USAID’s self-inflicted wounds

MA in Democracy and Governance student Elizabeth Cutler has a very insightful post on the constellation of forces within the USG that seek to undermine the work of USAID and their reasons for doing so at Budget Insight. She left out an important part of the problem: she blames everyone in the USG except USAID. Part of the agency’s problem is that it does a terrible job of justifying its own existence. USAID does not operate as a single agency, but is more like an umbrella organization for lots of different development projects (health, education, environment, democracy/governance, etc.). USAID has been unable to frame why it exists, so others have chosen to do so – to the detriment of USAID.

Not good enough

MA program co-Director Dan Brumberg argues that the Obama administration can’t rely on supporting civil society alone to foment democratic reform in the Middle East.

Social media trifecta

Blog, twitter, and now we’re on facebook. Thanks, Mariel.

Cohesive parties are bad for Afghanistan

MA in Democracy and Governance alum Jack Santucci weighs in against donor consensus that Afghanistan needs more cohesive political parties at the Democratic Piece:

I wonder whether the ’strong’ parties that might result from more party-centric electoral rules would be all that great. If, for example, closed-list PR turns divided societies’ elections into “national identity referenda,”would programmatic coherence and party discipline be such great ideas?

I agree completely. A more cohesive party system is only likely to sharpen ethnic tension in Afghanistan. The country has enough problems already. Weak parties are probably an asset.

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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