Fruits and Votes » 2011

Penguins

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

Little Blues and Yellow-Eyed Penguins, at the amazing Nature’s Wonders on the Otago Peninsula.

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29 December 2011

Azulejos galore

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

You see these painted tiles, azulejos, all over Portugal. But the National Palace in Sintra has some of the finest.

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Second chambers in unitary states

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Bicameralism; France

At least two unitary states have a second chamber in which the units (departments, provinces) have equal numbers of representatives, regardless of population: Bolivia¹, and the Dominican Republic.

While the logic for equality of unit representation in federal systems is clear, the logic for the same organizing principle in a unitary state is much less so.

However, aside from making that observation, the real purpose of this planting is to ask the readership if anyone knows of other examples of unitary states that have second-chamber equality. These are the only two I can think of.

A further purpose is to observe that the French Senate is in the process of a major reorganization that has begun in 2011 (but it is not a case of equal representation of units).

I would have provided a link, but senado.bo returns an error, “This Account Has Been Suspended”! [↩]

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28 December 2011

Napier

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

A stunningly beautiful city.

Sometimes I can’t pick just one. And, yes, there are many more.

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27 December 2011

The dwindling of the season

Planted by MSS
Planted in: FRUITS

The Hachiya persimmon season is almost done. And so is Chanukah.

The fruit is fantastic this year, and always at its best when it can ripen on the tree. The Hachiya is an astringent variety, which must be super-soft before it is edible.

Note the menorah (technically, a chanukiyah) in the window. Later this evening, once it is dark, all eight¹ candles² will be lit.

Plus the shamash, the candle that stands higher than the rest and is used to light them. [↩]
The astute observer may notice that this is an electric menorah. The one with real candles is in the house, but as one must publicize the miracle by having the candles be outside or in a window where passers-by will see them, and as the office (but not the house) has such a window, and as one should not leave candles unattended, the electric variety in the office window does the trick. In any case, the miracle concerned olive oil, not candles. But most of us use candles these days. [↩]

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Did Eiffel ever do anything else that can beat this?

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

Porto.

The engineer who designed this bridge also did some little tower somewhere else in Europe.

More of Porto.

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26 December 2011

In honor of Boxing Day…

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

You really do not have to go far from central Canberra to see kangaroos.

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25 December 2011

The Romans really knew how to build infrastructure

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

No matter how many photos or TV shows you have seen of the aqueduct in Segovia, nothing can prepare you for just how massive this structure is.

I like this photo, among the many I took, because of the shadows, and how it gives a sense of how long and tall the structure is. (And this is by no means all of it!)

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23 December 2011

Canberra

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Australia; Travel

Canberra.

That’s the War Memorial (also a fantastic museum, by the way) at the bottom of the picture. Then the ANZAC Parade. On the day we left (which was not the day of this photo), ANZAC Parade was lined with alternating Australian and US flags, as Barack Obama was arriving for his visit that day.

Across Lake Burley Griffin the white building is the Old Parliament House (which contains an outstanding Museum of Democracy). Then well beyond that, under the massive flag pole, is the current parliament building.

The view is from the Mt. Ainslie lookout.

More (in addition to the specific links above).

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22 December 2011

Cliffhanger!

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

No, this is not about another close election, but the literally cliffhanging city of Ronda.

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21 December 2011

Franz Josef

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

…Glacier, that is. On the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

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What were the strong parties in 18th century Europe?

Planted by MSS
Planted in: POLITICAL PARTIES; USA

In an otherwise good piece by a Republican insider about why a Newt Gingrich presidency would be dangerous, Mickey Edwards offers this line:

It is why they argued against creating strong political parties like the ones they had left behind in Europe.

The “it” here is the “confrontational” style of Gingrich that, Edwards says, is more responsible than anything else for the current “dysfunctional” nature of American politics. “They” are the drafters of the US constitution.

No argument here about Gingrich’s dangers, or the incompatibility of strong parties (at least when there are just two) with the US Constitution as it emerged from the Philadelphia Convention. And certainly no argument to be offered here against the dysfunction of the US political system.

I just want to know, because I am not a historian of European parties, what “strong political parties” did the early European settlers of America (neatly conflated here with the constitutional founders) leave behind?

Electoral democracy and disciplined parliamentary parties must have emerged rather earlier than I had been aware previously.

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20 December 2011

Trams on narrow streets

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

Lisbon.

From a series photos of funiculars and trams.

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Hungary’s new electoral system

Planted by MSS
Planted in: ELECTORAL SYSTEMS & REFORM; Hungary; Mixed-member

As long expected, Hungary is about to get a new electoral system, which will include a sharply reduced assembly size. The current system, in use since 1990, has been a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system, with partial compensation. Not enough compensation to make it MMP–seats are allocated in parallel, but with unused votes from the nominal tier augmenting the party list votes prior to list-tier allocation. In fact, the evolution of party behavior showed just how much the fundamentally majoritarian nature of the system shaped incentives.

The new system will remain MMM, but perhaps even more so. The following details come from Alan Renwick (of the University of Reading, and one of the leading experts on electoral-system change). Alan has generously agreed to be referenced here.

The assembly size will drop from 386 to 199.¹ The nominal tier will continue to consist of single-seat districts. However, the formula for these districts will now be plurality, rather than two-round majority-plurality. This tier will amount to 106 seats, or 53.3% of the total.²

The list tier will be one nationwide district, unlike the current system which actually has two tiers of list allocation (regional and national). These 93 seats will continue to be elected from closed lists. As Alan explains:

For the distribution of the list seats, both the list votes and the remainder votes from SMDs are added together, where remainder votes are votes for losing candidates and votes for winning candidates after subtraction of the second-placed candidate’s votes. Seats are then distributed by d’Hondt, subject to a 5% threshold. There are also special provisions for minorities.

For nominations in the single-seat districts, the number of signatures needed is doubled from 750 to 1500³, even though the increase in the size of these districts is much less than this.

Alan also offers two links, in Hungarian.

http://www.parlament.hu/irom39/05006/05006.pdf

2. hazaeshaladas.blog.hu

This change of the electoral system is in the context of a new constitution, which takes effect on the 1st of January. I previously branded this constitutional reform process as de-facto authoritarian. Alan also recommends a blog entry by Kim Lane Scheppele, who notes that the new constitution also contains a major attack on the independence of the judiciary, the Election Commission, and the electoral district boundary delimitation process.

Thanks, Alan, for this information!

As for Hungary, these are all very troubling developments. In fact, the electoral system change may be the least troubling of this set of changes.

As the first-linked F&V item above discussed, Hungary has had a significantly “oversized” parliament. The Cube Root Rule would suggest an assembly size of around 200 to 215, or right about where they have now settled. [↩]
Previously the nominal tier was 176 seats out of the total 386, or 45.6%. [↩]
In the final version of the law, the number was set at 1000, as noted in Alan Renwick’s overview. [↩]

Propagation: Seeds & scions (9)

19 December 2011

Arches and columns and columns and arches…

Planted by MSS
Planted in: Travel

The Mezquita in Cordoba may be the most incredible building I’ve ever been inside of.

More.

For roughly the next two weeks, I am going to make an almost daily post of some photo from the past year (or so) of travel. So expect a lot of Portugal, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Spain.

Propagation: Seeds & scions (1)

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