Elections and Democracy

This book addresses the contrast between the view that elections are a mechanism to hold government accountable and the view that they are a means to ensure that citizens’ views and interests are properly represented in the democratic process. The majoritarian and consensus models of democracy are the embodiment in institutional structures of these two different views of democracy. In the majoritarian view the single most important function of an election is the selection of a government. The concentration of power in the hands of an elected majority government makes it accountable to the people. In consensus models of democracy, or proportional systems, the major function of elections is to elect the members of parliament who together should be as representative as possible of the electorate as a whole. The criterion for the democratic quality of the system is how representative parliament really is. The book explores how far these different views and their embodiment in institutional structures influence vote choice, political participation, and satisfaction with the functioning of democracy. The volume is mainly based on data from the second module of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The general conclusion of the book is that formal political institutions are less relevant for people’s attitudes and behaviour than often presumed. Rather than formal political institutions like the electoral system, it seems to be characteristics of the party system like polarization and the clarity of responsibility that really matter.