From globalvoices:

Will Bolivia allow President Evo Morales to run for re-election? It all depends whether a constitutional court decides he is currently serving his first or second term.

A quick comment (since I’m a Bolivianist, after all) on this evolving story (ironically, as I head off to my Populism in Latin America course):

The legitimacy of the reelection of presidents is a tricky thing, conceptually. On the one hand, there’s nothing intrinsically bad (or even undemocratic) about allowing a sitting president to run again for office. Assuming it’s a free & fair election (which I still think is the case in Bolivia), then there’s no clear reason why a popular majority can’t reelect a president.

The problem has to do with long term consequences of repeated reelections. Evo Morales came to power in 2006 (he was elected in December of 2005, but inaugurated in January of  2006). If he wins reelection (which he almost certainly would, if he were to run) next year, he will have already been in office for 8 years. If he won another five year term, he would be president for 13 years at the end of that term. That would be one year longer than the 12-year post-revolutionary MNR government that lasted from 1952-1964 (and ended in a military coup). The long term consequences are two fold: 1) Is it desirable for any one person to hold power for that long? 2) What does it say about the institutional capacity of the party or movement (MAS) that there’s no other leader waiting to take the reigns of power in an orderly, inter-party transition? 

The first question could be solved by strong institutional checks and balances, primarily by strengthening the legislature, the courts, and the local and regional autonomous governments. Unfortunately, those checks have been eroded over time. The 2011 judicial elections were poorly orchestrated and have weakened the courts. The legislature is dominated by MAS and now serves as rubber stamp for presidential prerogatives. And the local and regional governments are regularly harassed by the central government which is glad to use an anti-corruption law to remove opposition mayors and governors (it works because the law states that anyone accused of a crime is removed automatically during the investigation; not surprisingly, almost all such cases involve opposition politicians; and the president is immune from the law).

The real problem is the long term consequences for MAS. By arguing that “only Evo” can lead MAS and secure the gains of his government, which are significant (in particular the increased attention to poverty & inequality, an emphasis on multicultural rights & autonomy, and the recent decentralization reforms), suggests that MAS is weak. Protecting the regime’s gains will mean institutionalizing the regime, not securing the leader’s power. Arguing that “only Evo” can defend the regime suggests that either (a) no one else within MAS is capable or (b) no one else within MAS believes in the regime. At some point, Evo Morales will have to give up power (either through an orderly transition to a successor, or losing an election, or being overthrown, or death). The sooner MAS begins to prepare for that transition, the better. A strong MAS can ensure that it either achieves an orderly transition (with or without the death of the leader), it can prevent a coup, or it can survive as a loyal opposition to any new government. That’s the real test for the new Bolivian regime.

Even looking only at Bolivian history is instructive. The MNR managed to share power among its caudillos (primarily Paz Estenssoro and Siles Zuazo) at first, but then it broke down. The attempt to create a dominant-party system ultimately failed and led to a military crackdown that reversed many of the revolution’s gains and persecuted many of its leaders. Similarly, it was the inability of the great caudillos of the 1980s and 1990s Bolivian parties (Paz Zamora, Hugo Banzer, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and even Carlos Palenque) to transfer leadership to a successor that doomed those parties.

If MAS is a true instrument of popular power, with a strong institutionalized coalition of key sectors of Bolivian society, then it should be able to present a slate of future leaders to the electorate. Because if the party is merely a vehicle for Evo Morales, then it will likely suffer the same fate as Condepa. Does MAS want to look forward to descending into the kind of crass soap opera drama that was the fight for Condepa’s remains among Palenque’s family and friends? And as crass as that was, Condepa was never in power. How much more crass (and chaotic) would such a struggle be when the contestants aren’t just picking over the remains of a political project, but a government apparatus?

Yesterday I posted an observation about the relationship between democracy & taxes. But when compiling that data, I also pulled some data on “size of government” (as measured by the conservative Fraser Institute). Their Economic Freedom index includes a component for “size of government,” which gives a score of 10 to “small” governments and zero to “big” governments.

That relationship is even more interesting.

Again, pulling from The Economist Democracy Index (2011), I plotted country scores along the two variables: Democracy Index score and “Size of Government” score. The Fraser Institute data has fewer countries, so instead of 161 countries, this time I was only able to plot 138 countries.

