Tag Archives: Democracy

Congolese Elections: Democratisation is a process, not an event.

Lord McConnell 30/01/2012 – 2:14 pm

  On December 17 2010, a young Tunisian man set himself on fire.  This desperate act helped to spark a political revolution in the Arab world.  Images of people revolting against notoriously oppressive regimes captivated onlookers worldwide.  More than a year later, the world is indeed a different place – long-term dictators have been unseated, governments shuffled or disbanded altogeth […]

DRC Elections 2012: Observing a Rush to the Polls

Lord McConnell 23/01/2012 – 11:22 am

November 28, 2011 was historic in the DRC; the first ever democratic national election organized by the Congolese themselves. Indeed it was only the second time since independence in 1960 that a multi-party electoral vote would be set to determine the presidential seat.  However, this relatively undeveloped voting system left the electoral process wide open to systemic and local corruption that c […]

Greece versus the World

Lord Soley 04/11/2011 – 11:16 am

There is something rather poignant about the birthplace of Western democracy putting the world on hold while they work out what they want to do! A bit scary too!!

Is election the democratic option?

Lord Norton 23/08/2011 – 5:00 pm

In my Stevenson Lecture at the University of Glasgow in January, I addressed the claim that election of a second chamber necessarily constitutes the ‘democratic’ option.  This is often advanced by proponents of an elected second chamber as if it were self-evidently correct.   I argued that it is not necessarily the democratic option, a point to which I returned in the debate in the Hou […]

Lords Reform Again

Baroness Murphy 27/06/2011 – 11:51 am

An article in the Guardian today by Lords Adonis and Tyler about the true nature of the House of Lords today is worth reading. I'm afraid their descriptions of current peers  are well observed. That's why we shouldn't fear an elected second chamber. See  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/26/lords-reform-overdue