15-04-2008, 04:01 PM
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#180 (permalink)
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| Sundance is my bff
Last Online: 10-08-2009 09:13 PM Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 6,028
| In spite of all this entertainment, the US electoral process is still arguably the "most democratic" and efficient one on earth among major democratic nations. Quote: |
If this were Britain, Russia or India, Rudy Giuliani '08 caps would not be on the clearance racks. In those countries, where bigwigs and insiders get to nominate party leaders, the former Republican front-runner and establishment favorite would have long ago been anointed the winner.
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Giuliani's inglorious fall, and the ascendance of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), send an important message to the world about the importance of intra-party democracy: Interesting things happen when you allow rank-and-file voters to choose their leaders. Primaries don't just eliminate over-hyped Giulianis; they also discover underrated Obamas and never-say-die McCains.
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In contrast to the United States, party leaders in Britain are selected by the equivalent of superdelegates, such as members of Parliament. In Russia, India and many other countries, presidential and prime ministerial candidates are often handpicked by small groups of elites --
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But in recent years (with the United States happily in the vanguard) a growing number of political parties around the world have turned away from selecting leaders in the equivalent of smoke-filled backrooms to holding open primaries. Along the way, they have discovered something astonishing: Parties that conduct primaries have a much better chance of fielding candidates who go on to win general elections than parties whose leaders are selected or nominated by party bigwigs.
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Gilles Serra, a political scientist at Oxford University, said primaries tend to produce superior candidates for a number of reasons. First, they expand the pool of possibilities -- outsiders such as Obama can enter the race and be taken seriously, and left-for-dead candidates such as McCain can resurrect themselves and fight on. Second, the millions of people who vote in primaries may be partisans, but they are a closer approximation to the views of the overall country than are small groups of party insiders. Finally, primaries produce leaders who are not beholden to the party establishment -- and these leaders tend to put the interests of citizens first.
| Shankar Vedantam - Lost in the Smoke-Filled Room: Unexpected Talent - washingtonpost.com |
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