fall outside the nature of the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives. Democratic quality, he suggests, must instead be understood in terms citizens’ abilities to influence their rulers through three forms of linkage: 1) electoral accountability (voters’ ability to dismiss politicians, who have broken promises or performed unsatisfactorily); 2) mandate accountability (voters’ ability to make meaningful choices from a range of distinct programmatic party positions) – and politicians’ willingness and ability to deliver on campaign promises; and 3) policy responsiveness (politicians’ willingness when in office to fit policy to public opinion – and voters’ ability to monitor and pressurize them to ensure that they do).

The book then seeks to operationalise and measure democracy quality (thus defined) across the new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), widely considered to be stable and functioning liberal democracies, but also to have consolidated democracy in a flawed and low quality form burdened by legacies of the communist past, a detached and alienated citizenry, and a corrupt and self-serving politicians – you know the standard journalistic-cum-academic shtick you have probably come across a million times in The Economist and The Journal of Democracy or wherever. But is that really the case?

In successive uses a mixture of quantitative analysis and re-analysis of existing literature assesses electoral accountability, mandate accountability and policy responsiveness in CEE as well as comparison of the region with Western Europe and Latin American and finds that it ain’t necessarily so simple.

Based on data on economic performance, Roberts finds that CEE democracies show high level of electoral responsiveness. Despite significant general anti-incumbent voting, voters in the region do hold governments to account for poor economic performance. However, although CEE party systems are programmatic, mandate accountability in the region is much weaker – and, he finds, has remained consistency weak since the fall of communism. Party positions in the region are less clear and – usually as result of a politics of populist outbidding - the range of party positions on offer to voters tends to be less varied than in either Western Europe or Southern Europe. Examining politicians’ follow-through on campaign promises, Roberts finds that the relationship between winning parties’ campaign promises on (economic) reform and the subsequent direction of policy weak, although they are few volte faces on reform commitments of the kind common in Latin America. In CEE we are talking shades of economic liberalism from full-on to half-hearted.

However, contrary to the image of ‘lonely reformers’ by-passing popular preference through blame avoidance strategies, Roberts finds that, when making policy, CEE politicians are relatively responsive to public opinion. Although there is little active public input into policy making, qualitative case studies of pension and housing reform in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, highlights how favourable public opinion has been a key prerequisite for reforms to go ahead.

Overall, Roberts argues, CEE enjoys a reasonable quality of democracy, albeit democracy characterised by distinct patterns of accountability. Weak civil societies, constraints imposed on left and right imposed by international and European conditionalities and CEE voters’ tendency to punish all incumbents at the polls, reducing politicians’ incentives to fulfil campaign promises, sharply depresses mandate accountability, Roberts suggests. The region’s surprisingly good democratic quality, juxtaposition with Western Europe and Latin America suggests, can be traced to a single factor: its relatively high levels of socio-economic development and, in consequence, its well educated, capable and rational citizenries.

Overall, the book offers an elegant, and generally convincing set of arguments about how we should view democracy in CEE, cutting through much current conceptual fog and going rounding in circles and – what’s more opens to way to genuine pan- comparison of democratic systems in the old and new EU. What are debates in the ‘advanced democracies’ if not about ‘democratic quality’?

True, the empirical basis of book’s findings is, in some respects, rather limited and broadbrush (not really much sharp cross-national comparison) and its formulations leave some questions unaddressed. The stress on citizen-state linkages as at the heart of its conception democratic quality might, for example, be taken as implying that forms of direct democracy offer better quality democracy. Not a conclusion I personally would shy away from or loose any sleep over, but an issue that goes unmentioned in the book, which is quite party-centred.

Such limitations, however, arguably reflect a concern with mapping out new territory broad agenda-setting, rather than making slam dunk cast iron, empirical judgements over narrow range of cases or issues, which frankly makes for dull and pointless political science. I personally like the rather unusual research-in-progress fee to the book. For all the above reason, it may, I suspect come to be a seminal work for research on comparative quality of democratic governance. Will CUP kindly grace us a paperback copy or an affordable e-version?

