I have been reading a book called Does War Make States?, edited by Lars Bo Kasperson and Jeppe Strandsberg and published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press. The book, as its subtitle (see image below) indicates, is focused mainly on Charles Tilly’s theory and reconsidering whether it is correct about the formation of states in early-modern Europe. Yet it also contains chapters on more recent state formation. It occurs to me that the Israeli case would be an outstanding case study of successful state formation in the second half of the 20th century, and in a context of repeated military conflict. Yet the few mentions of the Israeli case are actually quite dismissive and even factually incorrect, as I shall get to in this entry. But first, a digression: If you know my academic work at all (and most regular readers of this blog presumably are at least aware of my specialities), this title might strike you as not the sort of thing I’d normally read.

As a matter of fact, it is not, although I was quite interested in some of this wider topic in grad school (and I have a few publications on revolutions and incorporation of guerrilla movements into elections and states that you’d be aware of only if you really pored over my CV). I happen to have this book only because in recent years, whenever I earned an honorarium from a press for reviewing a submission (which typically can be taken as $X in cash or $2X in books from the press, because publishers understand academic incentives), I have let grad students submit a wish list of titles they’d like to have. I then fill up the honorarium as best I can with books for these grad students. I was on the committee of a student who recently wrote a dissertation questioning the famous Charles Tilly “bellicest” thesis that is best summed up in the line, “wars made the state, and the state made war.” (Check out this fascinating video of Tilly, who died in 2008, talking, approximately year before his death, about how he got interested in the topic of state formation.) One of my students wanted this book, and I “borrowed” it to read it first. (She will get the book soon–promise.)

The book is really good! So it is somewhat unfortunate that I am going to post about a book I have read–something I have rarely done on this blog–mostly in the context of criticizing a couple of chapters within it. But that’s exactly what I am going to do.

I happen to be reading this book during a couple of quite significant wars–the Ukrainian fight against the Russian invasion and occupation of a chunk of its territory and the Israeli fight back against the Hamas pogrom and its rule over the terrorist staging area it has built in the Gaza Strip. So the themes are suddenly more relevant to me than usual, given my longstanding interest in Ukraine and especially Israel. Moreover, the topic of state building, particularly after wars, is a central concern for the “day after” in Gaza: How will a state or state-like set of institutions be established there that allows Israel to be safe and Palestinians to enjoy a measure of much-deserved freedom and dignity? There are also important questions about how the war for survival is remaking state institutions and the nation itself in Ukraine. Alas, this post won’t answer these questions. But such questions being on my mind made reading this book all the more relevant. Further, their being on my mind also made a couple of misunderstandings or dismissive remarks about Israel serve as even bigger and brighter red flags than might have been the case in other times.

I will post a couple of excerpts and then comments. (Apologies for the not great quality of my page scans.) The first comes from Chapter 7, “War, conflict, and the state reconsidered,” by Vivek Swaroop Sharma.

The main theme of the chapter is to question the role of war and violence as the main drivers of state-formation and political development in Europe. Specifically, it questions the “realist” conception of international relations that underlies Tilly’s account, and offers an “institutionalist” alternative. The idea of war building states assumes a “total war” but most wars in the emergence of European states were more “limited” and even guided by law and institutions (think chivalric codes). It’s a fascinating and convincing argument that I can’t do justice to in my quick summary. 

Where the author sees total war and conquest occurring in state building is where Europeans engaged in religious conflict, such as conquering pagans in the Baltic region or fighting off Muslim powers in southeastern Europe. He contrasts this process, with its greater tolerance for “collateral impact” on civilians, with “dynastic” wars where minimizing involvement of civilians was preferred by those engaging in the fight. 

This brings us to the excerpted passage, occurring at pp. 213-14 right before the chapter’s conclusion. Note, in the 11th line of the excerpt, a single sentence on Israel and the “West Bank.” 

This is the only mention of that territorial dispute in the chapter. It could hardly get the Israeli–Palestinian conflict more wrong, when situated in the paragraph’s context of how territorial conquest works. The Israeli presence is rather obviously not “converting” Muslims in the territory to Judaism!¹ More to the point, it also has entailed essentially no displacement, in the sense of transfer/expulsion of civilians to other jurisdictions. (I won’t get into the discussions of “indigenous populations” except to note it hardly applies to this territory in the way the author seems to intend, and it was indeed Jews who were previously expelled from this territory–and in some cases massacred–due to the invasion of the Jordanian and other Arab militaries in 1948.)

My appeal to scholars and others would be that if you don’t understand this conflict, please don’t throw a single sentence into an otherwise erudite essay, claiming it’s “very much the same logic” as your essay is demonstrating. It probably isn’t.)² 

The second excerpt comes from Chapter 8, “War and state in the Middle East,” by Dietrich Jung. This chapter is by an expert on the region, or at least on the Muslims of the region. Its main conclusion is that the Tilly thesis only very partially applies here. (And even that may be a stretch, but I’m not the expert.)

Unfortunately, the few brief mentions of Israel in this chapter are dismissive and lacking context. I don’t know the field of Middle East studies well, but I certainly sense that being dismissive and lacking context is how the field at large indeed treats Israel. 

By dismissive, I mean even in such an otherwise innocuous a matter as how Israel’s conflict with its Arab enemies (in an actual war-impacted state-formation process!) is labeled: It is repeatedly called “the Palestine conflict” as though Israeli nation and state building were not relevant other than as perhaps something getting in the way.³ 

But most of all I want to call attention to these passages on pp 230-1:

The claim that the “nascent Palestinian state” was built largely “without direct contact to a population and a territory” is fair, although it’s odd there is no mention anywhere in the chapter of the period since the Oslo Accords when the Palestinian Authority has indeed had such contact (for now about three decades). 

But the Israeli state had little contact with a population or territory as it was being built? This an extraordinary and simply incorrect claim. How about the Yishuv? Accounts of the Israeli War of Independence (or, pardon me, the Palestine conflict of 1948-49) typically emphasize how the Jewish community of Palestine was ready for war and state building because it had already been building state-like institutions among the settled Jewish population of the lands in question. 

The point in the last paragraph of the excerpt about “political rents” being built up through international ties, allowing the building of “huge security apparatuses… directed against the regimes’ own populations” obviously does not describe the Israeli state. The latter indeed has built up a huge security apparatus. It also advanced well into the “second stage” of “nationalization” and “representative government.” Somehow the chapter missed the most Tillian example staring it in the face while bringing in “the Palestine conflict” as a matter “on the other hand.” The actual constraint “the Palestine conflict” has placed on the military behavior of “regional” (i.e. Arab) states has been through Israeli victory in successive foundational and consolidating wars, followed later by peace treaties with the two most important “confrontation states” (Egypt and Jordan—see p. 237, where the argument about “political rents” from the international system is applied very well).  

In conclusion, we have here a book with an excellent set of essays on a key topic in historical sociology and its intersection with political science. Unfortunately, two of the chapters reference the Israeli case but in a way that is dismissive of the state itself and factually flawed. In one chapter, it is just a throwaway line that would have been better left out (or elaborated upon, if the author actually had a valid point here, which as I said I do not believe he had). In the other chapter, the Israeli case is seriously misunderstood–overlooking the importance of the Yishuv to state-building–while missing how Tilly’s phrase “war made the state and the state made war” might actually have fit one Middle Eastern country rather well.

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Notes.

1. Judaism, through most of its history up to the present, does not seek converts, although it generally welcomes them under certain conditions. The number of Muslim or Christian residents of the West Bank who have enquired about, let alone completed, conversion must be an extremely marginal phenomenon. I am sure the author knows this, which only makes the inclusion of this sentence in this paragraph more puzzling.
2. The book includes another chapter by Sharma, coauthored with Philip Gorski, “Beyond the Tilly thesis: ‘Family Values’ and state formation in Latin Christendom” (Chapter 4). I wanted to include a short excerpt from this chapter’s conclusion, because I find the points about religious origins of bureaucracy and “family values” really interesting. However, Word Press won’t let me paste images into a footnote, so I will just post links to the images (1, 2) for those who might be inclined to click.
3. Not knowing this field, I decided to do a quick Google Scholar search on the phrase, Palestine conflict, to see if it was commonly used. It seems not. Most of the search results, at least on the first few pages, were actually to “Israel/Palestine conflict” or similar. I found a few that were simply “Palestine conflict,” but only one that is clearly about the post-1948 the Jewish state and its Arab-Palestinian opponents. The other two were mainly about the Mandate period, when it is arguably more appropriate, inasmuch as the territory under British rule (and in which there were both Arab and Jewish communities, with an overriding purpose being the creation of a Jewish “national home”) was indeed called Palestine.

