Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, elections without choice have been replaced by free and fair elections in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Russia.
This reference provides all the basic information about elections in these new democracies. Part One systematically compares the operation of electoral systems, the formation of parties without civil society, and the behavior of voters without trust. It includes sophisticated multi-stage model of election outcomes.
In Part Two, each country has a chapter systematically reporting the votes and seats won by every party with at least one percent of the vote at one parliamentary election since 1990. Where the president is popularly elected, results are given too. The data comes from the definitive record, reports of national election commissions in eleven different languages.
Table of Contents
Part One: the framework of competition. Elite supply and popular demands: an interactive model -- Democratization backwards-and in a hurry -- Understanding election outcomes -- Electoral systems compared -- Electing representatives -- Choosing a president -- Effects of electoral systems -- Parties without civil society -- A big supply of parties -- A variety of party appeals -- Fragmented, multi-dimensional party systems -- Voters without trust -- A legacy of distrust -- Political values without parties -- Clear-cut and fuzzy-focus outlooks -- Competition without institutionalization -- Institutionalization in theory -- Stable election laws -- Floating systems of parties -- An indefinite disequilibrium -- Part Two: national election results. Conventions in reporting results -- Bulgaria -- Czechoslovakia -- Czech republic -- Slovakia -- Estonia -- Hungary -- Latvia -- Lithuania -- Poland -- Romania -- Russia -- Slovenia.