Tuesday 31 January 2012

Kuwait elections coming soon.

On the 2nd feb Kuwait will be holding Parliamentary elections.
The official Kuwait news Agency has press releases in English about events.

organisations observing the conduct of the elections include
Kuwait transparency society (site in Arabic only)
Kuwait Journalists association (Arabic only)
New site Middle East online has predicted increased youth involvement becuase of the Arab Spring.

TEIM election watch has also produced a useful pre-election briefing.
Background on the political climate can also be found on the Carnegie Endowment website.

The Kuwait politics database from Michael Herb, Georgia State University. Also has an excellent collection of election results from the 1960s onwards.

Thursday 19 January 2012

Taiwan elections- send voters mad!

On Jan. 14, Taiwan re-elected President Ma. Interestingly the Telegraph reported increased cases of 'election' illness syndrom. However, here are some more serious suggestions for studying the resorts and political climate.
General background information can be found on the IFES guide.
The Official election commission website has a good English language section. get the official election results by district.
The Taipei times has recent news stories. Including summaries of reports from watchdogs monitoring the election.
The Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) also has reports from its observation mission. and further discussion on its facebook site.

For some background information on the possible impact of the elections. See this report from CSIS on relations with the USA.

Alan Romberg Chinese Leadership monitor article. Also avvailable more publications on Taiwan and China from the Hoover Institution.
Wilson center - coverage of the elections and Taiwan in general
Finally get some discussion on The Taiwan 2012 blog is produced in partnership with the School of Politics and International Relations, the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies and the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Arab spring - useful sources for tracing electoral reform information

In December the EU launched its own response to the Arab spring
This memo highlights reactions from the EU to events in specific nations.It includes details of aid.
Here are some other recommended starting points.
News services.
Guardian blogs and news analysis from the Middle East. There is also a separate news stories page.
Aljazeera - includes live blogs and video content
BBC news
Lede Blog from New York Times.
Speigel Online
Economist - includes access to many articles from the journal. See the interesting Shoe throwers index from Feb 2011 for graphs and predictions.
Other think tanks with analysis and reports include:
The Carnegie Endowment.
Council on Foreign Relations.
ASWAT
NDI
Brookings Institution.
Chatham House. For instance see the transcript of a recent event on Israel and the Arab spring Which was held in London In December 2011.

Egyptian elections 2012

To start 2012 Egyptians have been voting in the third round of their elections.
IFES has some background information on the electoral system.
Jadaliyya has a good site with topical news updates and analysis. It launched the Egypt elections watch in association with Ahram Online, with the Center of Contemporary Arab Studies (Georgetown University) and the Middle East Studies Program (George Mason University)This has excellent introductions to election laws, profiles of parties and key figures along with maps, legislation and links to key news feeds and facebook sites. Also useful for this type of information is the Egypt Votes. This site aims to encourage quality reporting by young Egyptian journalists. It is jointly financed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and the German Federal Foreign Office.
Some of the site is in Arabic, but there is also a twitter wall on the left hand side which has interesting current comment. It is also offering support to the Egypt Electionnaire which has been created by by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and MICT (Media in Cooperation and Transition) and provides an introduction for voters to the policies of the main parties. Finally look for further comment from Egyptian and other international bloggers on the Global voices website.