Download or read book The Politics of Electoral Reform written by Alan Renwick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-04 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elections lie at the heart of democracy, and this book seeks to understand how the rules governing those elections are chosen. Drawing on both broad comparisons and detailed case studies, it focuses upon the electoral rules that govern what sorts of preferences voters can express and how votes translate into seats in a legislature. Through detailed examination of electoral reform politics in four countries (France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand), Alan Renwick shows how major electoral system changes in established democracies occur through two contrasting types of reform process. Renwick rejects the simple view that electoral systems always straightforwardly reflect the interests of the politicians in power. Politicians' motivations are complex; politicians are sometimes unable to pursue reforms they want; occasionally, they are forced to accept reforms they oppose. The Politics of Electoral Reform shows how voters and reform activists can have real power over electoral reform.
Download or read book Defining Democracy written by Daniel O. Prosterman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining Democracy reveals the history of a little-known experiment in urban democracy begun in New York City during the Great Depression and abolished amid the early Cold War. For a decade, New Yorkers utilized a new voting system that produced the most diverse legislatures in the city's history and challenged the American two-party structure. Daniel O. Prosterman examines struggles over electoral reform in New York City to clarify our understanding of democracy's evolution in the United States and the world.
Download or read book Electoral College Reform written by Gary Bugh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has not updated the Electoral College system since the Twelfth Amendment was ratified in 1804, despite public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans are in favor of changing or outright abolishing it. So why hasn't the United States reformed this system? Electoral College Reform brings together new essays examining all aspects of this crucial debate, including the reasons for reform, the issues surrounding a constitutional amendment, the effect of the Electoral College on political campaigns and the possibilities for extra-constitutional avenues to change. The authors consider both the Federalists' vision of balanced representation and a more democratic and equality-based ideal. These competing frameworks, perhaps more than any other factor, account for centuries of American indecision on this key issue. By offering an unprecedented and carefully researched analysis of an always controversial subject, this volume explores the potential for changing a system that many contend is long overdue.
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 Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies written by Sarah Shair-Rosenfield and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-07-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When and why do democratic political actors change the electoral rules, particularly regarding who is included in a country’s political representation? The incidences of these major electoral reforms have been on the rise since 1980. Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies argues that elite inexperience may constrain self-interest and lead elites to undertake incremental approaches to reform, aiding the process of democratic consolidation. Using a multimethods approach, the book examines three consecutive periods of reform in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country and third largest democracy, between 1999 and 2014. Each case study provides an in-depth process tracing of the negotiations leading to new reforms, including key actors in the legislature, domestic civil society, international experts, and government bureaucrats. A series of counterfactual analyses assess the impact the reforms had on actual election outcomes, versus the possible alternative outcomes of different reform options discussed during negotiations. With a comparative analysis of nine cases of iterated reform processes in other new democracies, the book confirms the lessons from the Indonesian case and highlights key lessons for scholars and electoral engineers.
Download or read book Oregon Blue Book written by Oregon. Office of the Secretary of State and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Electoral College Reform written by Thomas H. Neale and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: (1) Intro.; (2) Competing Approaches: Direct Popular Election v. Electoral College Reform; (3) Direct Popular Election: Pro and Con; (4) Electoral College Reform: Pro and Con; (5) Electoral College Amendments Proposed in the 111th Congress; (6) Contemporary Activity in the States; (7) 2004: Colorado Amendment 36; (8) 2007-2008: The Presidential Reform Act (California Counts); (9) 2006-Present: National Popular Vote -- Direct Popular Election Through an Interstate Compact; Origins; The Plan; National Popular Vote, Inc.; Action in the State Legislatures; States That Have Approved NPV; National Popular Vote; (10) Prospects for Change -- An Analysis; (11) State Action -- A Viable Reform Alternative?; (12) Concluding Observations.
Download or read book Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan written by Amy Catalinac and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-25 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that Japanese politicians pay more attention to security issues nowadays because of the electoral reform.