The following is a guest planting about the Italian government’s constitutional reform proposal by Gianluca Passarelli, and it addresses various questions that we had in previous discussions of this topic (1, 2).

After the attempt made in 2016 when the parliament approved a reform promoted by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (Democratic Party, centre-left) but that was rejected via a constitutional referendum, Italy seems to be dealing again with a shot to deeply modify its institutions. The reform is called by the new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (Brothers of Italy, right-wing, first woman to cover that position) leading a neo-fascist party in a coalition with the League (far right regionalist party) and Forza Italia (Silvio Berlusconi’s heritage): the project aims to introduce the direct election of the head of the government. 

After weeks of internal discussion and considering the political hostility and the citizens’ perplexity (it’s a divisive argument) for the introduction of a presidential regime, the right coalition moved towards a different option. However, instead of generating more clarity and a softer model, the proposal goes in the direction of assuring a direct election of the head of the government. 

The document issued by the minister Elisabetta Casellati indicates that the head of the government will be “directly elected” by voters. Basically, in a way, the proposal resounds and mimics the Israeli experience of the model used between 1996-2001 after its adoption in 1992. But the similarities end here, at the “direct election”.

The electoral system for the Parliament (Italy has a bicameral system: Senate, 200 members, and House, 400 members) indicates so far a PR with bonus, a majority-assuring system that would confer 55% of the seats to the list(s) linked to the candidate to the premiership. But there is not a clear model, nor the indication of whether or not preferences would be allowed, which formula will be adopted, in how many districts Italy will be divided into. 

According to the recently circulated draft, the project of constitutional reform would aim to modify three articles of the Italian Constitution, as follows. The presidential prerogative to appoint the PM (art. 92 Cost.) would change so that the President has to indicate the name of the candidate winning the elections. As head of the state, the President would keep the prerogative to appoint the ministers, albeit based on the premier’s indications. Moreover, one main hypothesis circulating is that were the PM to end his/her term before the legislature, the President should indicate a new head of the government by choosing among those elected in the list(s) of the candidate who won the elections. So, there is not the provision of a constructive vote of no confidence (as in an earlier version–ed.). And, due to the previous proposed changes, the reform would modify the norm regulating the vote of confidence and the motion of no confidence to the Government (art. 94 Cost.). Consequently, the presidential power to dissolve the parliament (art. 88 Cost.) is under discussion due to the provision that indicates the President has to appoint the head of the coalition who won the election and to appoint another politician from his/her majority in case s/he resigns. The President would become a sort of notary taking notes of political changes but without intervening. The proposal also would cancel the presidential power to appoint life senators, whilst those still in office would keep their seats as well as the past presidents of the republic that would become life senators.

 As the proposal would move to the parliament for a political debate, we will probably know more about this new project of constitutional reform. In particular, the absence in the proposal of a minimum threshold to win the election and to obtain the bonus would likely pave the way to a pronunciation of the Constitutional Court. In fact, in 2015 Judges have already declared that a reasonable threshold should be included in the electoral reform (at the time it was 40%). 

Finally, the text is a prelude to a new referendum in a few years because it is very divisive. However, we will see if the proposal will be modified to move towards a shared (two-thirds of the parliament) reform that will exclude a referendum.

Although several of the deciduous trees still have considerable foliage, we are well into the period when their dormant flower buds–which form during the growing season–are receptive to the winter chill they need to bloom and set fruit in the coming spring. I no longer attempt to count chill from my own temperature sensors for various reasons, but I like to use the chill estimator provided by UC Davis Fruits & Nuts (not to be confused with this virtual orchard). This site lets you select a CIMIS station and a chill counting model, and get a sense of where your chilling stands at any given point in the season, as well as compare past years.

As for chill model, I prefer the so-called Utah model. It is summarized below. It is important to recognize that there is no objectively accurate count of how many “chill hours” or “chill units” you get, or of what a given fruit variety needs. They are just models (several of them) and estimates. From decades of my own personal research and experience, I have determined that the Utah model makes more sense than the others, for matching up winter conditions and what blooms. So that is what I always use. As we shall see results can be quite different by model!

One of the things that makes the Utah model more accurate, or at least more plausible theoretically and meaningful in practice, is that it does not assume sharp thresholds at which chill changes from zero to one, or turns negative. Some models just count all hours below 45F, or all hours between 32 and 45, possibly subtracting hours above 65 (or 70; as I said there are lots of models). For instance, it is unlikely that an hour at 44F is a full chill hour but an hour at 50 is nothing. The Utah model acknowledges this: the hour at 50 is half a chill hour. (More refined, you’d have a continuous curve, and I used to work with an adaptation that allowed for that.)

Here is what my closest station’s calculator looks like for this year compared to last.

I set this to start at October 28, because by chance both years that was just before we began to record sustained net positive chill. The result would not be much different had I set it earlier, because there was not much chill accumulated earlier for warm days to have wiped out, and the calculator is “smart” enough not to sum over negative hours before anything positive is recored. (In other words, you could leave it set for September 1, which is its default, and it would not show that on November 1 that you had -500 hours or something so absurd. It would be zero till you had some actual chilling weather.)

At this point we are just closing in on 100 hours, per the Utah model for a location near me. That seems decent, as it is not even December yet, and in this climate we can usually count on several chilly or cold phases in December and January. In other words, it is normally not too hard to accumulate 500 hours–near what many varieties I have planted are said to need–because you can get 100 or so before December, and 150 or more each of the following two months, and maybe more than 100 in February if things stay dormant. (And if they wake up as early as mid-February it is usually because they have had their chilling requirement met.) Actually, getting to only 500 by mid-February would be a pretty bad year, as some data I post below show.

However, look at where we were a year ago! Already over 300. Of course, last winter was the coldest one in much of the state in the past 40 or more years–also a decent chance that it was the coldest one anyone alive today will ever experience again in the state. So that we have only about a third of what we had a year ago at this stage is no great cause for concern. Last year we had well over 1600 by March 1, and many trees were still dormant then. The issue we had last year was it took “forever” to warm up, not that we did not get enough chill. Of course, we could have a mild rest of this winter and fall short of 500. No winter is just like the previous one, let alone an “average” one, and chill counts vary widely from year to year.

Using the Utah model calculations for the nearby station, following is what we see for the five most recent years. The most useful comparative date is February 15, which is usually a good cutoff because so many stone fruits in this climate are already blooming or about to be by then. However, I also include Feb. 1 and Mar. 1, because, depending on how cold it has been and when it warms up, the initial dormancy-break dates can vary a lot from year to year. I also include a few “benchmark” dates leading up to spring:

We see that 100 in the final week of November is well off the pace of recent years! Yet it would have to be an extremely mild winter to fall short of 500, as even in the year when we were not yet to 175 hours by December 1, we still got to 1000 some time in February.

Just for fun, I also compared what the “below 45” model would imply for the same station I used for the table above. It is this model that Dave Wilson Nursery, the main wholesale grower of stone fruits, says it uses for its estimates of what a variety needs. For the five years listed above, the values at Feb. 15 are: 655, 765, 664, 833, 954. That’s much lower, and I feel too low given the assumption that no hours in the high 40s or low 50s have any value. This approach also assumes that hours below freezing are good for chill, but most of the research that I’ve seen disagrees: the buds do not receive chill below 34 or so. If we use the method that counts only hours between 32 and 45, for the above years we get: 644, 760, 659, 826, 934. In my climate, it makes little difference, but in some areas it might matter quite a lot. Similarly, in some climate zones the fact that these latter approaches do not subtract warm hours may overestimate chill. This would be a longer discussion, for another day. I will simply note that the below-45 model might work fine for estimating what a variety needs at the location where DWN has its growing grounds in the San Joaquin Valley. But it may not work as well in different climate zones.

