About the author

Bernard Grofman et al.

The editor, Bernard Grofman, is an authority on American politics, comparative election systems, and social choice theory. He has served as an expert witness or court-appointed consultant in state legislative and congressional lawsuits in 11 states. Grofman has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of California–Irvine since 1980. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, visiting professor at the University of Michigan and at the University of Washington, and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, and at a number of universities outside the U.S. His past research has dealt with mathematical models of group decision making, legislative representation, electoral rules, and redistricting. He has also been involved in modeling individual and group information processing and decision heuristics, and he has written on the intersection of law and social science, especially the role of expert witness testimony and the uses of statistical evidence. Currently he is working on comparative politics and political economy. He is co-author of two books published by Cambridge University Press and co-editor of 15 other books; he has published over 200 research articles and book chapters. Professor Grofman is a past president of the Public Choice Society. He is a co-recipient (with Chandler Davidson) of the Richard Fenno Prize of the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association for best book published in 1994 in the field of legislative studies (Quiet Revolution In The South) and is a Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Electoral Laws & Their Political Consequences

Name: Electoral Laws &amp; Their Political Consequences
Brand: Bernard Grofman et al.
SKU: electoral-laws-their-political-consequences
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(Vol. 1 in the Agathon series on representation)

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Categories: Politics & International RelationsAuthor: Bernard Grofman et al. SKU: electoral-laws-their-political-consequences Category: Politics & International Relations Author: Bernard Grofman et al.

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The aim of this book is to provide an overview of recent research on electoral laws and their political consequences by scholars who have helped shape the field.

About the Book

After several decades of virtual neglect (except for Douglas Rae's seminal work), the comparative study of electoral systems is undergoing a lively revival. In the past five years, over a dozen books on electoral systems have been written by scholars from many nations and from many disciplines (see reviews of a number of these in Lijphart, Political geography, long moribund, is undergoing a remarkable renaissance (see reviews in Grofman, Taylor, Gudgin, and Johnston, this volume). Social choice theorists have begun to link axiomatic criteria for representative systems to practical political issues in choosing an election system (see especially Brams and Fishburn, Fishburn, this volume). In the United States, sparked in large part by the efforts of the section on Representation and Electoral Systems of the American Political Science Association, the history of American electoral experimentation with proportional representation, weighted voting, and limited voting is being rediscovered (see Grofman Weaver, this volume).This renewed scholarly attention to the study of electoral systems is long overdue. The late Stein Rokkan wrote as recently as 1968, "Given the crucial importance of the organization of legitimate elections in the development of the mass democracies of the twentieth century, it is indeed astounding to discover how little serious effort has been invested in the comparative study of the wealth of information available” (Rokkan, 1968, 17). The long past neglect of electoral systems by social scientists is especially surprising since election rules not only have important effects on other elements of the political system, especially the party system, but also offer a practical instrument for political engineers who want to make changes in the political system. Indeed, Sartori aptly characterizes electoral systems as ”the most specific manipulative instrument of politics” 273).

Table content

Part 1. The Effect of Election Type on Political Competition: 1. Duverger's Law Revisited (William H. Riker, University of Rochester); 2. The Influence of Electoral Sysems: Faulty Laws or Faulty Method? (Giovanni Sartori, Columbia University); 3. Duverger's Law: Forty Years Later (Maurice Duverger, University of Paris); 4. Intraparty Preference Voting (Richard S. Katz, Johns Hopkins University); 5. Thinking About the Length and Renewability of Electoral Terms (William R. Keech, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Part II. Evaluating the Impact of Electoral Laws: Proportional and Semiproportional Systems Case Studies: 6. Proportionality by Non-PR Methods: Ethnic Representation in Belgium, Cyprus, Lebanon, New Zealand, West Germany and Zimbabwe (Arend Lijphart); 7. Australian Experience with Majority-Preferential and Quota-Preferential Systems (Jack F. H. Wright, Proportional Representational Society of Australia); 8. The Rise, Decline and Resurrection of Proportional Representation in Local Governments in the United States (Leon Weaver, Michigan State University); 9. The Limited Vote and the Single Nontransferable Vote: Lessons from the Japanese and Spanish Examples (Arend Lijphart; Rafael Lopez Pintor, Universidad Autonoma, Madrid, and Yasunori Sone, Keio University, Tokyo); 10 Degrees of Proportion-ality of Proportional Representation Formulas (Arend Lijphart) Part III. Evaluating the Impact of Electoral Laws:Plurality Systems: 11. The Geography of Representation: A Review of Recent Findings (Peter J. Taylor, University of Newcastle upon Tyne; Graham Gudgin, University of Cambridge; and R. J. Johnston, University of Sheffield) 12. Social Choice and Plurality-like Electoral Systems (Peter C. Fishburn, AT&T Bell Laboratories); 13. The Effect of At-Large Versus District Elections in U.S. Municipalities (Richard L. Engstrom and Michael D. McDonald, University of New Orleans); 14. The Nonpartisan Ballot in the United States Carol A. Cassel, University of Alabama); 15. Ballot Format in Plurality Partisan Elections (Howard A. Scarrow, SUNY, Stony Brook); 16. Cross-Endorsement and Cross-Filing in Plurality Partisan Elections (Howard A. Scarrow) Part IV. Redistricting:< 17. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE REAPPORTIONMENT REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES? (GORDON E. BAKER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA); 18. CONSTITUENCY REDISTRIBUTION IN BRITAIN: RECENT ISSUES (R. J. JOHNSTON); 19. DISTRICTING CHOICES UNDER THE SINGLE-TRANSFERABLE VOTE (PETER MAIR, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER) References and Author Index, Court Cases, Subject Index