Political consequences of the economic crisis in Eastern Europe

And for those who can face more writing by me, there's a short piece in Chatham House's World Today magazine on the possible political consequences of the global economic crisis in Central and Eastern Europe. Journalists and economists were making all the running on this - and sometimes not very good running, I felt - so I thought I stick my oar.The piece is downloadable here until the end of May, longer if you are a CH member. As one of my colleagues has already pointed out, I underestimate the extent to which the crisis will push CEE elites towards support for further European integration even if they feel the need to make populist forays into bashing Sarkozy.

Too many cooks don't spoil political broth, say Israeli leaders

Another interesting article in the Jerusalem Post, this time about arguments from the country's politicians, that, contrary to received opinion, the proliferation of small, short-lived, single-issue/interested based parties in Israel is good for democracy

Lithuania: I'm a celebrity, get me into there (parliament, that is)

Early results from Lithuania’s parliamentary election provide further, and rather depressing, confirmation of my SSEES colleague Allan Sikk's work about the the emergence of some party systems in in Baltic and beyond, as a whirlygig of loosely populist parties headed up by celebrity businesspeople and politicians which stand for nothing much more than a ‘project of newness’. In Lithuania a party headed by a reality TV talent show host, the National Revival Party polling 15% is the latest addition.

I'd like to teach the world to... vote

Ever been frustrated that the decisions of the US affect you when you have no influence on who gets to the Oval Office? If so, you at least have a chance to 'vote' online in a global online poll organized by two Icelanders (who obviously have more reason than most to feel vulnerable in the face of big power global politics and economics just now). Unsuprisingly, Obama sweeps the board in most countries of the world byhuge margins. The more hawkish McCain only gets a decent level of support (20-30%+) if rom online voters in US allies facing some kind of external threat (Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia - the subject of Russian hostility), Israel (no detailed explanation needed) and Columbia (narco-mafia, FARC). He also does well in Nicaragua and Venuzulua, presumably because of pro-US inclination of opponent of left-wing populist governments. I guess McCain's 20% from Iranian 'voters' might also be a gesture of anti-regime sentiment. I'm at a loss, however, as to why McCain does well in Macedonia (90%) or gets a respectable 24% in Russia. My finger hovered over my mouse for a second , but I really wouldn't want Sarah Palin a heart-beat away from the Presidency, so I clicked for Obama.

At least one British blogger seems to have toyed with the idea of UK becoming the 51st state, which would seem to be a kind of low taxing, eurosceptic’s dream but for those on the liberal-left would have the upside of abolishing the monarchy and putting Obama and sundry other liberal Democrats in the White House. However, as Wikipedia - ever packed with useful information - helpfully points out there is actually a rather long queue to become the 51st state (sorry, I should perhaps say ‘line’, shouldn't I) with Puerto Rico, Cuba, Australia, Israel and Iraq all having some kind of claim too.

Path of at least some resistance

A few months ago I discovered that the leafy local footpath to our town centre was due to be closed because it crosses the grounds of a local secondary school and the headmaster reckoned the path was a source of crime and disorder. Quite a few others reckoned it was some of his students, who were the main source of disorder. But backed by our local county councillor, who is also a governor of the school, it was all quickly signed and sealed behind-closed-doors 'consultation' helped by a tailor made section of the Highways Act allowing local rights of way to be closed in the interests of preventing crime and disorder. There is with a special provision for public footpaths passing near schools to get the chop. A very New Labour mix of social authoritarianism and simple kneejerk approach to prioritizing education.

Venting my frustration, I wrote a Disgusted-of-Mid-Sussex letter to the local newspaper and when they printed it (local newspapers will print anything) and forgot about it. Some time latter got a call from the local representative of the Ramblers' Association, who lives in a neighbouring town. At about 600 metres, the path 's not exactly a hiking route, but the Council in their wisdom - while not telling the locals about on, they did inform the RA as a standard bit of consultation. The key thing he tells me is keep a eye on the Official Notices section hidden away at the back of the local paper and send off a letter of objection in time when the Extinguishment Order is officially published. It finally appears in August as he anticipates- so as a few people as possible will see it - and I duly send off my letter. The RA man, out councillor on the District Council and 'other interested local organizations' also meet and distribute a Friends of Footpath leaflet to our and nearby streets. They will, he tells me, be a lot of objections and hopefully forcing the County Council to hold a local public enquiry. They could have spared themselves the expense, if they had

The RA man tells me that as well as the headmaster, Conservative councillors and the Director of Children's Services are pushing to close the footpath. It is a kind of test case. The first time in the county that a footpath would have been closed under the crime and disorder clause. The Tories, he tells me are ideologically opposed to footpaths, crossing any kind of private property and instinctively like closing them. I am capable of believing pretty much anything bad about the Tories, but , in fact, I discover both the anti-footpath county councillor and the pro-footpath district councillor are actually Liberal Democrats.