Just to illustrate the difference a climate zone makes, I checked Escondido (near where I used to live). For the 2021-22 year (chosen because it was a mild winter in the southern part of the state), as of Feb. 15, the below-45 model said they had obtained 432 chill hours. The 32-45 model is not much different, given how rare freezing temperatures would be there: 411. But the Utah model says only 251, which must be due to many warm days. I also checked San Clemente, a coastal area where both freezing mornings and warm winter afternoons would be less common. Both the below-45 and the 32-45 models say 287 hours (no freezes), but Utah says 373. That could make quite a difference to what varieties would be successful. Because I did not grow fruit that year in either Escondido or San Clemente, I do not actually claim to know which model is more accurate. But I’d trust the Utah model as the more realistic one, again based on experience in that part of the state where it always seemed as if extended warm spells were harmful to bloom and production, but mild winters with lots of high 40s lows but few nights in the 30s still resulted in decent sets.

So it is a slow start to chilling here so far this year, but still probably it will turn out okay, despite how very far we are off last year’s pace when already were already past 300 by now.

This may be my longest post title ever, but it is a question I needed to know the answer to. When the result of the recent Dutch election came in, the gap between the plurality party and the second one was surprisingly large. The PVV of Geert Wilders did not quite win a quarter of the seats (37/150), which is a pretty small share for a largest seat-winner. However, the second largest party is well behind, with only 25 seats for the alliance list of the Green Left and Labour. It seemed to me as if it might be unusual for such a small largest party to have such a large lead.

As the graph below shows, indeed it is unusual. The graph shows on the x-axis the seat share of the largest party (s₁), with the share of the second party (s₂) on the y-axis. Plotted are about 200 elections in parliamentary democracies. The solid line marks s₂=s₁, which is obviously the upper limit. If the top two parties tie in seats, the election will be plotted on this line. Cases in which the leading party has less than a quarter of seats are labelled, as are cases where the leading party has over two thirds or the second party is at less than about an eighth, as well as a few others that I’ll note below.

The dashed line represents s₂=s₁–0.05. As we can see, across the entire graph there are many cases with gaps bigger than 0.05 (i.e., a 10-seat difference if the parliament had 200 seats), but a gap at least that large is very rare if the largest party has less than 25% of the seats. In fact, aside from the Netherlands 2023, marked in magenta, there are only two such elections: Israel 2006 and Belgium 1995. We could given an honorable mention to Denmark 1973, where the leading party had 25.7% and the second party had 15.6%.

Of course, there is a crucial difference between the recent Dutch election and the other cases in which a leading party with only around a quarter of seats or less nonetheless had a five percentage-point lead in seats. In the Dutch case the leading party is a radical party, whereas in the other cases the leading party was one of the mainstream parties. The largest party in Denmark in 1973 was the Social Democrats, the main party of the center-left, while that in Belgium in 1995 was the Flemish Christian Democratic party, one of the main center-right forces. The largest party in Israel in 2006 was Kadima, the centrist party formed by Ariel Sharon with the main purpose of building support for his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. (Centrists do not always have ideas that pan out well, but I digress…)

Thus the outcome of such a weak leading party yet such a substantial lead over the next party is indeed unusual. It is even more unusual in that it is a party with extremist positions rather than a party of the center, around which various smaller parties would vie as potential coalition partners. Given the size of the lead, Wilders is in a relatively strong position, while given his extreme policy stances he is by no means assured of parlaying his lead into a prime ministership. And, of course, having less than half of a parliamentary majority is by definition rather weak, even before the ideological positioning is considered. The broad right won big, but it is too early to say that Wilders and his PVV have won in any meaningful sense of what it means to win an election in a parliamentary democracy.

The Netherlands has a general election today–an early one, the previous one having been March, 2021. I have not been following so I can’t say much of substance, but I note from the polling that three parties have been running close and sometimes trading narrow leads in recent polling, but neither has even broken 30 seats in any of the polls going back several months, and collected at Wikipedia. That is out of 150 seats, so we could be looking at a largest party holding fewer than 20% of the seats.

A largest seat-winning party at no more than 20% is something that happens only very rarely in established parliamentary democracies. In fact, in the dataset I use for my electoral systems/party systems analysis, I find only five elections in which the largest party had 20% or fewer: four in Belgium and one in Latvia (1995, with 18%). That is out of 293 elections in such systems. Moreover, the Belgian party system is one where the Flemish and French speaking electorates have their own parties within larger party families. (I don’t know much of anything about Latvian politics.)

So, while not unprecedented, the outcome the polls are suggesting we could see would be extremely rare. The three parties vying for the top spot are (1) the VVD, a center-right party that has led several recent governments under outgoing PM Mark Rutte; (2) GL-PvdA, an alliance of the Green Left and the Labour Party; and (3) the PVV, the anti-immigrant party led by Geert Wilders. Rutte is no longer leading the VVD, having been replaced by Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius. The GL-PvdA leader is Frans Timmermans, a former foreign minister who also has held several EU positions over the years, including posts focused on climate policies.

Also, it should be obvious, but it perhaps is not, and I even saw a political scientist (who is not a specialist on Dutch politics) get this wrong on social media: Coming in first, if it happens, will not put Wilders on the verge of becoming Prime Minister. Negotiations on forming a government will take a while, and the leading party might not even be in the coalition that eventually is formed. However, I do not know what coalition combinations have been put forth during this campaign. I hope someone reading knows, and can enlighten us in the comments.

The Netherlands uses nationwide proportional representation (flexible list) in a 150-seat district. There is no legal threshold beyond then requirement that a list earn a simple quota (1/150) of the nationwide votes to qualify for a seat.

Here is a modest proposal for dealing with two-round presidential elections under conditions of high party fragmentation. It is a theme on my mind due to the runoff today in Argentina. (If you want to comment on the Argentine election, I hope you will go to that link, and leave comments here only about the proposal I am about to develop.)

In cases where there is a concurrent legislative election at the same time as the first round of a two-round presidential election, define the top two qualifiers for the runoff as those whose associated legislative slates finished first and second in votes, rather than as the presidential candidates with the top two personal vote totals.

A modified version would be always to qualify the candidate with the most votes (even if the legislative slate finished third or there was none), but require the other runoff contestant to have a slate that finished first in the concurrent assembly voting (regardless of its presidential candidate’s votes*). I prefer the unmodified version, of course.

I am sure there are problems with this. The deeper consideration is that under conditions of high fragmentation presidentialism is per se problematic. But maybe my proposal brings some greater incentive of contenders to organize and mobilize for legislative contests instead of simply relying on coattails, which are often insufficient for new political forces or “outsider” or “populist” candidates.

Obviously, given the actual votes under the rules in place in Argentina, my proposal would have seen Javier Milei eliminated. It would have been a close call: his party finished third, two tenths of a percentage point behind the second alliance. Maybe to avoid the risk of such defeat he would have built a broader alliance before the first round.

Just a thought. And it is not motivated by any preference over who becomes president of Argentina (I can’t claim any such presence), but only over improving governability.

I prefer this solution to the one likely to be adopted in Chile, where there is also extremely high fragmentation: There the plan is to have legislative elections concurrent with the presidential runoff (which would mean a honeymoon assembly election in the event the presidential contest was completed in one round). This is not the first time I have made a “modest” proposal for a possible modification to top-two qualifying rules in a presidential election, by the way. It is a problem I take seriously, and if constitution designers are going to insist on presidentialism in cases where the party scene is fragmented or undeveloped, they should consider something that is a bit outside the box of usual rules.

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* If one does not mind further complexity–and one should be very careful about not minding that when it comes to electoral rules–there could be some floor on how low this candidate’s votes can be and still qualify, and a provision under which the candidate with the second ranked legislative slate qualifies instead. This footnote shows the further problems that creep in when we let a leading presidential candidate whose legislative slate finished third or lower nonetheless contest the runoff.

Argentines vote today in the presidential runoff, with the contest pitting Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza (normally classified in media accounts as “libertarian”) against Sergio Massa of Unión por la Patria (an alliance consisting mainly of Peronist factions). In polling, Milei appears to hold an advantage, but most polls since late October have had the margin under four percentage points.

The first round, which was concurrent with legislative elections, was held on 22 October. Massa earned 36.8% of the votes and Milei was in second place with just under 30.0%. The third place candidate, Patricia Bullrich of Juntos por el Cambio (consisting of mainstream liberal/center-right parries), was on 23.8%. Two other candidates were in the contest.

Argentina’s elections are now effectively a three-round affair. There are simultaneous primaries in which candidates compete to lead each of the various alliances (or “fronts”). These primaries are also concurrent presidential and legislative primaries, and were held this year on 13 August. It is what US literature would call a “blanket” primary in that all the various alliances are on the same ballot and the voter selects one, unconstrained by party affiliation. The votes for presidential and legislative preferences are separate.

