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.
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