All this rather reinforces my view that local politics is very much a closed game played by councillors, officials and a small cadre of worthy older people who are 'active in the community'. Fortunately, however, there are some differences within this small pond of political participation, so it will be a while before the somewhat misnamed local Community College gets to fence itself off from the local community.

Barack the Builder?

British radio comedy The Now Show wickedly points out that Barack Obama’s campaign slogan (‘Yes, we can’) is basically the same as the theme for children’s TV favourite Bob The Builder. Various right-wing American bloggers have also noticed this and there are quite a few amateurish medleys of Bob and Obama on You Tube . But isn’t that exactly what you’d expect? Both politicians of a vaguely centrist persuasion and children's TV producers share a need to come up with nice simple, feelgood messages, which are catchy easy to understand and have some basic moral points that pretty much no one could disagree with. Frankly, I’m surprised spin doctors and political PR people have mined the children’s channels more extensively for more decent campaign slogans. My tip for any who might be reading ‘Teamwork - Do It Together’, one of the bouncing disco numbers from the frenetic pre-schoolers’ show LazyTown, Iceland’s greatest export. And, yes, Obama definitely gets my vote.

Democracy: Chinese whispers, East European echoes

The long awaited, much heralded but uncompleted but much partially leaked next album by Guns ‘n’ Roses for which fans have been waiting fifteen years is, apparently entitled, Chinese Democracy. This suggests a wry sense of humour and/or an unexpected sensitivity to global politics on the part of the ever changing line up of LA rockers because much of 21st century politics seems likely to be a similarly confused and expectant wait for the real thing.

I have, for once, been reading a book that is not about Eastern Europe - What Does China Think by Mark Leonard, a discussion of Chinese debates about the country's future by the former head of the Blairite Foreign Policy Centre thinktank, who has since moved on to the European Council on Foreign Relations and become an 'accidental sinologist'. As one might expect of a leading thinktanker it's a consise, fluent and readable: I remember when Leonard came to SSEES a few years ago he did an excellent, well practised presentation on 'Global Europe' despite a streaming cold.

What Does China Think is interesting and illuminating, but a litle disappointingly holds few real jolting surprises about what China's wonks, intellectuals and politicians are variously thinking for anyone familair with the political and social landscape of late communist Europe. There is a neo-liberal ‘new right’ suspicious of state power, which wants to make a full transition to a private property-based capitalist economy (and possible democracy, or a form of democracy). More powerful and open than the neo-liberal technocrats squirreled away communist Eastern Europe, admittedly, and, of course, with a powerful private sector to draw on, whose nearest CEE equivalent was probably Hungary's much smaller 'second economy'. In China this vies with a ‘new left’ concerned about the socially and ecologically corrosive effects of inequality and untrammelled growth, which it wants to rein in using a more capable modernized and pro-active central state. Although there have been much publicized experiments with multi-candidate elections at local and (rarely) municipal level - sometime with a perestroika style filtering of candidates - Leonard sees the future of Chinese ‘democracy’ in technocratically directed public consultation and input into policy-making. Indeed, as this parallels developments in the West, he even sees it as rather sophisticated alternative to competitive electoral democracy. Possibly, the boot should be on the other foot: if the Chinese Communist Party can use them, then we might worry that experiments with ‘citizen juries’ and the like are simply shoring up elite-dominated political systems. Indeed, Avizier Tucker makes precisely this point in a recent issue of Political Studies.

