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While several studies have examined retirements from the US Congress, fewer studies have examined retirement patterns in other legislatures. Christopher D. Raymond and Marvin Overby examine partisan differences in retirement rates in Britain and Canada.

n our forthcoming article in Political Studies, we test whether the phenomenon of partisan differences in retirements can be found in other legislatures. To do so, we analyse retirement patterns among MPs in Canada and Britain. While these two countries use similar electoral systems to the US (first-past-the-post), differences in the types of parties in each case allow us to parse out some of the ideological and personal motivations guiding retirement decisions that are more difficult to isolate in the two-party system of the US.

Not only do conservative politicians seem to retire early because they find the work less rewarding, but politicians belonging to parties commonly as being the ‘natural’ party of government seem to be more likely to try to hold on to their seats.

A 2017 Pew Research Center poll found that most Americans disagree only whether the United States is the best country in the world (29 percent) or one of the best (56 percent). Only 14 percent of Americans agree instead that there are other, better countries.

U.S. reluctance, or inability, to learn from other countries is making life worse for its citizens than it has to be—not just in the big ways, such as the disasters of American health care and student debt, but in the little, everyday ones, too

the United States proves so resistant to learning from other countries. Using terms that officials since have echoed repeatedly, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described the United States and its role by saying, “We are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.”

As it sweeps across nations, the coronavirus is exposing systemic flaws. In China, it was freedom of information; here in the US it is the massive disparities in the way people are treated depending on their economic circumstances and their immigration status.

Policymakers who face unfamiliar challenges often turn to the past. The problem is they don’t see the messy questions that historians do but, instead, a warehouse of analogies providing easy answers. That seductive simplicity can lead them badly astray.

The actual events of the Chernobyl disaster that took place 35 years ago have been transmuted into a fable about how the revelation of a calamity can undermine an authoritarian regime. That story has led to a ceaseless search for how any disaster in an authoritarian system opposed to the United States presages the imminent defeat of U.S. adversaries from within. It’s an analogy that instructs U.S. policymakers of the fragility of other systems and the inherent superiority of their own. In doing so, it absolves them of any need to shore up the foundations of their own system or prepare for long-term coexistence with a resilient authoritarian rival.

If Soviet collapse was not inevitable or if we can attribute it to factors other than legitimacy or calamity, then the political importance of Chernobyl recedes. What becomes more important, then, is not the roots of instability in authoritarian countries per se but how political systems of any stripe grow brittle or susceptible to collapse—a lesson one would think Americans have learned from the past several years. Indeed, as nonprofit organization Freedom House notes, at the moment, it is contemporary democracies, not autocracies, that seem to be on the waning side as the world enters the 15th consecutive year of democratic recession.

Aristotle (384–322BC) was not only a philosopher but also a pioneering giant of political science. He observed and classified how city states of his time did their politics, identifying six regimes in all. The three “ideal” ones – where rulers would rule for the benefit of all citizens – were monarchy, aristocracy, and polity. Respectively, that meant rule by the one, the few, or the many. He called their real-life equivalents – where rulers ruled for their own benefit – tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.For Aristotle, whether states were oligarchic or democratic was deeply ingrained in their ways of working – the politics of structure itself. He believed that cities that chose their office holders, jurors and judges by lottery were democratic and that those using elections were oligarchic – that’s Greek for government of, by, and for the few.

He argued that lotteries extinguish the electoral campaigning advantages of wealthier, more expensively educated candidates over poorer adversaries. He reasoned that a handful of people, grown used to generations in office, are easier to corrupt than the many.

Citizens were ever ready for lottery selection as judges, jury or political office holders – active decision makers in the affairs of their city. That they were chosen by lot – not election – was the critical issue for Aristotle.