We don’t care about Haiti anymore

Chris Blattman has a great chart showing news attention to natural disasters. He has found, surprise, surprise, that we no longer care about Haiti (and makes Tyler Cowen look pretty foolish in the process).

Gaming the (electoral) system

Guest post from David Jandura, a student in the MA in Democracy and Governance Program. David takes a look at Sudan’s electoral system:

In the world of electoral system design, there are advantages and disadvantages to the many types of systems that exist.  It would probably be incorrect to say that any one system is “better” than another, because better is dependent upon what your priorities are.  One of the many advantages of a proportional representation, or PR system, for example, is that it does a relatively good job of ensuring that electors’ votes accurately translate into who is elected with less “wasted votes.” While it may be wrong to say which system is better, however, I don’t think it’s wrong to look at a system and question what its priorities are.  Sudan is a good case in point.  The nation claims to have a parallel system, which includes a significant amount of PR seats, yet the Sudanese have managed to create a PR tier that doesn’t actually deliver any of the advantages the system is designed to provide.

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