Leonard is, unsurprisingly, rather more interesting on foreign policy. Chinese thinkers are divided as to whether to openly admit or conceal that China is a rising power and desperate to learn from the mistakes of others. ‘Neo-comms’ want to assert Chinese power, if necessary ultimately militarily against Taiwan, while ‘liberal internationalists’ are genuinely committed engagement with multi-lateral institutions. In practice, China is using multi-national institutions to achieve national interests (holding the USA in check) and to create (what are in form) new regional multi-lateral institutions, which serve to boost Chinese power. There is also the beginning of a projection of ‘soft power’: exporting the Chinese developmental and political model of state capitalism and strong sovereignty to Africa, promotion of Chinese language and culture internationally, sophisticated English language media, a well-trained, soft-spoken diplomatic and academic elites. Here all parallels with CEE - a region always controlled, not controlling - fall away and we have to look to more distant historical paralles with rising powers such as Japan or Imperial Germany.

Bulgarian President wants strong, clean parties and mixed elctoral system

The Sofia Weekly carries the following report about the Bulgarian President's plans for making the country's democracy more effective and legitimate

"Bulgaria President Proposes New Political Model

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov presented Tuesday his proposal for the reform of the political model in Bulgaria, focusing on the three main points that could lead to real political results.

The three points included in the President's proposal are: the necessity of legal and public guarantees for a national representation of the political parties, transparency regarding Party financing and regaining of voters' trust through a reform of the election system.

Below is the proposals' full text:

I. Legal and public guarantees for a national representation of the political parties:

• In order to participate in elections, a Party must have registered structures in 2/3 of the municipalities.
• If a Party could not reach 1% (2% for coalitions) from the vote in two consecutive elections, the Party would be stricken from the Party Register and would not participate in the next elections. If the Party wishes to continue its political existence, it would enter a new registration regime according to the Political Parties Law
• Only parties who have received 1% (2% for coalitions) from the vote during the previous parliamentary elections would be able to participate in local elections. They would be the only ones to designate candidates for mayors and create election lists. Independent mayoral candidates and independent Councilmen would be acceptable, but not lists that are not clearly related to a political Party.

II. Transparent Party financing:

• Discontinue financing of political parties by legal entities; increase State subsidy for parties receiving over 1% at the last parliamentary vote.
• Public register of individual donors with a preset limit for the donation amount; public register for the Advertising and PR agencies serving particular parties.
• For election participation, in addition to the requirement that the Party registers with the Central Election Commission, it must also register a public payment account where all donations would be deposited and all money to pay for election campaigning would come from.
• Delegating rights, human resources and experts to the National Audit Office for control over Party finances, election campaigns and activity of the advertising and PR agencies.
• Each election campaign would be subject of finance check-up by the National Audit Office. If the campaign has not been paid for from the payment account officially registered by the Party, the Party would be sanctioned.
• The National Audit Office would have the right to check the Party accounting books.
• Sanctions that could be imposed by the National Audit Office in case of finance violations include elections' results cancellation, disallowing the Party participation in the next elections and others.
• Discontinuation of the renting of Party club facilities to third parties either by directly forbidding the renting or by turning the rent into a public or State rent determined by the average market price for the region.

III. Regaining the voters' trust through a reform of the election system:

• Introduction of a proportional election system with a majority element:
• Maintaining the proportional character of the election system in order to guarantee the leading political will and responsibility of the political Party.
• Majority candidates would run in big single mandate election regions to contribute to their public recognition and allowing effective control over vote purchasing.
• Clean the electiton lists from the so-called "ghosts"; introduction of active voters' registration; unification of the rules for different"

Another referendum, another master plan derailed?

