it's rainin' water

I'm back in the Isidora Goyenechea Starbucks for the first time in along time. There's no way I'd be back here on my own except that at 8 COPA is taking me, four other kids and a bunch of gringo study abroad advisors out to dinner at a really nice restaurant, Isla Negra, on El Bosque. Seeing as that's three blocks from here, and seeing as I needed a change of scenery in order to buckle down a little, I'm here now.

The buckling down is mostly in the form of working on my two final essays. I'm still kind of in the dark about what each will deal with specifically. That's okay for the European Political Economy one, because all that's due next week is a presentation outlining what I'm going to talk about. So I need some idea of a thesis and structure, but nothing really research-based or overly specific. Electoral Systems, however, is a bigger issue. It's due on Tuesday and I'm still not entirely sure what's going on with it. I've been snooping around on JSTOR (long live JSTOR!), but now I will expound for a couple of minutes in hopes of clearing this business up.

In new democracies, social cleavages tend to get defined early on and have deep historical roots. According to one school of thought, these early cleavages remain fundamentally unchanged throughout the evolution of the democracy. For example, in France the most fundamental cleavage is thought to be the rural-urban divide, and that divide still rules the day in French politics. It takes different forms and is seen across various levels of society: industrial labor verus agriculture, churchgoing country dwellers versus non-churchgoing urbanites, etc. This fundamental divide is the basis for the party breakdown in modern France, as such fundamental cleavages form the foundation for party breakdowns in most democracies. However, rapidly growing integration has led to huge immigrant and minority populations that are changing the scene: Witness the victory of Sarkozy, a Reagan-esque nationalist (thanks to Juan Cole for that particular comparison) whose campaign made use of white French people's reactionary fears of Muslim immigrant unrest. The same kinds of divides are coming to the fore in England, Spain, Germany, the United States (obviously) and even in the traditionally homogeneous Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark. These are all highly developed, very stable Western democracies. But what of the less developed, newer European democracies who are participating in the same breakneck economic integration as those countries mentioned above, but without the accompanying influx of immigrants; i.e. what's up with countries whose populations are still remarkably homogeneous--religiously, ethnically, linguistically--like Ireland, Portugal, Poland and Greece? How do party politics break down in those countries, and how are they changing? Perhaps I should hypothesize that divides in those countries (I have to pick three, but that can be later) have to do traditionally with religious versus non-religious groups (i.e. commies), but increasingly have to do with protectionist/traditionalists versus integrationalist/progressives. That's a thought. Then again might be a bit ambitious for a ten-page paper with no time for original research. Still, good start. Good job, freewriting Luke.

BUT, the really big news of today is that it's raining and raining. This morning and early afternoon saw veritable torrents (relatively speaking, of course), and after a mid-afternoon break it's raining lightly but steadily now. Apparently this will continue for a couple of days, which means two very, very wonderful things: First, the mountains will look spectacular as soon as the clouds go away; and second, the air is clean as hell. It's so strange it is to grow accustomed to things a quarter of a mile away being hazy and indistinct in the middle of the day and then all of a sudden being able to see individual trees on a hill miles distant; like walking around all day wondering why things don't look quite right, then realizing that one of your glasses lenses has a substantial smudge on it, then cleaning it off and remembering what things are supposed to look like.

I posted a video the last time this happened, but today's rain-induced happiness can't quite measure up to the giddy ecstasy of that other day, because the wait hadn't been as long. So no video today. Still, frisbee is going to be 85 billion times better on Sunday because the air will be pristine. Oh baby! And now, it's time to get back to work. Profe Altman sent me an article by Alberto Alesina about fractionalization, complete with table of measurements of the ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization of almost 200 countries. Hott with two t's.

P.S. That link to Cole above is worth checking out; I know nothing about French politics so for all I know he's totally wrong, and his interests are certainly biased in favor of the Muslim world, but it's still a very interesting brief analysis.

P.P.S. The bathroom of this Starbucks smells fantastic.