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Wrestling with Democracy
Though sharing broadly similar processes of economic and political development from the mid-to-late nineteenth century onward, western countries have diverged greatly in their choice of voting systems: most of Europe shifted to proportional voting around the First World War, while Anglo-American countries have stuck with relative majority or majority voting rules. Using a comparative historical approach, Wrestling with Democracy examines why voting systems have (or have not) changed in western industrialized countries over the past century. In this first single-volume study of voting system reform covering all western industrialized countries, Dennis Pilon reviews national efforts in this area over four timespans: the nineteenth century, the period around the First World War, the Cold War, and the 1990s. Pilon provocatively argues that voting system reform has been a part of larger struggles over defining democracy itself, highlighting previously overlooked episodes of reform and challenging widely held assumptions about institutional change.
Parties, Power, and Change
No detailed description available for "Parties, Power, and Change".
Conservative Political Parties and the Birth of Modern Democracy in Europe
A bold re-interpretation of democracy's historical rise in Europe, Ziblatt highlights the surprising role of conservative political parties with sweeping implications for democracy today.
Advancing Comparative Area Studies
Advancing Comparative Area Studies responds to questions about the analytic range of the comparative area studies (CAS) field and the organizational challenges it must navigate. The chapters demonstrate that CAS can cover a broad range of scholarship beyond cross-national comparisons, including interpretive work across different sites, sub-national comparisons at the sectoral level, and inter-regional comparisons addressing topics such as the behavior of regional powers. The volume also considers how the institutional architecture of research universities can be adapted so as to better support cross-regional research and collaboration without sacrificing the quality of area expertise.
Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice
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 today were initially devised as exclusionary safeguards to protect pre-democratic elites from the impact of democratization and, particularly, the existential threat posed by working-class mobilization. The ubiquitous use and enduring nature of these safeguards calls into question the familiar picture of democracy moving along a path of increasing inclusiveness. Instead, what emerges is a picture that is riddled with ambiguity, where inclusionary democratic reforms combine with exclusionary electoral safeguards to form a permanent part of the new democratic order. This book has important implications for our understanding of the dynamics of democratic development both in early democracies and in emerging democracies today.
Ethnic Hatred
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Brazilian Immigration and the Quest for Identity
This book is a detailed study of the lives of a group of young Brazilians living in the greater Boston area, the majority of whom entered the country illegally. It explores the extent to which their origins in a more racially fluid environment affects their adaptation to a society with a much more rigid form of racial categorization. In what ways does their adaptation to the racial hierarchy influence their lives in the United States and how their varying ancestry and legal status impact this process? The book provides further insight into the debate about "post-racialism" and the changing dyn ...
The Regime Question
Ongoing struggles over core principles of democratic governance The regime question—often boiled down to “democracy or autocracy?”—has been central to democratic politics from the start. This has entailed not only fights over the extent of the franchise but also, crucially, ongoing struggles over core principles of democracy, the “rules of the game.” In this timely study, Amel Ahmed examines the origins and development of the regime question in Western democracies and considers the implications for regime contention today. She argues that battles over the regime question were so foundational and so enduring that they constitute a dimension of politics that polarized political opp...