Never mind the Irish referendum - a predictable outcome, which allowed the EU’s carefully crafted constitutional compromise to become the target of a set of contradictory anxieties and antagonisms and allowed voters to give the political establishment a kick up the backside (hard to resist in any democracy) - the most interesting referendum I’ve come across of late is the one in the neighbouring commuter town of Haywards Heath. The local district council in collaboration with Thornfield Properties has been trying to push through a 20 year masterplan for the grandiose redevelopment of HH and its satellite town of Burgess Hill with many details - despite some careful top down ‘consultation’ - rather vague or rather confidential. Many locals suspected they weren’t getting a good deal - too many civic and community facilities bulldozed, too little certainty of proper replacements - and thought the relationship of Thornfield, the district council's chief executive and the councillors a little too opaque and a little too cosy. In HH opponents, including the Liberal opposition and the town’s long serving single Labour councillor, organized in the Haywards Heath Referendum Group, used fairly new legal provisions to force a local (consultative) referendum on the plan: half a day’s voting, 20% turnout of the town’s 19,000 voters with almost 94% voting to put the plan on hold until fuller information is available. Local elected worthies and council bureaucrats - the (appointed) chief executive seems to play a surprisingly prominent role in all this - don’t quite have an EU-sized dilemma as they can, in theory, ignore the result, but there will be political pressure to respond to this obvious public thumbs down. As in the EU, consultation’ and a pause for reflection seem likely until civic opposition dies down. Then I imagine they’ll just go ahead with what they planned anyway - certainly the local press seems to think so.

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

Bulgaria: blogged down

Transitions Online reports on the heavy handed attitude of the Bulgarian authorities to a blogger, who promoted an ecological ‘flash’ protest on his blog. The more interesting element is less the Bulgarian state’s dislike of civic protest or being held to account that the nascent movement of bloggers claiming to be the country’s ‘real’ civil society. The political role of blogging and the internet has been endlessly hyped. I personally am sceptical that it does much more than allow well educated elite groups to talk to each other and co-ordinate a little more quickly and easily. This probably matters for the emergence of liberal minded anti-establishment challengers - the emergence of Estonia’s Res Publica party seemed to have taken place largely over email - but the real issue seems to be that, blogging or not, such forces lack the social and political weight to have much impact.

Perhaps more interesting to track, however, would be whether CEE officialdom has generated any anonymous insider blogs such as the UK’s Civil Serf (now taken down), which can shed some light in the ‘black box’ of day-to-day public administration in the region.

Path dependence in West Sussex

I was annoyed to discover that our local regional authority, West Sussex County Council, plans to close and block up the public footpath that leads from out street to the town centre. It is quick, traffic free and ideal for parents with small kids. Alternative routes are much longer and involve crossing roads. The reason, as I later discovered, is that part of the path cuts through a local secondary school and the head teacher, in his wisdom, had put a request for the path to be closed to the public and blocked because he thinks it 'causes' anti-social behaviour, crime and vandalism, which - like a lot of secondary schools - his school is prone too.

This would be all very well, if true, but I don’t buy these arguments all. The school is on accessible open site near the town centre and drug dealers, vandals and burglars could easily simply walk through the car park or across the playing field to gain access to the school buildings. Indeed, I would have thought without a regular flow of regular citizens walking to the shops and back, they would probably be more likely to do so unhindered. Ironically considering it wants to keep the local community out, the school styles itself a 'Community College'.

What’s most annoying is the secretive - or perhaps I should say ‘pseudo-open’ - nature of the whole process. You can, if you know of what is going on access the minutes of the relevant council committee meeting on the web and read how the head’s arguments about ‘security’ trumped anything else anyone could say (Why a decision about a local footpath has to be made in Chichester two hours drive away by authority responsible for 500,000 people, I don’t know, but I guess that’s another issue). I, and anyone else living locally, could theoretically even have made written and orally submission to the committee asking for path to stay open, if, of course, we had actually known about the proposal in the first place. But what normal person habitually reads county council agendas and minutes?

It would have been helpful if they could have put up a notice for passers-by to read, but that would clearly have been too transparent. Instead, very oddly the Council informed two well established and worthy bodies, the Ramblers Association and the Open Spaces Society. In an oddly corporatist twist, this is standard practice with proposed footpath closures - the RA and OSS are deemed to represent all footpath users, so wider publicity is unnecessary. They at least did have the decency to object to this closure and the OSS mentions that local people use the path to get to town, but it’s easy to imagine how they were just seen as lobby groups going through the motions, while local headteacher appeared more of real community leader . The committee minutes, it should be said do mention local councillors (it’s not clear how local, as there are three layers of local government in this part of the world: town council, district council and county council) transmitting some residents’ concern about access to their fences, but this seems to refer only to a few houses near the school. I do find it a little odd, that despite living here for two and half years and assiduously reading public notices and anything from local council or political parties that came through our letterbox, I knew nothing about it.