Milei was the only candidate in his front/party, and he won just over 30.0% of the overall vote then, but the other alliances had internal competition. Unión por la Patria had two presidential “pre-candidates” who combined for 27.3% of the vote with Massa having 21.4% (or about 78% of the alliance total). Juntos por el Cambio had two pre-candidates who combined for 28.3%, with Bullrich having 17% overall (or about 60% of the alliance total). It is noteworthy that the order of finish of the alliances in the primaries was La Libertad Avanza, Juntos por el Cambio, then Unión por la Patria, whereas the order in the first round of the general election was Unión por la Patria, La Libertad Avanza, then Juntos por el Cambio. The vote percentage for Milei hardly changed between the primaries and the general first round. In fact, it actually declined a little. However, he may be more likely to win over votes of Juntos por el Cambio, given that alliance includes parties with a long opposition to Peronism.

The first round of the general is held under a qualified plurality rule, and I can claim a partial role in its being adopted. An official of then President Carlos Menem was visiting UCSD during the time that the current constitution was being drafted. I shared with him the paper Rein Taagepera and I had written proposing a “double complement rule” (published in Comparative Political Studies, 1994), which the official said was the “perfect” proposal. In actual adoption it got considerably more complex and, I would say, less perfect. Our proposal was that the winner in case no one cleared 50% be the candidate with the plurality of votes provided the runner-up had a shortfall from 50% that was at least double that of the leader. The provision Argentina adopted, and remains in place to now, says that 45% is a sufficient plurality to win (regardless of margin), or 40% with a ten percentage-point lead over the runner up. (Several other Latin American countries have adopted various permutations on the Argentine concept in the ensuing years.) Obviously, at 37–30–24, the rule allowing for a single-round win was not close to be invoked, as no one cleared 40%. Moreover, under the actual double complement rule, there likewise would have been a runoff, as the plurality candidate’s shortfall from majority was 13 percentage point and the runner-up’s was 20.

Whoever wins is going to face a divided congress. In the Chamber of Deputies, only half the seats are stake. Argentina is, as far as I know, the only country in the world where a first (or sole) chamber has staggered elections–in Argentina’s case, the term is four years, with half elected every two years, alternating concurrent with the first round of the presidential election and at the president’s midterm. There are 257 seats in total, and 130 were up at this election (roughly half from each district, some of which have odd numbers of seats). Unión por la Patria won the highest total of seats, with 58, followed by La Libertad (35), and then Juntos por el Cambio (31). If Milei wins, he will have only 39 seats in the Chamber (15.2%) with which to embark on his ambitious reform plans. Unión por la Patria did not exist in 2021, but the main Peronist alliance (Frente de Todos) won 50 seats then, so if Massa were to win today, he would have 108 seats (42.0%), a much stronger base from which to work on legislative achievements. The Juntos for Cambio will have its 61 seats from 2021 to add to its 31, so that’s 92 (36%) of seats for a political force that got eliminated in the presidential first round.

The table below summarizes the votes (percentages) and seats by alliance in each round, including figures I had not referred to above: the votes for legislative lists in both the primary and general. “Peronist” here refers to Frente de Todos in 2021 and Unión por la Patria in 2023.

Just for fun, I also made the following table of the alliances’ order of finish in each of the above contests for votes or in translation of votes to seats (in the 2023 election and across time, given the staggering).

I did not include the Senate here. There were 24 seats (of 72 total) at stake concurrent with the presidential first round. The Peronist Frente de Todos won 13 of these, La Libertad won 7, and Juntos 2. Two of the La Libertad senators are from an affiliated party, called Federal Renewal, based in Buenos Aires. I love the very objective description of this party on Wikipedia: “The PRF does not have politicians with a high level of knowledge of society, so its vote flow is usually low.” It also is described as “non-Kirchnerist Peronist” and “Federal Peronist.” If Wikipedia can have its editorial commentary, so can I: Argentine party politics is just a confusing morass to me!

Regarding Senate elections, they are staggered but in a totally different way from the Chamber. Whereas every province elects half of its deputies every two years (alternating +/- 0.5 in case of odd number), for the Senate one third of the provinces elect all three of their senators every two years. Terms are six years, and the electoral rule is a limited-nominations closed-list plurality: the leading slate wins two, the runner up one. As best I can tell, Milei’s party elected no senators before this year, so he would have just 7 of 72 (9.7%) in that body to support his presidency were he elected today.

Argentine party politics is so fragmented, and while the adoption of primaries was intended to help bring some order to the competition (reducing the number of distinct options competing in general elections), the overall package of institutions is far from optimal for ensuring smooth executive-legislative relations. A victory by a radical candidate with so little congressional base could hardly be a good thing for institutional stability.

As the deadline for submitting candidacies approaches, the two main opposition parties in Taiwan have announced they will submit a joint candidate. They have yet to determine which party’s candidate will stand down in favor of the other– Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party(KMT) and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). They have a plan to use public opinion polls to settle the question, with each side selecting pollsters whose polling is to be considered. The election will be on 13 January 2024.

The presidency is elected by direct plurality, and up to now the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate has been leading polls consistently, but recently with only around 40%. Hou and Ko have been roughly tied recently, in the mid-twenties, with polls varying as to which of the two is ahead of the other. If they could successfully combine their votes, the alliance should win. But alliances are rarely so seamless.

In addition, the KMT and TPP promise to form a coalition cabinet based on the parties’ relative success in the concurrent assembly election. Here is where things get really tricky. Will they make the decision according to seats won? This is the basis on which coalitions normally parcel out posts, after all. But Taiwan uses a disproportional system–specifically, a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system. It is unclear to me whether the parties are also forging an alliance for the assembly election. Under MMM, and with a joint presidential ticket, it would make sense to do so, given that this type of mixed-member system makes the single-seat district (plurality) contests more important to the overall seat balance. (They still could run separately on the list, given the two-vote system.)

In any case, the balance of forces in the legislative assembly will not necessarily reflect the balance of voter preferences, either due to vote-splitting (if the KMT and TPP compete against each other in single-seat districts) or “contamination” effects (whereby if one partner has the local candidate and the other does not, the one with the candidate may draw additional list votes). Votes for parties in the nominal and list component often have been fairly divergent in past Taiwanese elections under MMM. For instance, in the 2020 election, the DPP won 45.1% of the nominal (constituency) vote and 40.0% of the party-list vote. For the KMT the figures were 40.7% and 33.4%.

While pre-electoral coalitions are hardly unheard of in disproportional systems (see India under FPTP, plus for an MMM case, Japan), they may be more difficult when they involve a concurrent presidential election, given the importance of that indivisible office. They may also be more challenging to hold together when the allying parties’ strengths are quite balanced, as opposed to there being a clearly dominant partner (like the nationwide parties in the alliances in India or the LDP in Japan). I am referring to their balance in the presidential polling. It is not clear to me whether there is polling for assembly voting preferences. In the current assembly, the parties are very unbalanced. In 2020, the KMT won 107 seats and the TPP 45 (with DPP winning 102). In the nominal tier (single-seat districts), it was, not surprisingly, even more unbalanced: KMT 71, TPP 17 (DPP 67).

I should note–this being Fruits and Votes–that Taiwan uses a semi-presidential system. However, it is of the president-parliamentary subtype, the one in which the president retains constitutional authority to dismiss a premier and cabinet. Thus holding together pre-electoral coalitions after an election and throughout a term would tend to be more difficult than under a parliamentary (or premier-presidential) system.

The alliance seems quite fraught, especially as it is being struck so late. And, while he does not address the assembly elections, Nathan Batto of Academia Sinica is referenced in the Economist article saying that some of the TPP’s “Gen-Z” supporters may object to teaming up with the conservative KMT. Indeed, alliances are not necessarily as large as the sum of their parts. If the parties can hold each others’ support in the alliance, they should be able to defeat the DPP. But that is a big IF.

At Frozen Garlic, Batto has interesting detail on the question of how to use to polling to sort out the alliance presidential candidate, and states that Ko (TPP) got “rolled” in the process they agreed to.

I often see claims that President Joe Biden’s polling is so weak, while the party brand is holding up sufficiently well, that the party should open up the nomination for someone else to take over as its standard bearer in 2024.

