Sunday, January 23, 2005  Juan Cole's problematic definition of
"elections"  Over at Winds of Change, Armed Liberal (aka Marc
Danziger) noted the other day that Juan Cole has a very peculiar
and highly specific (perhaps even ethnocentric) definition of
elections. He quotes him as follows from a PRI broadcast (but
it's very similar to what he says at RadioNation interview with
him I listened to yesterday): "The Iraqi people are being asked
to vote for party lists or coalition lists...but they most often
don't know which politicians are running. I think it's a little
bit absurd to call that an election." I agree with Armed Liberal
--Juan Cole is a professor of what? The otherwise urbane Cole
needs to study up on his political science, and realize that
this method (known as "closed lists") is prevalent in what is
called List Proportional Representation systems. Closed lists
mean that "the order of candidates elected by that list is fixed
by the party itself, and voters are not able to express a
preference for a p