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A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world . Of course , the 2002 midterm congressional elections are still a year away and anything can happen to change the political dynamics between now and then , especially if the economy takes a lot longer to recover than current forecasts suggest . It 's a Washington ritual as reliable as the cherry blossoms , if nowhere near as pretty : Midterm congressional elections are over and aspirants for the most powerful job in the world are throwing their hats into the race for the US presidency . Perhaps the fact that Halloween celebrations have grown so much in recent years reflects a desperate attempt on the part of U.S. society to make sure that its democratic elections are still taken seriously . In the Philippines , in the Republic of Korea , free , contested , democratic elections are the order of the day . Palestinian and Israeli elections have changed the political landscape . Democratic elections are hardly new in Thailand . This , however , does not mean that a policy prescription for a large inherently decentralized country should be to get rid of sub-national elections because : local elections have a substantial ( independent of decentralization ) positive effect on many economic outcomes ( e.g ., through aggregation of information about people ’ s preferences ) they are a necessary prerequisite to developing democratic tradition , civil society , and other components of civic capital accumulationpoliticians at all levels of government may be subject to capture , and therefore , administrative control of local by central officials does not necessarily align interest of local bureaucrats with the public The author suggests that a better remedy to poor governance in inherently decentralized countries is building strong national political parties , as strong parties help to provide elected local officials with efficient political incentives because their chances of reelection depend both on the national party support ( i.e ., national objectives ) and the satisfaction of local constituency ( i.e ., local accountability ) .