Download or read book The Limits of Electoral Reform written by Shaun Bowler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Institutions 'matter' to electoral reform advocates and political scientists - both argue that variation in electoral institutions affect how elected officials and citizens behave. Change the rules, and citizen engagement with politics can be renewed. Yet a look at the record of electoral reform reveals a string of disappointments. This book examines a variety of reforms, including campaign finance, direct democracy, legislative term limits, and changes to the electoral system itself. This study finds electoral reforms have limited, and in many cases, no effects. Despite reform advocates' claims, and contrary to the 'institutions matter' literature, findings here suggest there are hard limits to effects of electoral reform. The explanations for this are threefold. The first is political. Reformers exaggerate claims about transformative effects of new electoral rules, yet their goal may simply be to maximize their partisan advantage. The second is empirical. Cross-sectional comparative research demonstrates that variation in electoral institutions corresponds with different patterns of political attitudes and behaviour. But this method cannot assess what happens when rules are changed. Using examples from the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere this book examines attitudes and behaviour across time where rules were changed. Results do not match expectations from the institutional literature. Third is a point of logic. There is an inflated sense of the effects of institutions generally, and of electoral institutions in particular. Given the larger social and economic forces at play, it is unrealistic to expect that changes in electoral arrangements will have substantial effects on political engagement or on how people view politics and politicians. Institutional reform is an almost constant part of the political agenda in democratic societies. Someone, somewhere, always has a proposal not just to change the workings of the system but to reform it. The book is about how and why such reforms disappoint. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, and Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia.
Download or read book Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College written by Alexander Keyssar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book From Open Secrets to Secret Voting written by Isabela Mares and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The expansion of suffrage and the introduction of elections are momentous political changes that represent only the first steps in the process of democratization. In the absence of institutions that protect the electoral autonomy of voters against a range of actors who seek to influence voting decisions, political rights can be just hollow promises. This book examines the adoption of electoral reforms that protected the autonomy of voters during elections and sought to minimize undue electoral influences over decisions made at the ballot box. Empirically, it focuses on the adoption of reforms protecting electoral secrecy in Imperial Germany during the period between 1870 and 1912. Empirically, the book provides a micro-historical analysis of the democratization of electoral practices, by showing how changes in district level economic and political conditions contributed to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting the adoption of electoral reforms.
Download or read book Rethinking US Election Law written by Steven Mulroy and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent U.S. elections have defied nationwide majority preference at the White House, Senate, and House levels. This work of interdisciplinary scholarship explains how “winner-take-all” and single-member district elections make this happen, and what can be done to repair the system. Proposed reforms include the National Popular Vote interstate compact (presidential elections); eliminating the Senate filibuster; and proportional representation using Ranked Choice Voting for House, state, and local elections.
Download or read book Discount Voting written by Michael J. Hanmer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that the effect of registration laws is not as profound as either reformers would hope or previous studies suggest.
Download or read book Handbook of General Elections and Electoral Reforms in India 1952 1999 written by M. L. Ahuja and published by Mittal Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Is Virtually A Handbook Of Information For All Political Parties And A Useful Book For Political Scientists, Scholars, Teachers And Students Of Political Science As Well As Modern Indian History.
Download or read book Understanding Electoral Reform written by Reuven Y. Hazan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of elections and electoral systems, and particularly electoral reform, has exhibited tremendous growth and cross-national appeal over the last two decades. However, beyond an increased knowledge of voting rules and their consequences for political representation, little attention has been devoted to the question of why electoral systems have recently undergone substantial change in several liberal democracies. This book addresses several new approaches to electoral reform. First, the scope of the study of electoral reform has been expanded. Second, contrary to previous studies of electoral reform, the conviction that the determinants of reform can be explained by one single approach has been replaced by a belief in a more comprehensive framework for analysis. Third, we move beyond political parties (acting in parliament and government) as the most significant source of electoral reform. Fourth, a focus on the determinants of electoral reform allows us to include motivations and objectives of electoral reform. A final advancement in the study of electoral reform is the inclusion of countries other than ‘established’ democracies. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.
Download or read book Directions in Australian Electoral Reform written by Norm Kelly and published by ANU E Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australia has a proud history of being an international leader in electoral administration, and Australian electoral commissions continue to have a professional, non-partisan approach to the management of elections. Yet their independence is constrained by the electoral laws they need to administer, and parliamentary committees charged with the oversight of the conduct of elections do so with a clear partisan bias. Elections are all about winners, but who decides who the winners will be? Voters definitely have a big say, but it is the electoral system that determines how votes translate into seats in parliament. Any changes to the electoral system require the support of those in power, and it is important to question who benefits from electoral reforms. It is not surprising that partisanship plays a role and that governing parties usually benefit, although that is not always the case. This book assesses Australian electoral reforms of the past 30 years using personal interview data and parliamentary debates, to provide a picture of the reform process as well as the outcomes. These issues, such as who gets to vote, the use of postal voting, party registration and vote weighting, have a profound impact on who wins elections. The book also examines Australia's electoral administration, testing for professionalism, independence and integrity.
Download or read book Party Ballots Reform and the Transformation of America s Electoral System written by Erik J. Engstrom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that nineteenth-century electoral politics were the product of institutions that prescribed how votes were cast and were converted into political offices.
