{"id":10691,"date":"2015-05-28T08:46:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T13:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10691"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:43","slug":"election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10691","title":{"rendered":"Election Selection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Andy<\/a>
Andy Reynolds (courtesy of Oxford University Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An old, repressive regime is out. Someone new takes power. First order of business: elect a new government. But how do you do that,\u00a0exactly?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question the Egyptian military, Tunisian reformers, and other groups had to ask after coming to power in the Arab Spring of 2011. Some new governments were winging it, with mixed results. Others got good advice. One Carolina professor brought a message to as many nations as he could: Let history do the experimenting for you. Learn from other countries\u2019 mistakes. You have choices about how to do democracy, and there are ways to predict the\u00a0results. <\/em><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, \u201cdemocracy\u201d meant North America, Western Europe, Australasia. Before the 1990s, what we knew about democracies mainly came from the West, says Carolina political scientist Andy Reynolds. But you can\u2019t model the world after western-style democracy. \u201cWhat works in France may not be what works in Kazakhstan or Argentina,\u201d Reynolds\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Then, after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and after countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia moved toward democracy, suddenly Reynolds and others who study how democracies work had a lot more information about building new governments. \u201cWe could say to a country, \u2018Okay, who do you look like? You don\u2019t look like Russia\u2014that wouldn\u2019t be helpful. But you look a bit like Indonesia.\u2019 And we can tell them about the four fascinating elections Indonesia has had\u2014it\u2019s been a pretty strong success. So we can say, if you want to do better economically and be more stable, think about copying\u00a0Indonesia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1997, Reynolds and a colleague compiled all this data into a manual on designing electoral systems. When he travels around the world, people ask him to sign their copies. It was the first book to explain simply\u2014almost like a cookbook\u2014how different ingredients of an electoral system add up to different\u00a0results.<\/p>\n

For example, imagine an election for representatives to a parliament, where each district gets only one representative. If voters can choose only one candidate, people with minority interests will feel driven to vote not for the candidate who best represents them, but for the least objectionable candidate who seems likely to win a lot of votes, Reynolds\u2019 manual explains. But if voters are allowed to pick a first, second, and third choice, they\u2019ll probably pick their top candidate\u00a0first.<\/p>\n

In Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak, parliamentary representatives had to win more than 50 percent of the vote (in a first election or runoff) to be elected, making it difficult or impossible for anyone representing minority interests to get elected. And after the military seized power, Commander-in-Chief Hussein Tantawi planned on having the same type of electoral system. Was that a deliberate attempt to stack the new\u00a0parliament?<\/p>\n

Probably not, Reynolds says. More likely, the military just didn\u2019t know how elections work. Why would they? \u201cSo they chose something they thought was reasonable\u2014but it would have given the Muslim Brotherhood or Mubarak\u2019s old regime people all the seats, and the Free Egyptians and Coptic Christians no\u00a0seats.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The U.S.<\/span> government recruited Reynolds to go to Cairo and deliver this caution. It was pretty calm in Egypt when he got there. Most days, Reynolds walked along the Nile to Tahrir Square. But he couldn\u2019t get his foot in the door with the military. Instead, he spent his time talking to groups eager to learn about democracy-building: legal groups, student groups, women\u2019s groups, and new political\u00a0parties.<\/p>\n

When Reynolds got home, the U.S.<\/span> National Security Council asked him and a Dartmouth professor to write a brief about why continuing the old electoral system would be a disaster, and what Egypt could do instead to make elections more likely to\u00a0succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told that Admiral Mike Mullen, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Robert Gates, at the time the Secretary of State for Defense, flew to Cairo with five pieces of paper. One was our briefing; the other four were on other issues. And they met with General Tantawi and said, \u2018You need to do these five\u00a0things.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Reynolds says, the military took some of his advice. They changed the electoral system so that two-thirds of parliamentary seats would be awarded in proportion to how many votes a party\u00a0won.<\/p>\n

He also gave advice\u2014from afar\u2014to Tunisia, and on the ground in Yemen and Libya. He was in Yemen in 2014 while beheadings were taking place, and in Libya he stayed in a hotel where 10 people were later killed. \u201cAlmost every place I\u2019ve been in has been blown up or attacked, but I was never there at the time,\u201d Reynolds says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been\u00a0lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

After watching some countries successfully oust oppressive regimes, and many fail to make lasting changes, Reynolds and his colleagues Jason Brownlee and Tarek Masoud wrote The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform<\/a>. <\/em>Reviewers are calling it the best analysis yet of how and why regimes changed. The most successful countries, they write, were able to overthrow their governments because the old regimes weren\u2019t backed by oil wealth or strong hereditary\u00a0dynasties.<\/p>\n

Tunisia, Reynolds says, is the only Arab Spring country so far to get on the path to a stable democracy, after ousting President Ben Ali. Reynolds and a team of experts helped advise the new government as it set up a true proportional system where voters choose between lists of candidates, where each list is made up of candidates from one party. If about a third of votes across the country are for a certain party, that party wins about a third of the legislature\u2019s\u00a0seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Tunisia, the constitutional design process was led by civilians\u2014people who were invested in building a state, not just partisan control. And it\u2019s been successful. Tunisia elected a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Then the Brotherhood lost the next elections, and the opposition came into power peacefully,\u201d Reynolds\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn countries where civil society groups\u2014women\u2019s groups, religious groups, student groups\u2014learn what works, they lobby and promote that. A lot of change comes that way. Our job is to bring lessons from lots of places to empower people and help them make their own\u00a0decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds helps new governments because he wants minority groups to get a fair shake, he says. But he also works abroad because it helps protect the United States. \u201cStable governments are good for us,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the problem with Afghanistan\u2014instability in that country provided space for someone to come and attack us\u00a0here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Andrew Reynolds is an associate professor of political science in the College of Arts and Sciences. His latest book, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform<\/a>, was published in April 2015. His coauthors are Jason Brownlee of the University of Texas at Austin and Tarek Masoud of Harvard\u00a0University.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Susan Hardy, Endeavors magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Learn more: <\/span><\/p>\n
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The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform <\/a><\/div>\n
Electoral System Design: the New International IDEA Handbook, by Andrew Reynolds, Ben Reilly, and Andrew Ellis<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around the world, political scientist Andy Reynolds helps new democracies live up to the name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-programs","category-social-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47284,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions\/47284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}