What’s News Today, and the Last Week (or so)
There is so much going on current events-wise these days, and so much is changing so quickly, that it is difficult to pin anything down long enough to write about it.

This is one of the reasons that I have been so impressed with Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo recently. Anyone who keeps up with Marshall knows that, for weeks now, he has focused his considerable energies on one issue: saving Social Security from the privatizers. Day after day, hour after hour, Marshall keeps tabs on the wrangling around the issue, paying particular attention to two groups that he has christened “The Fainthearted Faction” (Weak-kneed Dems who might go over to the dark side)and the Conscience Caucus (Republicans who are taking a stand against the phase-out). Marshall’s single-issue focus is a great model for marshalling (sorry) the power of the blogosphere and may even point the way to a good model for the Democratic party.

Unfortunately, I share none of Marshall’s ability to focus, laser-like, on a single issue, and so, here is a quick rundown of the stories that I find fascinating right now:

The Note: National Enquirer for the Cool-in-D.C. Set, or Human Bidet for the Republican Elite, you be the Judge
It was getting on my nerves towards the end of the 2004 election cycle, but it has gotten a lot worse recently: The Note barely has any time to actually report on anything, what with how frantically it has applied itself to, on the one hand, crawling very, very far up the Republican's ass, and on the other, taking every possible opportunity to bash the Dems while they are down. Not a day passes when Halprin and his Monkey’s don’t take it upon themselves to offer up some sternly worded sagacity to the poor, bumbling party leaders. Today’s lessons are for Harry Reid and Howard Dean. I, for one, can barely read the thing anymore.



The DNC Chair
Howard Dean is now officially the presumptive DNC Chair. I came out of the 2004 campaign thinking that Dean deserved a lot more credit then he got for awakening the Democratic Party out of the utter complacency of the pre-war period, but personally, I think there were better candidates for this job (Simon Rosenberg, in particular). Still, I am going to remain hopeful that Dean will figure out how to shake things up without providing The Note with a new dish every day.

The Budget
Its too soon to say anything meaningful about this now, but its sure worth watching.

Democracy in Iraq
Juan Cole at Informed Consent has been consistently offering valuable analysis of the situation in Iraq from the perspective of a critic of the administration who opposed the war but wants very much to see the situation in Iraq turn out well for the Iraq’s, the U.S. and the rest of the Middle East. Here is a recent post of interest: Shiite Religious Coalition Dominates Parliamentary Voting

Political theorists rarely respond to world events in real time so it is unlikely that we will hear any detailed analysis of the situation in Iraq from Yale professor Robert Dahl anytime soon. Dahl is a leading theorist on democratic systems who has been productive in the field for something like six decades. Dahl is particularly well known for work he has done in debunking the myth that forms the basis of the constitutionalist movement in American conservative circles.

One of Dahl’s major contributions is his study of what he calls polyarchal democracy, defined as having seven features: elected officials, free and fair elections, inclusive suffrage, the right to run for office, freedom of expression, alternative information, and associational autonomy. It is clear that the Iraqi election did not come anywhere near meeting these goals in full, though Dahl would be one of the first to note that the long term success of a democratic system does not depend on all of these features being present from the outset.

Along with his sometimes partner, the economist Charles Lindeblom, Dahl has devoted a great deal of attention to the problem of intense minorities within democracy. Intense minorities (like Southern slave holders during the American foundation) are subsections of the polity that can influence political outcomes to a degree that is out of whack with their simple numerical weight. Often, as was the case with the Southerners in this country, their power lies in their ability to opt out of the system altogether.

The situation in Iraq appears to be one in which the problem of intense minorities will again be front and center. Will the Sunni, who were largely disenfranchised from this round of voting, stay engaged in the political system long enough to become active participants? Will the Kurds be able to square themselves with a federal system rather than a Kurdish state? Will Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s UIA, the clear winner in the elections, have to turn to smaller, more radical Shiite factions to build the coalition government, and if so, will those small groups wield as much power as, for example, the ultra-right wing wields in conservative Israeli coalition governments?


- posted by Simon Marcus @ Tuesday, February 08, 2005