I do not believe it. Why? Basically, when you have an incumbent eligible for reelection, opening up a contested nomination process is an own goal. It is far more likely to help the other side than to help you.

But maybe my take assumes an incumbency advantage that won’t actually be there in 2024. Well, yes, it does. And maybe it won’t be. The thing is, either there is an incumbency advantage, or the party is going to lose. Either Biden is strong enough and voters happy enough that Biden wins reelection, or the winds blow against Biden and take down his replacement nominee just as they would have taken him down personally. It would be hard to find whatever narrow window there is through which Biden himself weighs down the party, but the party could find an alternative who could save it. Maybe the window exists, but good luck locating it, let alone locating the perfect candidate to ride to victory in both a primary and a general.

Basically, in presidential systems and the “presidentialized” parties that result, any election is a referendum on the incumbent–whether he is personally on the ballot or not. It gets even harder for a party when its own standard bearer is under pressure to differentiate himself or herself from the co-partisan incumbent. It gets harder still when the alternative standard bearer would have needed to explain how he or she would be different in order to win the nomination. And that is surely a task that the winner of a primary would have to accomplish, and would also be a question that would come up throughout the general election campaign.

Perhaps the “how different” problem vanishes if there is a “coronation” of an alternative rather than a long competitive process. The more viable candidates, and the longer it takes, logically the more the winner has had to emphasize differences with both the incumbent and the other challengers. I do not see how this could work out well for the party.

It is possible that in an ideal world there would be a seamless transition to a new standard bearer. Perhaps even the incumbent would resign, the Vice President would take over, and no one would put up a serious challenge to her as the nominee. This is fantasy. It also assumes Biden has real problems with reelection, which, current polling aside, I do not believe.

Yes, Biden is old, but the evidence that this is affecting his abilities is just not present. If it were “common knowledge” that he could not perform his duties, I might change the argument I am putting out here. But such common knowledge is lacking. (Whether he might be incompetent at the end of a second term is not relevant, in my opinion, because few actors in this whole process really look that far ahead. It is all too speculative. I care only about 2024 in assessing this question.)

Bottom line, if he is weak enough that the party should replace him, the party is weak enough that it has bigger problems than Biden. And I do not believe that is the case.

And finally there is one more problem, which only makes all the above worse for the “change the nominee” crowd. It is not as if there exists a PARTY with authority to order Biden off the ticket. US parties do not work that way. I suspect most presidentialized parties do not have that ability in practice, although there may be exceptions in other presidential systems. Seeking reelection is, ultimately, his choice, and other actors can only complicate whether he can pull it off, or go along for the ride. That’s presidentialization!

No sooner had I closed off the previous entry by noting that “the specific rules of any country’s semi-presidential system matter less when the election has actually resulted in an assembly majority,” than I read that President Andrzej Duda of Poland has initiated the process of government formation. He has done so by nominating a member of his own party, Law and Justice (PiS). So, what about that cohabitation?

Recall that the election produced an assembly majority for a pre-election coalition committed to ousting PiS from power Thus the most likely outcome of the government-formation process will be cohabitation, defined as a situation in which the premier is from a party opposed to the president and the president’s party is not in the cabinet. As I noted on 16 October, the constitutional process of government selection clearly privileges the assembly over the president’s preference when these diverge.

Well, diverge they do. The president either does not understand the constitution, is not very good at looking down a game tree to see how the game will end, or is just playing for time and hoping something unexpected falls his way. I will assume the latter. But first, let’s look at the constitutional provisions, because that is the sort of thing we do around here.

Poland is a clear cut case of premier-presidentialism, with an unusually detailed back-and-forth process for dealing with any potential divergence of preferences. The key provisions are Articles 154 and 155. These establish a series of alternating moves in which the president has 14 days from the first post-election sitting of the Sejm (first chamber of parliament) to appoint a premier and other members of cabinet, who then have another 14 days to submit a program of government to the Sejm. They are invested with governing authority upon passage of a vote of confidence by a majority of all members of the Sejm.

If the proposed government the president has submitted to the Sejm does not obtain the required absolute majority, the Sejm itself has a 14-day period in which it may elect a premier and members of cabinet “as proposed by him” (i.e., the premier), which would become the government.

Subsequent provisions allow the process to revert back to the president, whose nominees are invested in office if a majority of a quorum consisting of half the Sejm votes in favor. Finally, if this step fails, there is a dissolution followed by new Sejm elections.

The process clearly favors the Sejm if there is a majority with a collective preference for a particular leader even if that leader would not be the president’s choice. A president who has just lost an assembly election–as Duda and the Law and Justice Party (PiS) have–could dispense with the above steps and just appoint the leader who can command a majority of the house. That leader, based on the Sejm (and Senate) election outcome, would be Donald Tusk.

Nonetheless, instead of stooping to the indignity of nominating Tusk, Duda today designated Mateusz Morawiecki, the incumbent premier, to form a new government. Reuters puts it this way:

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will get the first shot at forming a government after his nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won last month’s election, the president said on Monday – a seemingly impossible task as it lacks a majority…  With all other parties having ruled out forming a coalition with it, the party looks unlikely to be able to govern.

I might note that if his party lacks a majority, then perhaps PiS did not “win” the election, but let’s not split hairs. Indeed, a pre-electoral coalition of parties won a majority, although running separately, and PiS indeed has more votes and seats than the largest of the parties in the coalition that in fact won the election.

On Twitter (or X, if we must) Stanley Bill notes that Duda has appointed Marek Sawicki, a member of parliament from PSL (agrarian party) to function as Speaker (Marshal) of the Sejm* till the office is filled by an ally of whatever new government is formed. As Bill notes, “PiS has expressed hope that some deal to govern with PSL can be done.” They keep trying, but PSL already ruled this out immediately after the election, pointing out it had run in a pre-election coalition with Third Way which is in turn committed to backing Tusk.

So there is little chance of any outcome other than cohabitation, with Tusk as premier. But Duda can let this process drag out a little, and do so within the provisions of Poland’s premier-presidential constitution.

____

* How can he do this? The only provision I see on how this office is filled is in Article 110: “The Sejm shall elect from amongst its members a Marshal of the Sejm and Vice-Marshals.” In any case, clearly Sawicki is just going to keep the seat warm–unless something unexpected and probably downright scandalous happens.

A further point on Poland and Slovakia. For background, please see the earlier planting.

I noted previously, quoting another source, that there were two possible coalition options being considered by actors following the recent Slovak election: “one consisting of Fico’s Smer-SD, Hlas-SD, and SNS; the other of Hlas-SD, PS, KDH, and SaS.”

Note that one of these possible coalitions for Slovakia would have included the party of President Zuzana Čaputová, Progressive Slovakia (PS). Thus, unlike in the Polish case, the newly installed Slovakian cohabitation was not a direct result of the election. In Poland, an alliance opposed to the president won the assembly majority in the recent election. In Slovakia, coalitions with, and without, the president’s party were possible. I would still call this cohabitation, because the outcome of government formation matches the definition: the premier is from a party opposed to the president and the president’s party is not in the cabinet. However, it is a post-electoral cohabitation coalition, rather than pre-electoral cohabitation. This is a distinction I had not thought of before, but theory as well as practice obviously should allow for it.

That the president in Slovakia was unable to appoint a coalition led by her own party underscores that this is a premier-presidential variant of semi-presidentialism, in which the cabinet must have the confidence of the assembly majority and the president has little or no capacity to supersede government preferences bargained by parties comprising the assembly majority. The pivotal actor in post-electoral bargaining here evidently was the Hlas-SD, not the president or her PS party. On the other hand, Poland’s system is also premier-presidential, but the specific rules of any country’s semi-presidential system matter less when the election has actually resulted in an assembly majority for a pre-electoral alliance of parties opposed to the president.

Via ANSA news and Constitutionnet, we learn that the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is planning formal introduction soon of a reform of the constitutional executive structure. When I wrote about this back in February, I understood the plan to be a move to some form of semi-presidentialism.

However, this ANSA article states it is a proposal for direct election of the prime minister. This possibility was mentioned in some news accounts that I cited months ago, although it was not clear that this would be the government’s proposal.

