Download or read book The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform written by Frederic Charles Schaffer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schaffer reveals how tinkering with the electoral process, even with the best of intentions, can easily damage democratic ideals.
Download or read book Democracy in Africa written by Nic Cheeseman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.
Download or read book Voting in Fear written by Dorina Akosua Oduraa Bekoe and published by United States Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine contributors offer pioneering work on the scope and nature of electoral violence in Africa; investigate the forms electoral violence takes; and analyze the factors that precipitate, reduce, and prevent violence. The book breaks new ground with findings from the only known dataset of electoral violence in sub-Saharan Africa, spanning 1990 to 2008. Specific case studies of electoral violence in countries such as Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria provide the context to further understanding the circumstances under which electoral violence takes place, recedes, or recurs.
Download or read book Political Parties in South Africa written by Thuynsma, Heather and published by Africa Institute of South Africa. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties and the party system that underpins South Africa’s democracy have the potential to build a cohesive and prosperous nation. But in the past few years the ANC’s dominance has strained the system and tested it and its institutions’ fortitude. There are deeper issues of accountability that often spurn the Constitution and there is also a clear need to foster meaningful public participation and transparency. This volume offers a different and detailed assessment of the health of South Africa’s political system. This study intends to unravel the condition of the party system in South Africa and culminates in the question: Do South African parties promote or hinder democracy in the country? The areas of the party system that are known to require continued work are the weakness of democratic structures within parties, the perceived lack of responsibility of elected parliamentarians towards voters, non-transparent private partner financing structures and a lack of attractiveness of party-political commitment, especially for women. Experts in the respective fields address all of these areas in this book.
Download or read book Election Management Bodies in West Africa written by Ismaïla Madior Fall and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The State of Peacebuilding in Africa written by Terence McNamee and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Download or read book Electoral Systems and Democracy written by Larry Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the number of democracies has increased around the world, a heated debate has emerged among political scientists about which system best promotes the consolidation of democracy. This book compares the experiences of diverse countries, from Latin America to southern Africa, from Uruguay, Japan, and Taiwan to Israel, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Download or read book Violence in African Elections written by Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multiparty elections have become the bellwether by which all democracies are judged, and the spread of these systems across Africa has been widely hailed as a sign of the continent’s progress towards stability and prosperity. But such elections bring their own challenges, particularly the often intense internecine violence following disputed results. While the consequences of such violence can be profound, undermining the legitimacy of the democratic process and in some cases plunging countries into civil war or renewed dictatorship, little is known about the causes. By mapping, analysing and comparing instances of election violence in different localities across Africa – including Kenya, Ivory Coast and Uganda – this collection of detailed case studies sheds light on the underlying dynamics and sub-national causes behind electoral conflicts, revealing them to be the result of a complex interplay between democratisation and the older, patronage-based system of ‘Big Man’ politics. Essential for scholars and policymakers across the social sciences and humanities interested in democratization, peace-keeping and peace studies, Violence in African Elections provides important insights into why some communities prove more prone to electoral violence than others, offering practical suggestions for preventing violence through improved electoral monitoring, voter education, and international assistance.
Download or read book Election Management Bodies in East Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Electoral Politics in Africa since 1990 written by Jaimie Bleck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic transitions in the early 1990s introduced a sea change in Sub-Saharan African politics. Between 1990 and 2015, several hundred competitive legislative and presidential elections were held in all but a handful of the region's countries. This book is the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the key issues, actors, and trends in these elections over the last quarter century. The book asks: what motivates African citizens to vote? What issues do candidates campaign on? How has the turn to regular elections promoted greater democracy? Has regular electoral competition made a difference for the welfare of citizens? The authors argue that regular elections have both caused significant changes in African politics and been influenced in turn by a rapidly changing continent - even if few of the political systems that now convene elections can be considered democratic, and even if many old features of African politics persist.
Download or read book Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections written by Joleen Steyn Kotze and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections is a critical reflection on the key lessons of Elections 2019 in South Africa, focusing on the future of the country’s electoral democracy. The volume engages questions on land, election campaigns, voter turnout, voter apathy, and how opposition parties will be forced to co-exist in the context of declining electoral dominance the ANC once comfortably held. An important reflection on the lessons of the 2019 South African General Elections, the contributors ask: Quo Vadis South Africa? The 2019 General Elections marked a watershed in South Africa’s political landscape. The ANC under the banner of a narrative of regeneration and getting back on the moral path dipped below the 60 % mark for the first time in South Africa’s democratic history. This decline in electoral support for the party may be interpreted as a degeneration of the ANC through the loss of its moral stature, the erosion of its integrity and disillusionment with its performance as a governing party. Opposition political parties could not capitalise on this seeming disillusionment with the ruling ANC. Caught in their own factional battles and in the midst of corruption scandals, opposition parties were unable to successfully increase their share of the vote, and capture the undecided and disillusioned voter. Considering the future of South Africa’s electoral democracy at 25 years of democracy, Reflections on the 2019 South African General Elections will be of great interest to scholars of African Studies, South Africa, Governance and Elections. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies.
Download or read book Democracy and Elections in Africa written by Staffan I. Lindberg and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-09-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Seats Votes and the Spatial Organisation of Elections written by Graham Gudgin and published by ECPR Press. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many elections – especially those using single-member constituency systems – the allocation of seats is incommensurate with each party's share of the votes cast. Seats, Votes and the Spatial Organisation of Elections provides a convincing, rigorous analysis of this disproportionality which has not been improved on since its publication over 30 years ago. Its formal analysis, illustrated by empirical examples from a range of countries, stresses the importance of three geographies as key influences on how votes are translated into seats: the geography of partisan support (where people with different political persuasions cluster); the homogeneity of those clusters; and their relative size. Its re-publication makes this classic piece of spatial (political) science available to contemporary audiences, for whom it is as relevant as when the book first appeared in 1979; Ron Johnston's introductory essay sets the work in context and identifies its importance as the foundation for three decades of subsequent work into this key feature of electoral system operation.
Download or read book African Political Parties written by Mohamed Abdel Rahim Mohamed Salih and published by OSSREA. This book was released on 2003-02-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critique of modern African 'democracies'
Download or read book Democracy Good Governance and Development in Africa written by Mawere, Munyaradzi and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2015-10-24 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.
Download or read book Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa written by Nicholas Kerr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some countries hold elections that meet global democratic standards, while other countries do not? Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa makes a novel contribution to this question. In a departure from the typical story about the “boring” administrative tasks that electoral commissions carry out and their impact on international observers' assessments of election quality, Kerr aruges that electoral commissions provide valuable information that helps politicians and citizens resolve uncertainties about electoral fraud and administrative irregularities. Whereas previous research focuses on the institutional design of electoral commissions, this book privileges their actual performance and focuses on two attributes: autonomy and capacity. By serving an informational role, the autonomy and capacity of electoral commissions influences how citizens and elites think about and behave during elections. This includes whether political elites and citizens participate in elections, engage in electoral fraud and violence, accept electoral outcomes, and express confidence in elections. These attitudes and behaviors, in turn, influence whether elections meet democratic standards (election quality) and whether political elites and citizens regard election processes as acceptable (election legitimacy). This book brings together evidence from public opinion surveys, elite surveys, field research, and cross-national databases to give an unusually rich empirical exploration of the dynamics of elections and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s, with a focused case study of Nigeria. Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa will be appealing to scholars and policymakers interested in democratization and elections. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged, as is interdisciplinary research and work that considers ethical issues relating to the study of Africa. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics, University of Bristol; and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford.
Download or read book Democratization in Africa written by Larry Jay Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review
