Propagation:

10 ideas sprouting »

1. I was surprised about how accurate the poll was in regards to my preferences, despite the fact that my partisan leanings are more influenced by the competence and honesty (or lack thereof) displayed by party leaders while in office than by policies. Also I agree with Charles de Gaulle’s position on UK membership (further European integration is a good thing, but its less likely to happen with the UK included), so its hard to know how to respond to the European integration questions.

   Seed planted by Ed — 11 May 2009 @ 15:03

2. I was also surprised how close I stand to subnational parties according to EU Profiler: The nearest party to me in Europe is Plaid Cymru (Wales); and the nearest party to me in Spain (where I’m supposed to vote in less than four weeks) is ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya). I know these are European Elections, but I miss some questions about the role of regions and linguistic issues. In case of being included, I guess that my results could change a little bit.
   Anyway, glad to see that my voting behavior in Spain is close to Matt’s preferences.
   PS: For more information on electoral reform in Spain, see the Report of the Consejo de Estado on this issue (Spanish): http://www.consejo-estado.es/noticias.php#7.

   Seed planted by Pedro — 11 May 2009 @ 15:49

3. I think this Euro Profiler is far from being a useful tool. Regional politics is almost absent and many questions are biased in the way they are formulated.
   Anyway, thanks for your support on the electoral system reform in Spain. I hope Izquierda Unida would make this issue its core in the future. Otherwise, the future is the darkness.

   Seed planted by SL — 11 May 2009 @ 16:00

4. Does anybody understand the difference between the results given by “analyse your nearest party” and “analyse party matches”? The first says I ought to be an Irish Green, the second that I should join the Pirate Party: yarrr!

   Seed planted by Vasi — 11 May 2009 @ 22:37

5. What is this about in Spain? A just electoral law? Does the Izquierda Unida want to change the electoral law in Spain? Should Spain change it’s electoral law to MMP or add a national wide list tier to ensure proportionality?

   I heard that the regional parties in Spain got far fewer voters but more seats than the Izquierda Party who got far fewer seats because it’s support is geographically disperse and not concentrated. The Catalonian and Basque parties get more seats on far fewer votes because there support is concentrate geographically.

   I heard that even Finland has this problem with it’s proportionality because it too like Spain only uses regional multi member districts, but no national list tier like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark does.

   Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 12 May 2009 @ 13:57

6. Spain has as majoritarian an electoral system as a country could have and still be called proportional.

   The small district magnitudes (other than Barcelona and Madrid) are very beneficial to regional parties, and harmful to more dispersed parties. The IU is an example of the latter (and it currently has a place in the system only due to the few large-magnitude districts.)

   Finland’s situation is far less severe, because district magnitudes are generally larger and there are few regional parties. Still, the magnitude variation could be said to have a political impact.

   Seed planted by MSS — 12 May 2009 @ 17:01

7. ‘[...] Still, since I don’t feel like railing against the inevitable this week, and since I’m guessing that there really will be a European president and a European foreign minister in the near future, it’s worth spending a minute or two contemplating what that might mean. Clearly, the real test of whether Europe’s most powerful countries are taking this new treaty seriously wasn’t the Irish referendum. The question of whether the recalcitrant Czech president will finally be browbeaten into signing the thing is an irrelevance, too. (And if he does sign, it will certainly not represent a “triumph of the European ideal,” whatever they say in Brussels.)

   ‘But do watch closely, over the next weeks and months, to see who is selected to fill these jobs and, more important, how they are selected. Traditionally, leaders of multilateral institutions are chosen through a process of elimination - the person who is the least interesting, least opinionated, and least influential gets the job, precisely because nobody else objects. Yet this is not how the president or prime minister of a country is selected. He gets the job because he has convinced the electorate that he is better than somebody else. I’m not saying that democracy always produces the most gifted leaders, but it does frequently produce politicians who are willing to argue loudly in favour of some things and against other things. By contrast, people often wind up running multilateral institutions - and not just European ones - because they are not willing to argue about anything at all.

   ‘Here, then, is how to evaluate the Lisbon Treaty: If there really is now a coalition of the willing in favour of a common European policy, then it will support the selection of forceful and opinionated leaders of Europe. Europe will then have, in Henry Kissinger’s immortal phrasing, a phone number to call when America (or Russia, or China) wants to talk. And if there is no such coalition? Then you won’t hear much about the president or the foreign minister of Europe again, so it doesn’t really matter.’

   - Anne Applebaum, “Will the President of Europe Be a Gifted Pol or a Compromising Bureaucrat? The choice will tell us everything we need to know about European unification,” Slate (5 October 2009).

   Seed planted by Tom Round — 17 October 2009 @ 02:06

8. This blog needs to be renamed Frutas y Votas. I ended up with the Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds.

   Seed planted by Alan — 17 October 2009 @ 07:44

9. Even better, frutas y votos (or fruits i vots, the Catalan translation).

   Seed planted by Pedro — 18 October 2009 @ 21:35

10. Spain has no national list tier like Sweden, and Norway do? Well, to start with, Sweden and Norway don’t have national lists. Do they even have a national tier? I would say they have national compensation. Not precisely the same as “the distribution of remainders on the national level,” one of the options the Spanish Council of State considered, but very similar. They considered two others: larger regions, and “election of a portion of the Members at the national level.” They concluded that the distribution of remainders on the national level was constutitionally possible and should be considered. It would work much like the Swedish system; the lists would remain provincial.

    Seed planted by Wilf Day — 19 October 2009 @ 06:09

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