Like most European countries, Switzerland uses proportional representation (PR) to choose members of the National Council, the lower house of the country’s federal legislature. However, the Swiss system has distinctive characteristics which require a special procedure to determine the nationwide party percentage shares, and a minor technical problem during the federal election held last Sunday, October 22 resulted in the calculation of erroneous nationwide party percentages figures, which remained undetected for nearly two days. Although the Swiss government issued corrected figures on Wednesday, October 25, the unfortunate incident has become a major embarrassment for a country which prides itself on precision. In this posting we review the procedure used in Switzerland to determine nationwide party percentages in federal elections, as well as the technical issue that generated the erroneous figures and the steps that could or ought to have been taken to prevent its occurrence.

In elections to the 200-seat Swiss National Council voters in twenty multi-seat cantons have as many votes as there are seats to be filled; in 2023 that figure ranged from a minimum of two to a maximum of thirty-six. In these cantons, voters can select a single list, thus voting for every candidate on it, but they can also drop a candidate from the list, and either put another candidate from the same list a second time and cast an additional vote for that candidate (a procedure known as cumulation), or write in the name of a candidate from another list (a practice known in French as panachage). Moreover, voters can also compose their own lists by combining candidates from different lists.

Meanwhile, the remaining six cantons have one seat each, filled by plurality voting, with voters choosing a single candidate. Since adding up the canton-level results to obtain nationwide totals for each party would result in skewed figures, due to the disproportionate weight of the vote totals in the larger cantons, it is necessary to convert the results from the multi-seat cantons to comparable values on a nationwide basis.

One alternative would be to divide the votes obtained by each party in a multi-seat canton by the corresponding number of National Council seats to be filled. However, due to the incidence of under-voting – some Swiss voters choose fewer candidates than the number of cantonal seats – the sum of comparable values for all parties would be smaller than the number of valid ballots. Instead, in each canton Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO) divides the number of votes obtained by each party by the total number of valid votes, and then multiplies it by the number of valid ballots, so that the sum of comparable values for all parties will be equal to the number of valid ballots. Then, the canton-level comparable values for each party are added up to obtain nationwide totals, and the corresponding party percentage shares are calculated by dividing each party’s nationwide comparable value total by the total number of valid ballots.

By the way, FSO calls the comparable values “fictitious voters” – an incredibly unfortunate term in an era of rising skepticism about the transparency of election processes, and all the more so in light of the incident addressed here.

At any rate, the procedure utilized by FSO delivers modestly inflated comparable values at the expense of under-voting (whose incidence in Swiss federal elections is fairly low), and which also vary slightly when calculated at different geographical levels, precisely because of under-voting percentage variations. More importantly, it contributed directly to the erroneous calculations, because it depends on accurate valid ballot totals. As it was, according to FSO an undetected data import glitch triggered by a programming error caused voter turnout data records for the single-seat cantons of Glarus, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Appenzell Innerrhoden – which deliver their election data in a non-standard format – to show up multiple times, thus inflating turnout statistics for these cantons by a factor of three to five, including the crucial valid ballots statistic. Moreover, the faulty data import routine wasn’t even tested with previous election results before being used on election night.

(Specifically, the affected cantons’ commune-level records in the CSV-format turnout data file were repeated three to five times; the canton-level records showed up once, but with values inflated by the number of times the commune-level records were repeated. However, this problem did not occur with the corresponding records in the party votes CSV data file, where only the parties’ comparable values in the three affected cantons were inflated.)

Normally, the comparable values for parties in single-seat cantons are equal to the number of votes polled by their respective candidates in those cantons, since voters in such cantons can only vote for one candidate, and therefore the total number of valid votes for all candidates is equal to the total number of valid ballots. But in the case of the three affected cantons, the inflated valid ballot totals in turn inflated the comparable values for the parties, thus skewing the nationwide totals for each party, which in turn produced incorrect party percentage shares at that level.

For example, in the canton of Glarus the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) polled 5,388 votes out of 12,650 cast for the four candidates contesting its single seat, and the comparable value for SVP should have been equal to its number of votes, as 5,388 divided by 12,650 votes, and then multiplied by 12,650 valid ballots equals 5,388. But since turnout data for Glarus was repeated five times, the division of 5,388 by 12,650 was multiplied by an inflated total of 63,250 valid ballots, resulting in an inflated comparable value of 26,940 for SVP in the aforementioned canton.

In all, the turnout data errors inflated the nationwide valid ballot total for the October 22 National Council election by 109,715, from 2,554,482 to 2,664,197 (and from 33,287 to 143,002 in the three affected cantons). In particular, the nationwide comparable value totals of SVP/UDC, The Centre (DM/LC) – the 2021 merger of the Christian Democratic Party (CVP/PDC) and the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD) – the Liberals (FDP/PLR) and the Social Democratic/Socialist Party (SP/PS) were inflated by 47,194, 29,158, 19,119 and 11,840, respectively. In terms of party percentage shares, the figures for SVP/UDC and LC/DM were overestimated by 0.62% and 0.52%, respectively, while those for the Greens and the Green Liberal Party (GLP/PVL) were underestimated by -0.40% and -0.31%, respectively.

Even worse, the erroneous figures remained unchanged for almost two days after the election. According to news reports, in a hastily arranged press conference on Wednesday, October 25, a contrite FSO director apologized for the faux pas, indicating that due to a work overload quality controls that ought to have been carried out at an earlier stage didn’t take place until the afternoon of Tuesday, October 24, at which point the problem was detected and corrected the following day.

A press release [PDF] issued by Switzerland’s Federal Department of Home Affairs has further details, including both the originally published and updated nationwide party percentage shares.

Meanwhile, in the morning of Tuesday, October 24 – early afternoon in Switzerland – I came across the same errors while attempting to replicate the nationwide party percentage shares published by the FSO from the election data files furnished by the agency. Once I realized it was an obvious mistake on their part, I documented my findings on a Twitter thread – which included corrected figures – and notified the FSO about them.

Quite predictably, Swiss news media hasn’t taken kindly to the matter, with one leading German-language newspaper bluntly describing it as a “fiasco,” while wondering if there are further errors waiting to be found; FSO insists there are none, and as far as I can tell that is indeed the case. Another German-language newspaper was even less charitable: writing about the “historic election mishap,” it dubbed FSO as the “Federal Office for calculation errors.”

While canton-level party percentages, and most importantly the distribution of National Council seats and its elected members, were in no way affected by the election data errors, the nationwide party percentage shifts placed the Liberals back in third place, narrowly ahead of The Centre. Before the nationwide party shares were corrected, there was speculation the latter might press for an additional seat at the expense of the former in Switzerland’s ruling seven-seat Federal Council, on account of having apparently finished third both percentage- and seat-wise; Federal Council seats are currently distributed on a 2-2-2-1 basis among SVP/UDC, SP/PS, FDP/PLR and DM/LC.

It’s been speculated as well that the Greens might press for representation in the Federal Council, in light of their improved showing in the updated nationwide results, even though the party’s updated share of the vote still fell by 3.4% compared to the 2019 National Council election.

Although nationwide party percentage shares have no bearing in the distribution of National Council seats, carried out entirely at the cantonal level, they are often perceived as a more accurate indicator of party strength than lower house parliamentary representation, which usually is slightly distorted by the country’s canton-based PR system. For example, in this year’s election Switzerland’s largest party, the right-wing SVP/UDC won 31% of the seats in the National Council (62 of 200) with a nationwide share of 27.9%.

It should also be noted that while press reports have referred to the incident as a vote counting error, a more accurate way to describe it would be as a data aggregation error, which nonetheless underscores the importance of timely verification by human beings of automated processes, all the more so given that the problem at hand could have been detected fairly quickly, and dealt with before it became a national embarrassment. Specifically, the fact that three single-seat cantons had party comparable values several times larger than their respective vote totals (and on top of that by whole integer factors) should have immediately raised a red flag: the ratio of votes to comparable values should be a figure very close to the total number of seats for multi-seat cantons, and exactly one for single-seat cantons. A subsequent turnout data check would have then brought up the inflated statistics – including crucial valid ballot totals that sometimes exceeded their respective cantons’ population figures – and the repeated commune-level records.

Incidentally, running the comparable value calculations under the alternative seat divisor method, which didn’t depend on the faulty turnout data, would have produced party shares nearly identical to the corrected figures; under the seat divisor method the parties’ comparable values in one-seat cantons are also equal to their respective number of votes, since the divisor equals one.

