
An Electoral Passions Reunion
The positive (and less recognized) aspect of confrontational tension
Regarding the several approaching appointments with the ballot boxes (
(From
There is a coincidence of events: the primaries in the United States, the proximity of some very hard-fought elections in Spain between the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP) (Editor’s note: the PSOE won these elections by a 4 per cent margin), the ambitious French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s first test at the ballot boxes, and Italy’s entry into an electoral contest precipitated by the fall of Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi being on the verge of returning to power.
THE REGENERATION OF AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE
“The
“Obama and Clinton mobilize sectors that would have otherwise continued to stare at other TV channels (…) McCain has retained the Republican electorate, even in view of the neoconservative sector’s abandonment” As the Bush era comes to an end, the United States is demonstrating a notable ability to regenerate its political life, in spite of Iraq and the specter of a recession (or, perhaps, precisely because of this). The candidatures of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have excited young people and mobilized sectors that would have otherwise continued to stare at other TV channels and attended other events.
The figure of John McCain has managed to retain the Republican electorate, even in view of the neoconservative sector’s abandonment and the massive mortgage that the current administration is leaving behind.
The most important immediate consequence has been the increase in voter participation levels, which in the
SOME ESPECIALLY MOTIVATING PRIMARIES
“The same instruments of representative democracy that were taken to be obsolete are now inciting a rarely seen mobilization of voters” In accordance with American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate’s studies, there has been a tendency for voter participation levels in the United States to decrease since the middle of the 1960s, when participation reached a record 45 per cent in the primaries. In 2004, for example, only 8,3 per cent of the national population of age to vote participated in the primaries, with large differences between states, ranging from a high of 23 per cent to a low of 3,8 per cent.
This declining tendency has been reversed in the primaries of the current Presidential contest. In several states, as much in those that had open elections as those that held caucuses, the “Democratic politics is, at the end of the day, the possibility of confronting distinct models of society without causing the rivers to run red”participation of both Republicans and Democrats has doubled in comparison to 2004’s turnout. Out of 15 million people able to vote in
In that way, the same instruments of representative democracy that were once taken to be obsolete or considered to discourage citizen participation (the primaries, party assemblies, curriculum discussions and political leaders’ speeches to the public) are now having the opposite effect and actually inciting a rarely seen mobilization of voters.
CONFRONTING MODELS WITHOUT SPILLING BLOOD
“And you can bet that blood has been spilled in Latin America, so we must not assign too much value to these demonstrations of quality democracy” In several South American countries the attention is falling on the necessity to modernize political parties, even when it is difficult to determine to an exact science how much evolution and how much real transformation results from these cyclical impulses.
For this reason, it is necessary to remember that a party system is far from being a summation of apparatuses; rather, the system responds to a dynamic in which each strong force talks to, competes with, and confronts the other. In these past weeks
And you can bet that blood has been spilled in
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