John Carey on democracy in Afghanistan

John Carey, the Wentworth Professor of Government and associate dean of faculty for the social sciences at Dartmouth College, recently published an op-ed in The Washington Post on the failure of Afghanistan's political institutions.  With co-author Andrew Reynolds of Princeton University, Professor Carey argues that the institutions constructed by the United States in Afghanistan "rejected a parliamentary system [of government] in favor of a presidential system — a kind of government that fosters a winner-take-all posture among politicians and the electorate." Moreover, according to Professors Carey and Reynolds, the Afghanistan constitution employed "a method of voting in multi-member districts that political scientists know is intrinsically flawed."

Professor Carey, a member of the steering committee of the Program in Quantitative Social Science is a co-director of Bright Line Watch, which monitors threats to American democracy. Professor Reynolds studies democratization and constitutional design and is the author of  The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World, published by Oxford University Press.