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The Jakarta Post

Publication Date : 02-04-2015

As a country that experienced a painful transformation from dictatorship to democracy, we Indonesians deeply commend the statesmanship of outgoing Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, who unconditionally conceded defeat to Muhammadu Buhari in the March 28 presidential race.

With a population of 170 million, Nigeria has achieved an unprecedented level of maturity after the return of civilian rule in 1999. Africas largest economy has many similarities with Indonesia: poor law enforcement, rampant corruption, overdependence on a resource-based economy, especially oil and gas, civilian conflicts and religious-related violence.

Nigeria is fighting Boko Haram, a struggle that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, including young girls. The group has declared its loyalty to the Islamic State (IS) organisation. This is similar to the atrocities we once had to deal with, albeit it was, for us, on a much smaller scale.

Contrary to the pessimistic view of many international media organisations and observers, Jonathan immediately acknowledged the victory of former dictator Buhari, a retired general who describes himself as a born-again democrat.

Nobodys ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian, Associated Press quoted the Christian Jonathan as saying after he directly telephoned Buhari to congratulate him on his victory on Wednesday.

We have proven to the world that we are people who have embraced democracy. We have put the one-party state behind us, said Buhari in a victory speech.

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Nigeria's road to democracy

Democracy in America is dead, according to Silicon Valley investorPeter Thiel.

No, not in the anthropological, Alexander-de-Toqueville sense. The PayPal co-foundermeans it literally.

"It's not clear we're living in anything resemblinga democracy," he told a crowd Tuesday at George Mason University. "We're living in a republic that's modified by a judicial system, that's been largely superseded by these agencies that drive the decision-making."

"Calling our society a democracy is very misleading," Thiel went on. "We're not a republic; we're not a constitutional republic.We live in a state that's dominated by these technocratic agencies."

For even the typically colorful Thiel, this is a surprisingly bluntcritique of the American political system. It fits into a much larger brand of Washington skepticism that's become characteristic of Silicon Valley in recent years. And while much of it mayring true to the casual observer, it also draws its own critics.

[Watch: Here's how entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel thinks we should live each day]

Thiel saysthat organizations likethe Federal Reserve have been allowed to roam too far. Calling governmentagencies"deeply sclerotic and deeply nonfunctioning," Thiel pointed to the Energy Department's failed investments in Solyndra as a case study in bureaucratic mismanagement and executive overreach.

"You could use ninth grade geometry to show this was never going to be commercially viable," he scoffed in reference to Solyndra's roundsolar panels, which he argued weren't as efficient as conventional solar collectors.

Thebankrupt company aside, Thiel's bearish appraisal of the federal government is one that many share, particularlywithinthe tech industry. Washington is slow, has a penchant for gridlock and is stuffed to the gills with old, white men. All of this createsa sense of stagnation that stands in stark contrast to the dynamism of the Valley, where ideas are constantly being developed, refined and rejected. Investors such asChamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook vice presidentand oneof the founders of lobbying group FWD.us, have said that it's now "excruciatingly, obviously clear to everyone else that where value is created is no longer in New York, it's no longer in Washington, it's no longer in L.A. It's in San Francisco and the Bay Area."

For Thiel, this trend is tied to a much broader notion about globalization. Traditional power centers like New York and Washington did really well for themselves so long as nations rose and fell on the basis of international finance or geopolitics. The process of drawing the world closer through advanced communications and trade, said Thiel, reinforced that prosperity. But the housing bust and the financial crisis marked a turning point.

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Why PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel thinks American democracy is dead

By Shane Singh April 1 at 10:49 AM

Following President Obamas mention of compulsory voting at a town hall event in Cleveland a couple weeks ago, the topic has received a lot of attention in the popular media. While Obama did not clearly suggest that the U.S. should implement compulsory voting, countries including Bulgaria, Colombia, and India have actively considered its adoption in recent months.

Scholarly research finds a robust correlation between compulsory voting and turnout rates. So turnout in the U.S. would very likely increase if abstention became illegal although, as John Sides recently noted, election outcomes may not systematically change. Compulsory voting could also have other effects, such as reducing income inequality and enhancing political sophistication in the electorate.

But my ongoing research suggests that compulsory voting also has a more troubling effect: itsours attitudes toward the democratic system among those who prefer to not to vote.

The reasoning is straightforward: when people are forced to do something that they dont want to do, they often come to dislike whoever is making them do it. So those who dont want to vote may come to have less favorable attitudes toward the political system that forces them to vote.

The graph below shows this fact, drawing on AmericasBarometer survey data from Central America, North America, South America and the Caribbean. Fourteen of the countries included here have some form of mandatory voting. I classify compulsory voting laws as nonexistent (voluntary voting), weak, or strong, depending on the severity of the penalty for abstention and the likelihood of enforcement. The bars represent the percentage of people who report being dissatisfied with democracy in each type of voting system. Red bars are used for individuals who prefer to abstain, and blue bars are used for those who are inclined to vote.

Unsurprisingly, those who prefer to abstain are more dissatisfied with democracy than those who prefer to vote, regardless of whether there is compulsory voting. But those who prefer to abstain are more dissatisfied in countries with strong compulsory voting.

Of course, this correlation does not demonstrate that adopting (or abandoning) compulsory voting would necessarily cause attitudes toward democracy to change. However, I can get some additional leverage from this fact: in a handful of Latin American countries, senior citizens are exempted from the requirement to turn out. And I have found that this gap in satisfaction with democracy between those who prefer to abstain and those who prefer to turn out dissipates once people reach the age when their participation becomes voluntary.

In India, the Law Commission recently ruled out compulsory voting on the grounds that, among other things, it is undemocratic. In addition, in the dozens of opinion pieces on compulsory voting that have emerged in the United States in response to Obamas comments in Ohio, a common theme is that the right to vote also includes a right not to vote. Infringing on any right not to vote could decrease satisfaction with democracy among those who would prefer to exercise that right.

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Monkey Cage: Compulsory voting can actually weaken support for democracy

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