Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2020

Source: Pixabay

Stephen Bosworth, Anders Corr, Stevan Leonard1

Abstract

Unlike existing voting methods, this article describes a new method that gives all voters every appropriate reason to be pleased. Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR) invites each citizen to grade the suitability for office of any number of candidates as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable).  EPR allows each citizen to guarantee that one of the elected members of the legislature has received either their highest grade, remaining highest grade, or proxy vote – no vote is needlessly wasted. Continue reading

Making Political Risk More Politically Relevant

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019

Ukraine’s Independence Square in Fall 2013, taken only months before it erupted into violent protests culminating in the overthrow of the sitting government. A busy commercial and tourist hub that day, there was no sign of the war zone it would soon resemble. Photo: Alicia Ellis.

Alicia N. Ellis, Ph.D.
Arizona State University

Executive Summary

This report assesses the state of the academic literature on political risk and evaluates its contribution to understanding and mitigating risk for both business and political professionals. This assessment concludes that policy-relevant research has been in some cases limited and, in most cases, ineffectively communicated. Several major problems contribute to the persistent disconnect between policy, industry, and academia. Political scientists do not approach their research questions in a communicable way, nor do they often take the necessary step of connecting their research to an end use. Risk rating organizations have become overly reliant on cross-national aggregate models. Mixed methods research has been applied inappropriately and thus, ineffectively. Systematic biases have been introduced to models at a structural level, and conceptual difficulties plague some of the most basic questions for risk analysts.

Despite these problems, opportunities do exist for bridging the gap between research and practice, and producing policy-relevant research. This article proposes some recommendations for moving forward. Research questions must be structured in new ways to reflect the needs of end consumers that include non-academic professionals. Several research agendas in need of a practical-minded researcher are put forth, including the rise of China and what it means for global trade patterns, the ‘buy local’ movement spreading across the United States, and the problem of democratic consolidation. For each problem identified, the article makes suggestions for how we might reframe the questions in a way that produces more useful research on political risk. Continue reading

Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019

442 rural surplus laborers from Kashgar and Hotan, Xinjiang China, are sent off to work in an industrial park in Korla in a “centralized fashion”.

Adrian Zenz, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow in China Studies
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

1.0 Introduction

After recruiting a hundred or more thousand police forces, installing massive surveillance systems, and interning vast numbers of predominantly Turkic minority population members, many have been wondering about Beijing’s next step in its so-called “war on Terror” in Xinjiang. Since the second half of 2018, limited but apparently growing numbers of detainees have been released into different forms of forced labor. In this report it is argued based on government documents that the state’s long-term stability maintenance strategy in Xinjiang is predicated upon a perverse and extremely intrusive combination of forced or at least involuntary training and labor, intergenerational separation and social control over family units. Much of this is being implemented under the heading and guise of “poverty alleviation”.

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Genocide as Nation Building: China’s Historically Evolving Policy in East Turkistan

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

China’s President Xi Jinping. China has enforced a massive security crackdown in Kashgar, East Turkistan (called “Xinjiang” by China), where between one and three million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are estimated to be held in a network of internment camps that Beijing describes as “vocational education centres”. They are aimed at erasing non-Han and non-CCP identity under the guise of steering people away from religious extremism. Source: Etan Liam via Flickr.

Rukiye Turdush
Uyhgur Research Institute

At Nankai University in 2003, Chinese professor Ai Yue Jing said, “Our great culture can assimilate any other nation or culture, we can change and absorb good one torture and kill bad one”. These words ushered in the new era of China’s “nation building” project in East Turkistan. [1]

Three million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan (“Xinjiang”) are incarcerated in Chinese concentration camps and face the prospect of being killed and deported to China’s secret inland prisons as a part of the country’s ongoing genocide.[2] According to the report Genocide in East Turkistan published by the Uyghur Research Institute this year, China’s ethnic policy in East Turkistan falls into at least four of the five acts defined as genocide by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [3] Eye-witness accounts, media reports, and testimonials of relatives of the victims have verified claims of the existence of torture and death in concentration camps,[4] as well as China’s policy of objectifying Uyghurs through experimentation in high–tech mass surveillance systems that make use of QR codes, biometrics, artificial intelligence, phone spyware, and big data.[5] China’s policies towards the Uyghurs have created horror and demoralization, destroying their belief in a world of right and wrong. Consequently, the deteriorated mental health of Uyghurs in East Turkistan has indirectly impacted on their relatives in the Uyghur diaspora. Many of them have already reported constant crying, appetite loss, sleep deprivation, loss of concentration, depression, and frequent nightmares.[6] Continue reading

Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

Stephen Bosworth, Anders Corr and Stevan Leonard1

Abstract

Source: Pixabay

Unlike any existing voting method for a representative democracy, this article describes a new method that gives every voter every appropriate reason to be pleased with the results. It is called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR). EPR guarantees that each citizen’s vote will continue to count proportionately in the deliberations of a legislative body, such as a city council. After assessing the ideal qualities needed by the office, citizens grade each candidate as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable). Each voter can give the same grade to more than one candidate. Each candidate not graded is automatically counted as a “Reject” by that voter. These grades can be counted by anyone who can add and subtract whole numbers or by the algorithm provided. Each EPR citizen’s vote adds proportionately to the voting power in the legislature of a winner. Initially, EPR’s count provisionally determines the number of highest grades (votes) each candidate has exclusively received from all the voters. However, no winner is allowed to retain enough votes to dictate to the legislature. Therefore, our simulated election limits the percent of votes any winner can retain to 20%. This ensures that at least three members of the legislature will have to agree for any majority decision to be made. We call a candidate who has received such a percentage super popular. Any non-super-popular candidate is eligible to receive at least one of the extra votes initially held by a super-popular candidate. Each extra vote is transferred to the remaining eligible candidate on this voter’s ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate. Similarly, all the votes provisionally held by an unelected candidate must be transferred to an eligible winner. The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature. No vote is needlessly wasted. Each citizen is given every appropriate reason to be pleased.

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