Comparative Government 101: Iraq

Gerritt posted Tuesday regarding this week’s drama in Iraq, where a meeting of the newly elected National Assembly failed to yield a prime minister:

Iraq the Vote: Election? Democracy? [I think not!](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9275-2005Mar29.html)

Nothing personal, Gerritt, but what’s going on in Iraq actually is democracy, and isn’t even that uncommon in parliamentary systems of government.

Remember that in a parliamentary system, the prime minister (head of government) is usually the leader of the majority party in the main legislative body; the PM then picks other legislators to serve as cabinet ministers (US: secretaries). “The government” in parliamentary politics refers to the PM and the slate of ministers, not the entire structure as it does in the US. In turn, the government can be taken down by a majority vote of the legislature at any time, called a “vote of no confidence.” When Americans hear “the government falls,” we think rioting, chaos, civil war; when people in countries parliamentary systems hear that their government has fallen, they think “oh great, a new election in six weeks.”

If no one party gets a majority of the seats in the legislature, you get one of two things. You could have a minority government, where the party with a plurality of the seats forms a government on its own, with unspoken acceptance by enough other parties to keep the government from falling. Canada’s Liberals did this last year with just 36.71% of their vote. Or you can have a coalition government where two or more parties make a formal alliance, with cabinet ministers named from most or all of the parties involved. One variant of this is the “grand coalition” or “national unity government” where both of the country’s leading parties participate; this is the case in Israel right now, where both right-wing Likud and left-wing Labor are allied in a coalition led by Likud PM Ariel Sharon. Both of these types of government are rather unstable, because all it usually takes to tear the whole thing down is one or two parties deciding they could gain position in a new election.

Even countries with a stable, mature political culture have parties flake out of coalitions at the last second. The problem is exacerbated in Iraq because Saddam-era dictatorship didn’t encourage the development of competent legislators, but the system is democratic in nature.

Tom Davis: Smarter Than Tony Kornheiser

If you’ve been watching the news, you know the House Committee on Government Reform held hearings Thursday on the Major League Baseball steroid scandal, subpoenaing several current and retired players plus Commissioner Bud Selig and players’ union head Donald Fehr. The committee chairman is Republican Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia’s 11th District, covering the central-southern half of Fairfax and most of Prince William County.

Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post and ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption has been adamant over the past few days that Davis instigated these hearings purely out of spite for baseball choosing DC over Northern Virginia as the Expos’ new home. For anyone with knowledge of DC-area baseball politics, this is a patently stupid theory on its face, and it’s rather surprising that a local writer would even consider it. But let’s take a moment to knock it down comprehensively, just for fun.

• First: Davis represents neither of the proposed stadium locations in Virginia.
  The early preferred sites for Northern Virginia baseball were clearly in the Arlington/Alexandria corridor, well inside the Beltway on Metro lines. Almost all of inside-the-Beltway VA is part of the 8th District, represented by Democrat Jim Moran. After those sites were rejected, baseball promoters proposed a stadium north of Dulles Airport in Loudoun County, part of Republican Frank Wolf’s 10th District. That location was the one actually rejected last fall in favor of the District of Columbia proposal.
• Second: Virginia probably didn’t want the stadium, and certainly didn’t want to pay for it.
  The Arlington/Alexandria proposal died very early in the game, due to (a) property owners’ disinterest in selling and (b) NIMBYs. Out at Dulles, people questioned both the traffic load (20,000 more cars on the westbound Toll Road during rush hour?) and the difficulty Maryland residents/potential fans would have just reaching the stadium. On the financial side, VA Gov. Mark Warner (D) stated in September that DC was offering baseball more money than Virginia was willing to give. I think this guy’s view is rather representative of ground-level support for a publicly-funded stadium in 703-land.
• Third: Davis doesn’t hate the District!
  Matter of fact, Davis is sponsoring a bill to grant DC voting representation in the House. He’s not a kneejerk hard-right, small-government guy; that kind of politician simply can’t get elected in this area with several hundred thousand federal and fed-contract workers. There’s no political hay to be made here in screwing the District.

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A Tale Of Two Boxen

H has a new computer. His name is Linnaeus.

We hoped that Linnaeus and my Mac newmarket would play nicely together, despite their size difference. Early indications were promising, as a game of “piggyback” developed.

But then Linnaeus got hungry, and, well…

I guess we can’t really blame him. After all, Malus domestica can be pretty tasty.