I found out about the in a pretty odd way - in a leaflet put through out door by the local Neighbour Watch - a government backed community crime prevention scheme. The leaflet suggested anyone concerned should email our town councillor. She actually lives in the same street as us, so I did this a week ago, but have had no reply whatsoever. This kind of suggests that she is not bothered by the footpath being scrapped and that the mention in the Neighbourhood Watch leaflet was probably inserted by someone other local person bothered about it, rather than her.

Thoroughly fed up, I made a mental note not to vote Liberal Democrat in the local elections again and wrote a letter to the local paper. God knows if this will have any effect. Local government at this level kind seems to be about various local elites agreeing things between themselves with minimal and token public consultation - and the perhaps the occasional sharp prods from central government.

As far as I can work out, footpaths have quite strong legal protection so it may still be possible to make some kind of formal appeal against the decision - please leave a comment if you do. Otherwise, I guess the kids I and will join local yobbos in skirting across the playing field to avoid whatever defences the head teacher plans to erect.

Economist podcast: My (un)certain ideas of Europe

Anyone interested in my thoughts on 'Democracy in post-communist Europe' can hear these podcast in latest of the Economist's Certain Ideas of Europe series in a discussion with Ivan Krastev of Bulgaria's Centre for Liberal Strategies, who, naturally, has all the mostinteresting ideas and all the best sound bites: democracy in contemporary post-communist Europe - and indeed the non-post-communist in the rest of Europe - he concludes is best summed up as 'bearable dissatisfaction'. Need you ask more?

Christmas cheer for democracy?

Despite an email from a student on Boxing Day asking about the critical case study method (I was sufficiently impressed by such dedication to answer at some length) and some very riotous kids fighting over a Peppa Pig playset, I had enough time over Christmas to catch up books I was supposed to be reviewing. Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) has been widely reviewed outside academic journals and gained media airtime on intellectual slots like Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed on Radio 4. Leif Lewin’s Democratic Accountability: Why Choice in Politics is Both Possible and Necessary (Harvard University Press, 2007) was pitched at the same kind of level at academic/intelligent general reader crossover market, but seemed to attach less attention, perhaps because of its more standard concerns with rescuing and re-inventing democracy, rather than saying there was too much of it because more voters are economically illiterate and incorrigibly populist as Caplan (backed by survey data) does.

Lewin’s books seeks to challenge a range of intellectual motifs in political science, which hethinks undermine the notion of politics as purposive rational activity and hence suggest that politicians cannot meaningfully be held accountable for their actions. He develops this analysis in thematic chapters, each discussing the intellectual origins and political science manifestations of one such argument then knocking it down it through an empirical counter-example.

Politicians are, he says, firstly are not prisoners of historical forces, whether structural or ideological. Some strategic choices, such as the US policy-makers’ decision to implement the Marshall Plan, not only radically affect historical outcomes big time, but are contingent and contested instances of Churchill’s ‘hinge of history’ Nor are policy-makers deprived of choice by some supposed inherent tendencies towards conflict in the international system or the recent globalization of the world economy. The formation of the EEC in 1956, Lewin argues, shows political actors can opt for deep, long-term co-operation. Tentative international agreements on climate change - very tentative, as he admits - suggest that the global market is (potentially) subject to political regulation. Neither can we discount politicians’ accountability because of trade-offs and compromises involved in consensus-building and coalition formation. Inclusive power sharing arrangements can simply generate corrupt, collusive political systems like that of the Italian party system - although unfortunately, its post-1994 to adversarial politics of alternating blocs of left and right as he admits hardly seems to have rectified this.

Lewin also doubts whether accountability is always diminished because politicians’ strategies are distorted by self-interested bureaucrats or because social complexity and the longue durée inevitably produce unintended consequences. Margaret Thatcher’s reforms of 1980s show how even a long established, independently minded civil service can be made to implement policies it dislikes, while successful Social Democratic strategies for Sweden’s unemployment insurance system of 1920s aimed at promoting unionisation suggest that long-term consequences can be intended. He concludes with an appeal for a democratic politics centring on choice and competition and a more informed, open and reflexive political class willing and able to face up to issues of democratic accountability.

