Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective

by Lawrence LeDuc (Editor), Richard G. Niemi (Editor), Pippa Norris (Editor)

Elections have undergone radical changes in recent decades. Television, opinion polls, and professional campaign consultants have become transforming factors. Electoral systems have been reformed in many countries including Italy, Israel and Japan. New parties are changing the face of competition in Germany, France and Belgium and the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and Latin America have established new party systems with competitive elections. Comparing Democracies integrates and synthesizes the most recent research in the field of elections. Internationally renowned scholars write on their area of specialty.

Paperback

First published August 29, 1996

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/comparing-democracies-elections-and-voting-in-global-perspective-eds-lawrence-leduc-richard-g-niemi-pippa-norris/

It was published in 1996, but it seems a bit dated even for 28 years ago; most of Eastern Europe was already two cycles into the new democratic system by then, and more could have been made of the test bed for democracy. In addition, there’s almost nothing about the actual subject of my talk, which was electoral boundaries. Still, I only paid £3.88 for it, so I can’t really complain.

What it does have is quite a wide range of essays picking out different aspects of the democratic process – not just the legal framework of the vote and the political party system, but also the roles of what we would now call civil society, opinion polls, media, the economy, and the impact of leadership, recruitment of candidates, and campaigning – the chapter on actual campaigning by David Farrell is probably the best in the book.

A useful snapshot of where research stood in the mid-1990s, but with massive gaps even then in the Global South.