The Weekly Five: Democracy in the News for the Week February 8, 2014
A selected round-up of democracy in the news. All opinions are those of their respective owners and do not reflect the opinions of H-Democracy.
- South Africa questions its democracy after parliament brawl
- Democracy, Deferred: Nigeria's postponed election is an embarrassment of bad choices
- Political Shoo-ins Are Bad for Journalism as Well as Democracy
- Democracy Gerrymandered
- The Digital Democracy Commission report is about far more than just digital
1 Reply
Post ReplyArticle #3 about political shoo-ins being bad for democracy is about large scale offices. But I think the issue isn't so much "political shoo-ins" as it is access to preexisting political campaign and fundraising networks. I have blogged in the past about how DC local elections have been integrated into the "city-wide" Growth Machine.
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2012/11/dc-at-large-city-counc…
This has upped the amount of money necessary to run a campaign (many hundreds of thousands of dollars) and generally involves either or both the Mayor and City Council chair trying to develop broader networks of influence and control.
In the 2006 general election, the ward 4 and ward 7 council seats became open as the officeholders rose to Mayor and Council Chair respectively. A special election was held in early 2007 to fill the seats. Each contest had a dozen candidates. But the Mayor made access conditional on support for his designee and so that candidate benefited from both the Mayor's campaign machine as well as the same set of donors. My understanding is the same thing happened in Ward 7. Each of the designees won their respective elections.
Since that time, ward council elections have been much more integrated into the Growth Machine system. The same thing is happening after the 2014 election. The candidates favored by the Mayor for the two open seats on Council slated for special election are leading the field in terms of fundraising.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bowser-backed-candidate…