Overall, Lewin’s hypothesis that political science agendas inadvertently combine to deny democratic accountability is a striking one. However, for me the quality of his book’s argumentation largely fails cut the mustard. Authors and cases selected as counter-examples are seem idiosyncratic and unconvincing. Italy, for example, is an odd test for Lijphart’s consensus democracy model - Holland, Austria or Sweden might be more convincing choices. And Lenin and Hobbes are not perhaps the best representatives of neo-realist views in modern politics, which I suspect do not say that war is inevitably, merely than conflict of some kind based on self-interests is. Despite a nod towards Mill’s comparative method, the book’s broadbrush essayistic studies also offer no compelling argument that cases are critical cases rather than exceptions proving the rule. Democratic Accountability is thus perhaps best an interesting, if undemanding, essay in democratic theory - the intellectual equivalent of a well dunked biscuit over a tepid cup of tea (or several)

Caplan, by contrast, is a much tougher cookie. Backed by survey evidence, he argues that the failures of democratic governance stem less from the rational ignorance of voters, as traditional Public Choice models suggest, than their irrational anti-liberal economic prejudices. Compared both to professional economists and a minority of well informed voters, most Americans he finds suffer from marked irrational biases when assessing the working of the economy and economic policy: an anti-market bias stigmatizing profit-seeking and unequal remuneration as greed; an anti-foreign bias favouring protectionism and autarchic measures costly to most consumers; a ‘make-work’ bias which wrongly sees employment as a something to be husbanded and protected, rather a resource whose input should be minimized; and a pessimistic bias, which wrongly assesses the economic situation and most aspects of economic policy as negative and deteriorating. Adapting the classic ‘rational ignorance’ perspective, Caplan suggests that such biases, in fact, represent ‘rational irrationality’: citizens cling to populist beliefs that bolster psychological well-being and identity when (as in politics) the marginal costs of doing so are low, but behave rationally in consumer markets when confronted with narrower, more immediate cost-benefit decisions

Such systematic biases, he claims, void conventional Public Choice arguments for the essential rationality of voters - to prop up the key analogy between political and economic markets - such as cognitive short-cut, cues from friends and family, retrospective voting on how the government didor the ‘miracle of aggregation’. Rational politicians thus demagogically play to majority economic prejudices, but then ignore campaign promises knowing that the electorate will punish them if the economy deteriorates because of its populist nostrums. This explains why democracies make policy with some degree of efficiency. Contrary to the prevailing ‘democratic fundamentalism’, we are, Caplan concludes, already bumping up against the desirable limits of democracy. We should therefore introduce economic literacy tests for voters and abandon efforts to boost turnout likely to mobilize less educated, less economically rational voters.

Although refreshingly iconoclastic, Caplan is not wholly convincing. The case for systemic voter ignorance seems made, but empirical evidence for ‘rational irrationality’ appears patchy. Even given its US focus, the book’s dismissal of self-interested (class-based) voting is sweeping. Politics is often a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers, not (just) an exercise in generating a single, rational socially optimum outcome. Caplan’s ‘democratic pessimism’ also seems to point as much to technocratic elitism as the greater marketization he clearly favours. Nor, as he is happy, is his argument very new. Indeed the books comes with self-consciously liberal (no pun intended) helping of quotations from classical liberal economists of the C18th/C19th (Smith, Bastiat, Spencer) and early 20th century elitist and democratic sceptics like Le Bon and Mosca - both intellectual influences on fascism, as I recall, but I guess that might be just historical contingency. The difference is that whereas then the uneducated nature of masses could in the views of someone like J.S. Mill (perhaps rather oddly not referenced by Caplan) justify civic literacy tests and an unequal if universal franchise (extra voters for graduates) as a form of quality control before their full admittance to democratic citizenship, now we have education galore. But rising levels of education, as Caplan is happy to point out, have not brought rising levels of knowledge about politics.