Meanwhile, the head of the Department of Home Affairs has ordered an administrative investigation “to analyse and improve the processes together with the FSO.” In the future, a more wide-scale automated plausibility check of the calculations will be implemented, along with the deployment of more staff to conduct controls on election day, as well as a “complete review of the overall processes and control modalities.”

Time will tell if the FSO blunder in the October 2023 National Council election has left any lasting damage. That said, the sad fact is that incidents like these undermine public confidence in the government’s ability to run election processes in a transparent manner, while potentially fueling election conspiracy theories.

Finally, on a personal note I can say that the world has truly become a global village when an elections specialist in Puerto Rico like myself can spot and diagnose an election results error in faraway Switzerland, and have the accurate figures online a day before the Swiss government finally corrected them.

Poland held its general election for both parliamentary chambers yesterday, 15 October. An alliance of parties opposed to the Law and Justice (PiS) has won. In the voting for the first chamber (Sejm) PiS retains a plurality but is down to 36.4% of the votes (per Wikipedia with around 90% reporting). Civic Coalition, led by Donald Tusk, is in second place with 29.7%. AP notes that there were “rumors that Law and Justice would try to hold onto power by seeking an ally in the agrarian PSL party… [but] Its leader ruled that out, noting it had run in a coalition with the Third Way group promising to oust the ruling party.”

That there was a pre-electoral coalition and that it won the election is clear from the Senate results. Here (again, relying on preliminary results posted at Wikpedia) we see “Senate Pact 2023” consisting of Civic Coalition, Third Way, New Left and various independents, having won 46.7% of the vote, vs. 35.7% for PiS. The Polish Senate is elected by FPTP, so parties that are serious about governing together would have strong incentive to present joint nominees. The Sejm, on the other hand, is elected by PR, but with districting, D’Hondt divisors, and a high nationwide threshold. So the largest party will tend to be overrepresented, and that remains Law and Justice. PiS won seat majorities in 2019 on 43.6% of the votes and in 2015 on only 37.6%. Its vote share this year is down dramatically on 2019 but not so much on 2015. I take it from the reporting that it must be clear that it has no path to a seat majority in this election. And a key reason for that must be the absence this time of so many wasted votes on below-threshold parties. The highest vote share for a below-threshold party is 1.87%. In 2015, there were two parties between 3.5% and 5%, and there was the United Left on 7.6% getting no seats. The threshold is 5% for parties and 8% for coalition lists (waived for ethnic minority parties).

This is good news for European solidarity. While the Polish government has been strong in support of its neighbor, Ukraine, that support had been looking more wobbly lately. And, of course, PiS had been roundly criticized for its absence of respect for the rule of law and democratic norms.

Meanwhile, Slovakia had its general election on 30 September, but I had not mentioned it here before. I have seen various news reports to the effect that Smer, led by former premier Robert Fico, “won” the election. This is true only if you consider getting a plurality of the vote to be “winning.” Alas, too many news outlets, at least in the English speaking world, frame everything in terms of who came first. But Smer won only 23% of the vote! Slovakia uses a more extreme PR system than Poland does: it is 150 seats in a single nationwide district, albeit with a 5% threshold (higher for various numbers of parties presenting coalition lists). Seven lists obtained seats. (Per the simple Seat Product Model, we actually expect around 12 for a 150-seat single district, but the thresholds reduce it.) The second place list is Progressive Slovakia on 18%, followed by Voice on 14.7%.

In seats, Smer has 42, which is 28%. That’s an advantage ratio of 1.22, which is high for a “proportional” system–there are two parties with over 4% but no seats due to the threshold. In fact, the first four parties below the threshold combine for 16.5% of the vote, showing the sense in which a high threshold can render even nationwide PR a somewhat “restrictive” electoral system. In fact, there were exactly five lists with more than 1/150 vote share but that did not win a seat; in other words, with no legal threshold, the Seat Product Model expectation for a completely simple system would have been met perfectly.

Fico may indeed return as prime minister, but it is important to note that he has not “won” yet, as he will need a coalition with at least two other parties to control a majority of seats. Wiki notes, “Two viable coalitions emerged: one consisting of Fico’s Smer-SD, Hlas-SD, and SNS; the other of Hlas-SD, PS, KDH, and SaS.” As I know nothing about these parties other than what I could learn by clicking around the Web, I will not speculate on the wider political significance of any given combination. I hope some readers more familiar with the country can help.

Saturday 14 October is New Zealand’s general election. Here are a few things I am watching with interest.

There will be a by-election in November, which will increase the size of parliament. In the electorate (constituency) of Port Waikato, one of the candidates died after the deadline for candidate registration passed. The candidate, Neil Christensen, was running for the ACT Party and we can safely say that he had no chance of winning the plurality of the vote in this electorate. Nonetheless, under a strange provision of New Zealand electoral law of which I was not previously aware, the vote in this electorate can not go ahead and so the seat will be held vacant till the by-election, which is set for 25 November. Stranger still, this does not mean there are set to be elected only 119 MPs on Saturday. Rather, the full 120 will be elected, 71 electorates and 49 list seats. (There could be more, due to overhangs, but that is a separate issue to which I will return.) When the by-election is completed, there will be an additional seat in parliament. Voters in Port Waikato will still cast list votes on Saturday, but not electorate votes. And early electorate votes already cast before Christensen’s death will simply be discarded. Graeme Edgele, a lawyer who has made submissions in past electoral-law debates, explains this provision in detail, and other means that he think would be better to deal with this situation, in a recent episode of On the Campaign, a podcast of the NZ Herald.

How many electorate seats will the Greens win? Until recently, the Green Party almost exclusively relied on winning party list seats. Nonetheless, it contested electorates, something that at one time was controversial within the party (per conversations I had with party staff and a then newly elected MP back in 2011). I have written before about why it makes sense for a smaller party like the Greens to have electorate candidates even if they have no serious chance to win them. Things have shifted–the party now has a realistic chance of winning more than one electorate. They are explicitly targeting some urban seats in Auckland and Wellington, as noted in July in the NZ Herald:

There are already an unprecedented four two-tick campaigns for the party ahead of this year’s election in October, including Chloe Swarbrick again in Auckland Central, Julie Anne Genter in Rongotai and Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central.

The reference to “two-tick campaigns” means seeking electorate (nominal) votes as well as party (list) votes. Usually the Green Party goes specifically for list votes, and a high percentage of its voters will vote strategically for the local Labour Party candidate. In these electorates, the Greens are perceived as strong enough that they might win the seats with Labour party voters shifting to the local Green candidate. Swarbrick won her electorate in the 2020 election.

Will Meka Whaitiri win her electorate? Meka Whaitiri was a sitting minister in the Labour government who defected and sat as an independent for the rest of the outgoing parliament’s term. She is now contesting lkaroa-Rāwhiti, one of the Māori electorates. This previously has been a safe Labour electorate. If she beat the Labour candidate, it would not change the number of seats Labour wins overall, due to the compensatory nature of MMP. However, it could help generate an overhang, whereby parliament would expand to 121 or more (even before the aforementioned by-election) due to Te Pāti Māori winning more nominal (electorate) seats than its list vote total would entitle it to proportionally. Some local conversation has centered around whether Māori voters should vote for the Labour candidate on the grounds that Whaitiri may get in regardless, being ranked third on the Te Pāti Māori list. This would be good enough only if TPM gets the 2.5–3% of nationwide party votes that some polls suggest it will, not the under 2% that others show–in other words, if there are not overhangs generated by currently unexpected wins in other Māori electorates. On the other hand, the Labour candidate inlkaroa-Rāwhiti, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, does not have a party-list nomination. The conversation is whether by voting for the local Labour candidate but giving TPM the region’s list vote they could effectively get two regional MPs. Thus there is a good “effects of MMP” angle here, too! This is discussed in the same podcast episode I liked to earlier. That podcast also discusses how the two major-party candidates in the Napier electorate–the general electorate that is located partly within Ikaroa-Rāwhiti–are campaigning on a promise to widen an expressway through the Hawkes Bay region and building a hospital in the area, as well as emphasizing the need for more more recovery assistance from a cyclone that hit the region. This is a clear reminder that MMP does facilitate the raising of local issues even in a context of overall nationwide proportionality among parties outcome (did someone say “best of both worlds”?).

