Synopses & Reviews
Reilly analyzes the design of electoral systems for divided societies, examining various divided societies which utilize "vote-pooling" electoral systems--including Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and Fiji. He shows that political institutions which encourage the development of broad-based, aggregative political parties and where campaigning politicians have incentives to attract votes from a range of ethnic groups can, under certain conditions, encourage a moderate, accommodatory political competition and thus influence the trajectory of democratization in transitional states. This is a challenge to orthodox approaches to democracy and conflict management.
Review
"This richly insightful and well-researched work is an important contribution to the literature on electoral systems and ethnic conflict management. It will attract considerable interest and enthusiasm from academic specialists, as well as from politicians and policymakers looking for institutional strategies for managing conflict." Larry Diamond, Stanford University"This is a superior work, engaging, important and timely. It concerns some of the most significant issues to theorists and practitioners of democratization, of electoral systems, of voter behavior, and of ethnic-group conflict and methods to ameliorate it. It engages recent debates and provides new evidence and insight." Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University"Benjamin Reilly makes an important contribution to the debate on the appropriate institutional design of electoral systems for mitigating conflict and sustaining democracy in ethnically plural societies." American Political Science Review
Synopsis
Reilly analyses the design of electoral systems for divided societies, examining various divided societies.
Synopsis
Reilly analyses the design of electoral systems for divided societies, examining various divided societies which utilise 'vote-pooling' systems - including Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and Fiji. Political institutions which encourage broad-based, aggregative political parties can, under certain conditions, encourage moderate, accommodatory political competition - influencing the trajectory of democratization in transitional states.
Table of Contents
Introduction: democracy in divided societies; 1. The historical development of preferential voting; 2. The historical development of preferential voting; 3. Centripetal incentives and political engineering in Australia; 4. The rise and fall of centripetalism in Papua New Guinea; 5. Electoral engineering and conflict management in divided societies: (i) Fiji and Sri Lanka compared; 6. Electoral engineering and conflict management in divided societies: (ii)Northern Ireland, Estonia and beyond; 7. Technical variations and the theory of preference voting; Conclusion: assessing the evidence.