Caplan’s reputation-making brickbat thus adds to a growing contemporary literature identifying the success of liberal democratic societies with liberalism rather than their democracy, and placing the onus for democracy’s failures on citizen incompetence, rather than flawed institutions. The Future of Freedom and Stealth Democracy immediately come to mind. And, of course, as mentioned in the previous post there are sharp resonances in CEE, where the liberal intelligentsia have longer suspected the populace of being too collectivistic and too stupid to be trusted with extensive democracy, hence the current vogue for ‘counter-majoritarian institutions’. The herd of docile sheep on the cover of Caplan’s book - presumably intended to represent the mass of dozy citizen-consumers - is an analogy used not only by J.S. Mill in On Liberty, but also in my hearing by a leading liberal Slovak politician. No wonder they vote for Robert Fico, a man seemingly more cut for democratic politics as outlined by Caplan as he seems to half-believe in the populist solutions he offers.

A post-communist Costa in the making? Western expats enter local politics in Bulgaria

The excellent online Sofia Weekly newsletter reports that - post-EU enlargement a German, UK national are likely to run for municipal councils in the central Bulgarian town of Gabrovo on the ticket of the centrist populist/centre-right GERB party founded and unofficially led by Sofia mayor Boyko Borissov, which seems to be making the running in re-uniting the fractured Bulgarian centre-right. As ever local elections serve as a testing ground and laboratory for alliance-building that the CEE centre-right needs to do regularly and in spades. Given the vogue in Western Europe for buying holiday and retirement homes in Bulgaria and Romania - endlessly featured in how-to-a-buy-second-home-and-escape-to-the-sun programmes on TV in the UK - I begin to wonder whether in 10-20 years these countries will develop the same large pockets of expat West and North Europeans as France, Portugal or Spain. Given their EU voting rights in local elections UK and Dutch voters are already a significant voting bloc in local politics on the Costa del Sol, with their 'community leaders' sought after as another element in clientelistically-assembled local political alliances. There is, I believe, already some pretty serious sociological research on the expat British minority in Spain undertaken by social geographers, but as far as I am aware nothing by political scientists.

Meanwhile back in Gabrovo, the German reportedly owns a furniture factory in the picturesque mountain town, while the Briton has bought a house in the are. Polls suggest GERB will do well in the October local elections

East coast intellectual?

Like a lot of SSEES people, during the summer, I always head East. This year though the Wild East meant Suffolk and a nicely modernized cottage complete with doll’s house, cafetiere and a selection of books and DVDs to suit all tastes. We spent most days on Lowestoft's long and sandy beach, with me keeping one eye on the kids and the other (very occasionally) on Frances Fukuyama’s After the Neocons - an attempt to put forward a sensible version of neo-conservatism, whose most interest argument for me was the overgeneralization of the experience of 1989 (and subsequent Coloured Revolutionss) as a template for transitional politics. Even allowing for his writing for wide audience as a public intellectual, Fukuyama conveys an uncomfortable feeling of breadth without depth. In the end I was happy I had to stop at chapter 2 and make sand castles.

Lowestoft is an interesting kind of place – more down-to-earth and with sandier beaches than posher, more cultured places such down the Suffolk coast.like Aldeburgh and Southwold and with an odd juxtaposition of rundown B and Bs, fish and chips and fairground attractions; rundown docks and a half empty industrial and redevelopment zone; and the beginning of the Broads. Packed with daytrippers from Merseyside and the Midland during the sunny weekend, it was half deserted during the cloudier cooler weekdays.

I had reason to grateful if tfor his bucket-and-spade and meets light industrial landscape though as when a vigilent policewoman noticed, much to my horror, that our MOT had expired KwikFit was only a short walk from the beach ( and they were polite and affordable toboot).

Looking the place over, I tried to suss out the local political landscape. Exhorbitant parking charges, cheap municipal swimming pool, complex recycling system, and giant wind turbine overlooking the beach suggested to me that politically speaking we must be in Lib Dem territory. But in fact the local council is run by the Tories who – backed by heftly representation from posher hinterland around the town where the Broads begin – have a large majority and Labour is the main opposition party with councillors mainly from the more run down bits of Lowestoft. The Liberals barely get a look - with three seats they barely matched the one Green and two independents. Clearly, this jarring social mix of seaside, run down industrial and poor social housing is not electorally their cup of tea, or perhaps there are historic reasons, who knows.