Will TOP get in? TOP is The Opportunities Party. Most recent polls have it in the 2–3% range, evidently safely below the threshold of party-list votes. However, New Zealand’s threshold is 5% of the list votes or a single electorate plurality. It may be a long shot, but there is at least some chance TOP could win an electorate, Ilam in Christchurch. Its candidate there is former city council member Raf Manji, who contested this seat as an independent in 2017 and came second, with 23.4% of the vote, about half what the victorious National Party MP won. That MP is Gerry Brownlee, a senior figure in National, but he is not contesting again. It would be a stretch for Manji to win, but perhaps some local Labour voters would vote strategically for him. If he were to win, that would qualify TOP for list seats as well, and on current polling it maybe would end up with a caucus of three. TOP is a centrist party, emphasizing investing in youth, and not surprisingly, its website front page includes a clear explainer about how it could get multiple seats even if it does not reach 5% of the party vote. In an additional reminder of the importance of local issues under MMP, Manji also emphasizes the ongoing recovery needs of the Christchurch area due to the destructive earthquake of 2011 among other local issues, as well as implications of the lessons of the earthquake for other regions.*

Beyond election day itself and looking ahead to government formation, a huge question is whether a coalition of National, ACT, and NZ First could form and if it did, could leaders David Seymour (ACT) and Winston Peters (NZF) avoid being at constant war with one another? (Debates and sniping in the media are not promising on that front; and sparring between them is not exactly a new phenomenon.) Will ACT make good on its threats to insist on a “confidence only” deal with National if certain ACT policy priorities (some of which National has explicitly rejected) are not advanced, instead of either a full coalition or a confidence-supply deal? This would mean negotiating spending policy on a case-by-case basis and would risk a level of government instability that New Zealand has not experienced since the first MMP-elected parliament (1996-99). National has even warned of the possibility of no deal (specifically in this case with NZF) and a second election, in a rather desperate-sounding appeal to consolidate center-right votes around National.

Through much of the campaign a National-ACT majority coalition looked likely, which may be what prompted Seymour to make his bold policy demands. In turn, that may have prompted some voters to shift to NZF as a least-bad option to limit ACT influence. It was not long ago that polls cast doubt on whether NZF would reach 5% (and it has no realistic chance of any electorate win). It is by now no longer a given that the center-left is going to be unable to form a new government. Labour (which won a single-party majority in 2020) with support of Greens and NZF might be possible, depending on the precise balance of the results; this potentially also would require involvement of Te Pāti Māori. Maybe TOP would be involved in a confidence-and-supply deal, if it even makes it into parliament. (Potentially it seems it could work with either National or Labour.) It is worth recalling that the 2017-2020 government was Labour+Greens+NZF, although it was not always the smoothest partnership. This is looking like it could get very interesting!

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* In the past, I would have voted Green if I had a vote in New Zealand, and I counted it among my personal favorite political parties worldwide. However, I would probably vote TOP if I had a vote this year (even if I did not live in Ilam). For one, I rather like a lot of their policies and their “teal” positioning–similar to the set of independents who won seats in the last Australian election. More to the point, I could not possibly vote Green this time, given statements made this week by a Green MP (who is ranked 8th on the list this time and thus safe) and even shared on social media by one of the co-leaders.

I do not know how active I will be on the blog regarding issues concerning Israel and the war that is just getting underway. Security and war-fighting are very much not my specialty, even though I am interested (in more ways than one). I will probably write now and then about these events. To that end, a programming note.

I may lose followers here. I know of at least one person who used to offer valuable comments regularly (on electoral systems) and who stopped doing so after a post about Israeli security some years ago. I know because this person felt the need to tell me so. There may be more to come. I’d prefer you have the courtesy not to tell me so, or to push back in comments or email. Just look away if something offends you, please.

I will note flat out that I’ll have very little patience for criticism of Israel after what has happened. I don’t want a war. But as Kohelet (of which we just had our annual reading in synagogues the day of the Hamas assault) says, there’s a time for war and a time for peace…

(If you aren’t Jewish you know Kohelet as Ecclesiastes.) This is a time for war. There will be civilian casualties in Gaza. None of them will be deliberate goals of IDF actions. And it is important to understand this distinction.

This isn’t about revenge, at least not principally (to be intellectually and emotionally honest, revenge is not itself wrong, depending on how it’s directed). It’s fundamentally about ensuring something like this NEVER AGAIN happens. To that end Hamas must be utterly destroyed. It will be a bumpy ride. So buckle up.

And if my saying this upsets you, please feel free to just stay away for a while. I hope you will come back, or even stay around now for the normal content here but not for posts you are uncomfortable with. It is also important for me to add that comments about specific tactical decisions of the Israeli government or about domestic politics of Israel will always be welcome. If it has not been clear, I am quite disgusted with the current government, and even more so since last Saturday than before. But for now it’s the government Israel has and it (or, please may it be so, a more competent successor) must lead Israel to victory. I just want to be very clear that I don’t wish to engage with anyone whose comments muddy the clarity of distinctions I am expressing here.

Israel will win this war. There is simply no other option. Am Israel chai.

I was very skeptical that there would be a bounce to Netanyahu from the current crisis. And we now have the first piece of hard evidence that I know of: Poll shows backing for Netanyahu imploding, Gantz taking the rudder.

The survey, published by Maariv, gives the centrist National Unity 41 seats, up from the 12 it currently holds. Likud meanwhile drops to just 19 seats, well below the 32 it currently has. The poll gives hardline parties Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism five and four seats respectively. The two garnered 14 seats together in the last election.

There have been memes going around this week on social media with the words, “Your Jewish friends are not OK” or similar. This is true. If you are not Jewish or not affiliated with Jewish community organizations, you might not realize. It should be obvious from the massacre of Israeli civilians, but closer to home, there’s evidence you wouldn’t see. So here are some examples.

My wife and I are members of two synagogues and still get email from at least two others of which we were members in the past. All of them are closing their offices today and some are closing their schools if they have one.

One of these synagogues has decided to move a planned outdoor service tonight indoors and to change planned musical accompaniment to something less joyous than usual even though it’s to welcome Shabbat (a time of joy!). Another will hold no on-site activities at all through the weekend (putting services only on Zoom like during the depths of the pandemic).

All are announcing what additional security measures they are putting in place. Understand that this comes in the wake of several recent increases in security due to past attacks on communities in America. We have had a steady stream of messages over the last few years about new security patrols, staff and congregant training in how to respond to a possible terrorist attack onsite, construction of enhanced fencing, contactless apps for entry, and accessibility of panic buttons, etc. This is all being further enhanced now.

So, no, we are not OK. I’m not sure we will ever again be “OK” in the way we once were.

More personally, for about seven years I’ve worn my kippah in public most places. I was out (a medical facility) earlier this week and I wore it. It felt good. No one said anything supportive, and fortunately nothing negative. But will I think twice now about wearing it openly, at least in some settings? I hope not, but probably.

Through it all we are sustained by the powerful support of our communities and the wise and comforting words that our tradition has given us, and from our allies in the mainstream society (we know who you are and are grateful). In that sense we will always be more than OK. Am Yisrael chai.

There is a headline in the Washing Post (in an entry in their live blog today) that says, “Netanyahu and Gantz form unity government.” This is misleading. No new government has been formed; therefore, there’s no unity government. All ministers of Bibi’s narrow right-wing/Haredi coalition remain in place. Benny Gantz and a couple others from his National Unity party will be in a new “war cabinet” but this has no basis in law or Knesset investiture.

It is an informal institutional innovation based on the emergency the country is facing (and the political deficiencies Netanyahu is facing). Gantz demanded the war cabinet and that he have a real say in it. But the legal body responsible for running the war will remain the Security Cabinet, of which the far-right ministers and others of the pre-existing cabinet remain members, and Gantz is not a part of.

This is explained quite clearly in today’s Times of Israel podcast episode, near the end (but you should also listen to the story of a family’s trauma and frustration with the government that is in the middle of this podcast).

I am still far too shocked by what I’ve seen to formulate any coherent blog-worthy thoughts. There is also a current pressing family matter that is weighing on me. (For both these reasons, I turned down an invitation from a newspaper in my area to write something.) Among the many things I’ve read, the following two resonate with me greatly, and I want to recommend them highly:

The Great Shattering by Michael J. Koplow, Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum.

How to be a Liberal Zionist when Israel is at War by Sara Yael Hirschhorn, historian of modern Israel and the Jews.

To say nothing will be the same again would be as trite as it is true. But we have to keep hope. We Jews did, after all, invent it.