Moldova remains stuck in a state of political upheaval initiated by the inability of the Communists to win the constitutionally required 61 seats to elect a President in the April 2009 parliamentary elections. The two years since then have seen several additional early votes – the last in November – but while the three-party coalition that forms the ruling Alliance for European Integration (AIE) has gained a few more MP’s each time, they still have only 59, and so are unable to elect one of their number to the presidency. Marian Lupu (former Communist rising star and now leader of the breakaway Democratic Party) has filled the role of acting President since December. He looks set to do so for some months to come, especially since the constitutional court decided in February that it was not necessary for the government to hold a vote to appoint a new President within two months of the resignation of the last one. And yet a new set of elections early next year remains a possibil ...

Are you the authoritarian leader of a CIS state? You are? Well how nice! Perks of the job But tell me friend, you must surely be getting a bit sick of all those pesky OSCE ODIHR Election Observer types coming to your country every time you have an "election," and then announcing to all and sundry that your efforts "failed to meet international standards in the following key respects..." or some other such interfering imperialist claptrap? What with a wave of democratization slowly sweeping the region, and the continuing need to maintain the paper-thin facade that your vicious little police-state is "democratic" for the purpose of domestic and international legitimation (but only within the context of your own "national traditions" of course - i.e that you should be able to remain in power for as long as you like), you'll need to make sure you're up to date with all the latest electoral fraud techniques, so you can get the "results&qu ...

As your correspondent's teacher and mentor, Fred Halliday (1946-2010), was very fond of pointing out, the limits of the predictive abilities of the social sciences ought by now to be better recognized than they are. What political scientist or "policy specialist" predicted the Lebanese Civil War (1975), the Iranian Revolution (1978-79) or the collapse of Soviet Communism (1989-91) with any kind of serious foresight? Answer: not a single one. No one managed to predict any of these critically important and internationally significant events with any kind of meaningful foresight or accuracy. But this should hardly come as a surprise. Even in the natural sciences prediction is not as precise as commonly assumed: just ask a meteorologist, seismologist or demographer. Fred's point was that the world of human affairs and politics is by its very nature necessarily uncertain, and will doubtless remain so. The temptation to additional "speculation" (especially when ...