Notice that the line is virtually flat. It’s slightly leaning towards the “wrong” end (democracy scores increase as size of government increases). But, statistically speaking, there is no relationship (Pearson’s r = -0.1086; p = 0.2048).

What does this mean? Well, basically, it means that there’s no reason to suggest that “size of government” has any relationship to whether a country is democratic or not. Like w/ yesterday’s data, this has no bearing on whether “big” government is “good” or not (those are ideological/philosophical debates you’re welcome to have). But, empirically, the evidence doesn’t support the assertion that “big” governments are bad for democracy.

For example, which countries scored the “best” according to the Fraser Institute in terms of “size of government”? Here’s the list of countries that scored a 9 (no country scored a 10):

• Togo
• El Salvador
• Madagascar
• Jamaica
• Haiti

And here’s the countries that scored the “worst” in terms of the “size of government,” according to the Fraser Institute:

• Sweden (3)
• The Netherlands (3)

For comparison, the United States scored a 7.

(I should note that the Fraser Institute did not give scores to a number of countries, including North Korea and Cuba. But the list of excluded countries also includes “small” states like Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.)

I was compiling some data for some class exercises and lecture presentations for next semester, and wanted to make a small observation. This stems from the difficulty I find in explaining to my students why states (or “governments”—although there’s obviously an important conceptual distinction between state and government) are important. Many of my students have a fairly strong anti-government bias, which is reinforced by their biases against taxes.

Whether strong states (or “central governments”) are a good thing or not is a question for moral or political philosophy. Certainly, strong states can be authoritarian (although, ironically, many authoritarian regimes actually have weak states). 

Similarly, whether taxes are useful or not is also a question for moral or political philosophy. And certainly many countries (including our own) spend tax dollars wastefully and/or on things we’d rather they didn’t (e.g. pacifists still pay taxes that go to military spending).

But the question of whether high taxes erode, weaken, or otherwise undermine democracy is an empirical question. That is, we can test it with existing data. To compare taxes across the world, I used tax burden as percent of GDP (this is better than using tax rates, since it looks at the share of taxes as the share of the total economy). I used data from the conservative Heritage Foundation. I wanted to see if there was any relationship between taxes and democracy. I used the 2011 Democracy Index measure developed by The Economist (the higher the score, the higher the quality of democracy). 

Turns out, there is a relationship between taxes and democracy. But it’s not what some of you might expect. The figure below plots 161 countries on both dimensions; the red line is the statistically estimated relationship (or “trendline”) between the two variables. The quality of democracy increases as tax burden as percent of GDP increases. The relationship is fairly strong (Pearson’s r = 0.6553; p < 0.000). 

There are outliers, obviously. But for the most part, countries w/ high democracy scores have high tax burdens. In contrast, countries w/ the low democracy scores tend to have low tax burdens.

How low? The ten countries with the lowest tax burdens as percent of GDP are:

An interesting visual design—but difficult to follow. Can you do better?

From lmdesigngrp:

Level of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North African countries

Just got my hard copy copy of the Freedom House Countries at the Crossroads 2011 report in the mail. You can view the entire report online. Or you can buy it the physical hardcopy here. I’m particularly excited because I was invited to write the Bolivia report. I tried to be balance (and the anonymous reviewers held me to that).

Working with the editorial team was a great experience—and it was a great way to peek behind the curtain to see how Freedom House scores countries. I came away impressed.

From kohenari:

Russia, China veto U.N. resolution telling Assad to quit

Russia and China vetoed on Saturday an Arab- and Western-backed resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down over his bloody crackdown on a popular uprising.

The setback in diplomatic efforts to defuse the revolt peacefully came after world leaders and Syrian opposition activists accused Assad’s forces of killing hundreds of people in a bombardment of the city of Homs, the bloodiest night in 11 months of upheaval in the pivotal Arab country.

It’s still controversial, it seems, to insist that leaders who murder their citizens by the hundreds should step down … especially when some of those who are voting on the matter might want to preserve the option of murdering citizens for themselves.

From newsflick:

Historic: Egypt’s first democratically elected representatives for 60 years have gathered for the first session of the new parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party captured almost half the seats in recent elections. Outside the parliament building there were protests over the military’s continuing grip on power. Here is an interactive graphic which gives you a visual representation of Egypt’s new People’s Assembly, the lower house of parliament. (Pic)