Democracy and the politics of electoral system choice engineering electoral dominance
"Amel Ahmed brings new historical evidence and a novel theoretical framework to bear on the study of democratization. Looking at the politics of electoral system choice at the time of suffrage expansion among early democratizers, she shows that the electoral systems used in advanced democracies...
| Autor principal: | |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Libro electrónico |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press
2012.
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| Colección: | CUP ebooks.
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| Acceso en línea: | Conectar con la versión electrónica |
| Ver en Universidad de Navarra: | https://innopac.unav.es/record=b3980107x*spi |
Tabla de Contenidos:
- Cover
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: contradictions and ambiguities of democratization
- The great electoral transformation
- Explaining electoral system choice
- Partisan electoral engineering
- Endogenous institutions
- Reading history forward
- 1. Understanding the starting point
- 2. Pre-democratic parties and working-class mobilization
- 3. The existential threat
- Engineering electoral dominance
- Plan of the book
- 2 Strategies of containment: the role of repression and accommodation
- Working-class mobilization and strategies of containment
- Right parties
- Containment: repression and accommodation
- Repression
- Accommodation
- Strategies of containment, working-class mobilization, and the existential threat
- Electoral viability
- Ideological radicalism
- Conclusions
- 3 Strategies of competition: the logic of electoral system choice, single member plurality (SMP) vs. proportional representation (PR)
- Preexisting electoral systems
- SMP and PR as electoral safeguards
- Logic of the choice
- No viable workers' party
- Workers' party electorally viable, ideologically moderate
- Workers' party electorally viable, mixed ideological platform
- Workers' parties electorally viable, ideologically radical
- Case study analysis
- 4 The United States: pre-industrial democratization and the origins of SMP
- Pre-industrial democratization and working-class mobilization
- Minority representation and the adoption of SMP
- Post-war politics and the campaign for PR
- The push for PR in Congress
- State-level reform
- New York
- Illinois
- Municipal reform and PR
- The success of containment and the defeat of PR
- Conclusions
- 5 The United Kingdom: safeguarding the Reform Acts with SMP
- Democratization and working-class mobilization
- PR and the Reform Act of 1867.
- The Reform Act of 1884 and the adoption of SMP
- Post-1884: SMP retained
- Conclusions
- 6 France: the tumultuous path of electoral system choice in the Third Republic
- Containment and competition in the early years
- Electoral system choice in the early years: the regime question
- Return to the district system
- Working-class mobilization and the pre-war movement for PR
- Post-war politics: the experiment with PR
- Conclusions
- 7 Belgium: minimizing the existential threat with PR
- Democratization and working-class mobilization
- Early attempts to establish safeguards
- The adoption of PR
- Conclusions
- 8 Conclusions: rethinking democracy's determinisms
- Findings of the study
- Cross-regional analysis
- Case study analysis
- Within-case analysis
- Implications of the work
- Institutionally structured outcomes
- Democratization as politics
- APPENDIX The existential threat: electoral viability and ideological radicalism
- Electoral viability
- Ideological radicalism
- Bibliography
- Index.
