A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Counterintuitive Observation

Last late-night observation: I've only been blogging for two weeks. How's this for something counterintuitive: according to my archive list over there on the right, there have been 34 posts (this is number 35, so that's what it will read when I post this). What do you think the most frequent category (tag) under which they were filed was?

This: 11 of those 34 posts carried the tag, " elections."

Admittedly Israel accounted for many of those, but so did Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Lebanon. Five countries. Maybe something is catching on in the region after all. Except for Algeria, all those elections are arguably competitive if not truly free. And Algeria is actually arguable, though I won't try to argue it since I've already learned that anything I write about Algeria gets detailed exegesis from people who know more than I do, and it's bedtime.

No comments: