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elections

International Affairs
Some saw early what Trump’s rise meant.
Others denied it (and us)
Jim Sleeper 9 November 2016

Long before the final results, many Americans knew that our body politic was suffering a seizure after being injected with a poison that nothing in Hillary Clinton’s politics was potent enough to expel. The impotence of that politics — its inability to draw from wellsprings deeper than bromides about breaking glass ceilings, “fighting” for families and children, and slashing college tuition — has little to do with Clinton’s character or alleged corruption or even with the undoubted wave of misogyny in this election.
Political Theory
Why the Iranian Elections Are a Turning Point
Ramin Jahanbegloo 7 March 2016

Unlike what many may think, elections in an illiberal country like Iran are not only a political show. Their outcome serves as a test of strength among Iran’s competing power centers. Over the weekend, the Iranian people went massively to the polls to elect members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the parliament, and the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, which is in charge of selecting the next supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was the first time that the two political bodies were elected simultaneously.
Political Theory
Iran’s 2016 elections: candidates and power clashes. What is at stake?
Marina Forti 24 February 2016

In Iran the time has come to call voters to the polls. “Even an influential minority will make the difference in the next parliament,” said reformist candidate Mohammad-Reza Aref only a few days ago addressing a crowded assembly of young supporters of the National Determination Party (as reported by the Financial Times’ correspondent). Similar appeals have been made by President Hassan Rouhani.
Political Theory
The New Turkish Parliament: a Good Surprise
Lea Nocera 12 June 2015

The result of the elections in Turkey was surprising for two main reasons, the downturn experienced by the governing Justice and Development Party – Erdoğan’s AKP – and the pro-Kurdish HDP’s arrival in parliament, also representing in a broader manner the Turkish democratic and pluralist left. The challenge was not an easy one due to the enormous disproportion of resources and the very loud and violent tone of the electoral campaign. Furthermore, there was the 10% threshold established following the 1980 coup d’état, which for decades altered real representation in parliament.
Political Theory
Israel and the Politics of Paroxysm
Jim Sleeper 25 March 2015

Any development involving Israel becomes a Rorschach test for many Americans, probably even for larger numbers of non-Jews than Jews. Israel’s recent elections lit up a spectrum of reactions that revealed more about the reactors’ own temperaments, ideologies, and even their feelings about Jews, than about what the elections themselves actually reflected and portend. At one end there is gloating, and at the other doom-saying, but to assess the situation intelligently, we need to look at it morally and politically — not moralistically or ideologically— or we will only exacerbate a politics of paroxysm that forecloses politics itself.
Political Theory
India’s 2014 General Election:
Time to Rediscover Secularism
Ananya Vajpeyi 26 May 2014

Ever since Partition and Independence, Indian political life has privileged the concepts of diversity, pluralism, tolerance and inter-religious harmony. The way to realise these values, according to the ideology dominant thus far, was to have a state that expressed equal ‘love’ for all communities, that is, a state taking it upon itself to safeguard the peculiarities, rights and interests of groups defined along the axes of religion or caste, or as a majority and multiple minorities. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta has explained recently, in the vision of its founders and the architecture of the Constitution, India was conceived of as a ‘federation of communities’ with a paternalistic, secular state presiding over and managing a mosaic of identities. But, the outcome of India’s 2014 general elections, which puts the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in power under the leadership of Narendra Modi – sworn in as the new prime minister on Monday 26 May – calls for a widespread debate on the meaning, purpose and definition of secularism in this country.
Political Theory
Presidential Elections in Iran. All Set to Choose Ahmadinejad’s Successor
Antonella Vicini 14 June 2013

After the final frantic hours of election campaigning, Tehran and the rest of the country now await voting results. Since 8 a.m. over 50 million people have been called upon to choose between six candidates, Said Jalili, Baqer Qalibaf, Ali Akbar Velayati, Hassan Rouhani, Mohsen Rezaei and Mohammad Gharazi. Of these, according to Interior Ministry data published on Sunday, 1.5 million will be voting for the very first time, meaning they turned eighteen after June 2009. There are 60,000 polling station and in Tehran, which has 14 million inhabitants in its constituency, there are 6,000 polling stations set up in mosques, schools, banks and even mobile ones with 12,000 booths.
Political Theory
Presidential election 2013, reformists cornered in Tehran
Giuseppe Acconcia 12 February 2013

Iran, 14 June’s next Presidential elections are upon us. And, in Tehran there is a confrontation between conservatives close to the Supreme Leader and hardliners backed by the outgoing President-in-office, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The space is too small for other fronts. Iranian reformists remain excluded from political life with two of their leaders, Moussavi and Karroubi, key players of the anti-regime protests in 2009, still blocked under house arrest. Yet, this time above all tensions could be caused by the severe monetary crisis that is hitting the country and causing an increase in prices without precedent. However, on the eve of the elections Iranian authorities are still counting on anti-American propaganda and repressive actions against the reformist press.
Political Theory
Laurent Gbagbo and the right to ‘difference’
Nicoletta Fagiolo 30 January 2013

Since November 2011 Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Côte d’Ivoire, has been detained at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, accused of being an “indirect co-author” of serious crimes against humanity during the post-election crisis in his country. But many people ask why and doubt the legitimacy of these charges. For many it is his political opponent of the 2010 presidential elections, Alassane Ouattara, that should be in his place detained at the Hague, along with Guillaume Soro, the current President of the National Assembly, who headed the 2002 rebellion that divided the country in two.
Political Theory
Israel’s Elections and the Rise of the Annexationist Right. Time for Europe to present a common peace proposal
Andrea Dessì 23 January 2013

On Tuesday 22 January 2013 Israelis have gone to the polls to elect a new parliament (Knesset) and government. No one is expecting big surprises and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current Prime Minister from the right-wing Likud party, is widely believed to retain his post. He is expected to form a governing coalition with a grouping of nationalist, religious and orthodox parties much in the same fashion as he did following the 2009 vote. The election campaign, inaugurated on the heels of a bloody eight day escalation of violence against Hamas in mid-November 2012, has not been witness to significant excitements, and other than Israel’s continued shift to the right, little new can be extrapolated from the run up to the vote.