Lots of interesting articles to keep up with these days: On democracy and society: An extremely thoughtful piece on balancing citizen participation with delegating expertise in a democracy, by Mike Ananny, a new media PhD student at Stanford.  Here's another good one, on the rise and fall of GDP as a good way to measure social progress.  I'm also trying to sort out my views on this piec... [More]

Regular readers of this blog know about our MP exit interview project, the first time this kind of information has been gathered systematically in Canada. We're putting the final touches on our first report, which will talk about the MPs' motivations for running and their paths to politics, and are turning ourselves to the next one, which focuses on their transition to politics and their work as ... [More]

One reader of this blog raised some good questions about the average Parliamentary sitting days we have here in Canada in response to last week's post. Here's my best effort at the answers. First, he wondered how elections skewed the figures. Ned Franks estimates that Parliament sits, on average, about seven fewer weeks (or 35 days) in an election year. Maclean's Aaron Wherry crunched the nu... [More]

The reputation of MPs took a real beating in the UK last year due to some, shall we say, mishandling of expenses. Already, 120 MPs (of 646) have announced their intention to step down. The UK election, required this year, hasn't yet been called but is widely expected to produce a change in government. At this rate, the UK may be in a situation very similar to that in Canada after our 1993 ele... [More]