With the 6 May election coming up in the U.K., there have been a great many predictions of the outcome, and most of them entail either an outright Tory win, or, more likely, a hung parliament. Of course, the obvious next prediction to make, at least by those who are paid to predict outcomes, is how the hung parliament will be structured, and, most importantly, which side will the Liberal Democrats, the perpetual third party who have not enjoyed any power since World War II, will join. It’s pretty much accepted that, given a hung parliament, whichever...
Continue reading...elections
Ready to die
With so much coverage over the past several months of the Green Revolution in Iran, it’s easy to forget how often disputed election results occur in nascent democracies, how often this leads to street-level protests, which end up, far too frequently, with street-level violence. And even without violence, disputed election results, whether caused by wholesale corruption in the worst cases, or honest mistakes in the best cases, damage presidencies and the overall reputation of democracy. Most recently, Afghanistan’s disputed election last year has undermined President Karzai’s government, while the disputed 2000 election in the United States—arguably the...
Continue reading...
Recent Comments