Germany votes in two weeks time on the fate of Angela Merkel's government. The result will depend in part on a quirk of the country's otherwise very democratic electoral system – a system which, incidentally, would have produced a rather different result last weekend in Australia.
Category: Australia
Please don’t feed the beast
Unnecessary military spending is a cancer on democracy, but it takes a case like Egypt to show the real damage that it can do.
How to think about the Senate
Australia has a Senate largely modelled after that of the United States, but understanding its elections is a very different business.
David Cameron channels Stephen Conroy
David Cameron commits himself to a compulsory internet porn filter, à la Stephen Conroy and Kim Beazley. It doesn't make any sense, but for certain sorts of policies, that doesn't seem to be an obstacle.
Westminster government for beginners
Our system of government operates under a set of largely unwritten conventions. But they're well established and they work surprisingly well, which is why the governor-general has not tried to second-guess the ALP caucus.
Rudd, reaction and refugees
The reborn Kevin Rudd turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a "conservative" on refugees as well. But leaving aside the morality of his promised toughness, why does anyone think it makes political sense for Labor?
Incentive effects
If you increase the demand for political bastardry, you'll get more of it in the future. It's not entirely clear that the federal Labor Party realises this.
Populist insurgency not working well in Italy
Italy's centre-left finally gets some good news, but its populist movement is facing the sort of problems that typically plague amateurs in politics.
Two concepts of surveillance
The US government goes much further in data collection than we should be comfortable with, but the latest revelations are not as devastating as some people think.
Do teenagers count as people?
The New South Wales government plans to (yet again) treat young people as second-class citizens, this time with high-frequency sound that the rest of us are too old to notice.
The World is Not Enough 