Elections in unstable times
The most troubling electoral result of the year, as far as I’m concerned, was the Scottish vote on independence. Not the referendum's failure itself—few people outside the UK had much of a stake in that either way—but the fact that elite opinion elsewhere seemed relatively unshaken by the implications when 45 percent of Scots voted to dissolve the United Kingdom. The defeat of an electoral coalition is a routine matter. From our privileged perspective, even the fragmentation of a country like Syria feels less shocking that it ought to.