This work contains the updated papers presented at the Conference "How Did They Become Voters? The History of Franchise in Modern European Representational Systems", which was organized under the auspices of the European University Institute and held on 20-22 April 1995 in Florence. It examines the basic mechanisms regulating electoral processes in many countries, both in Europe and the rest of the world, in the 19th and 20th centuries.
This book provides an entry point to the most cutting-edge lines of research on popular political mobilisation in Europe. It brings together leading scholars from Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Spain. The chapters explore the connected dimensions of popular participation within different countries and across borders, covering the topics of iconoclasm, popular acclamations, street politics, associations, petitions and electoral agitation. Focusing on the role of disenfranchised citizens and women, this collection broadens the themes of traditional political historical research that has identified political participation with the right to vote and struggles for political inclusion, and brings a wide array of formal and informal political practices to the centre of nineteenth-century European life. A must-read for scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students wishing to explore multiple dimensions of the history of political engagement and politicisation.
Why do dictatorships have elections? Dictatorship and the Electoral Vote analyses the role of elections in two dictatorships that were born in the Era of Fascism but survived up to the 1970s: the Portuguese New State and Francoism. A comparative study of the electoral vote held by both dictatorships is revealing at many organizational and structural levels. The multiple political interactions involved in elections worldwide have been subject to social science scrutiny but rarely encompass historical context. The analysis of the electoral vote held by Iberian dictatorships is uniquely placed to link the two. The issues to hand include: drawing of electoral rolls; evolution of the number of people allowed to vote; candidate selection processes; propaganda methods; impact on the institutional structure of the regime; the socio-political biographies of the candidates; the electoral turnout and final tally; relationship between the central and peripheral authorities of the state; and the viewpoint of regime authorities on the holding of elections. Comparative analysis of all these issues enables a better understanding of the political nature of these dictatorships as well as a comprehensive explanation of the historical roots and evolution of the elections these dictatorship held since 1945. Based on primary archival documents, some of them never previously accessed, the book offers a detailed explanation of how these dictatorships used elections to consolidate their political authority and provides a historical approach that allows placing both countries in the framework of European electoral history and in the history of the political evolution of Iberian dictatorships between the Axis defeat and their breakdown in the mid-seventies.
Winner of the 2005 J. David Greenstone Book Award from the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. Winner of the 2005 Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2005 V.O. Key, Jr. Award of the Southern Political Science Association The Reconstruction era marked a huge political leap for African Americans, who rapidly went from the status of slaves to voters and officeholders. Yet this hard-won progress lasted only a few decades. Ultimately a "second reconstruction"—associated with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act—became necessary. How did the first reconstruction fail so utterly, setting the stage for the complete disenfranchisement of Southern black voters, and why did the second succeed? These are among the questions Richard M. Valelly answers in this fascinating history. The fate of black enfranchisement, he argues, has been closely intertwined with the strengths and constraints of our political institutions. Valelly shows how effective biracial coalitions have been the key to success and incisively traces how and why political parties and the national courts either rewarded or discouraged the formation of coalitions. Revamping our understanding of American race relations, The Two Reconstructions brilliantly explains a puzzle that lies at the heart of America’s development as a political democracy.
Mediterranean states are often thought to have 'democratised' only in the post-war era, as authoritarian regimes were successively overthrown. On its eastern and southern shores, the process is still contested. Re-imagining Democracy looks back to an earlier era, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and argues it was this era when some modern version of 'democracy' in the region first began. By the 1860s, representative regimes had been established throughout southern Europe, and representation was also the subject of experiment and debate in Ottoman territories. Talk of democracy, its merits and limitations, accompanied much of this experimentation - though there was no agreement as to whether or how it could be given stable political form. Re-imagining Democracy assembles experts in the history of the Mediterranean, who have been exploring these themes collaboratively, to compare and contrast experiences in this region, so that they can be set alongside better-known debates and experiments in North Atlantic states. States in the region all experienced some form of subordination to northern 'great powers'. In this context, their inhabitants had to grapple with broader changes in ideas about state and society while struggling to achieve and maintain meaningful self-rule at the level of the polity, and self-respect at the level of culture. Innes and Philip highlight new research and ideas about a region whose experiences during the 'age of revolutions' are at best patchily known and understood, as well as to expand understanding of the complex and variegated history of democracy as an idea and set of practices.
How reforms limiting electoral misconduct completed the process of democratization Between 1850 and 1918, many first-wave democracies in Europe adopted electoral reforms that reduced the incidence of electoral malfeasance. Drawing on analysis of parliamentary deliberations and roll-call votes in France, Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, Protecting the Ballot explores how these electoral changes came about. Reforms limiting electoral malfeasance came in a variety of forms. Some reforms imposed harsher punishments for bribing or the politicization of state resources during campaigns. Other changes improved electoral secrecy, providing better protection of voters’ autonomy. By mandating the presence of candidate representatives supervising electoral operations, reforms also reduced the incidence of electoral fraud. Isabela Mares documents how elite splits facilitated the formation of parliamentary majorities in support of electoral reforms. The political composition of these majorities varied across countries and across issue area, depending on the distribution of political resources and the economic and electoral costs incurred by politicians with opportunities to engage in malfeasance. Unpacking the electoral determinants of the demand for reforms, Mares offers an alternative to theories of democratization that emphasize economic considerations alone. By studying the successful adoption of reforms limiting electoral irregularities in first-wave democratic transitions, Protecting the Ballot sheds light on the opportunities and obstacles for ending electoral wrongdoing in recent democracies.
The book is the first in a planned trilogy by Pippa Norris on Challenges of Electoral Integrity to be published by Cambridge University Press. Unfortunately too often elections around the globe are deeply flawed or even fail. Why does this matter? It is widely suspected that such contests will undermine confidence in elected authorities, damage voting turnout, trigger protests, exacerbate conflict, and occasionally lead to regime change. Well-run elections, by themselves, are insufficient for successful transitions to democracy. But flawed, or even failed, contests are thought to wreck fragile progress. Is there good evidence for these claims? Under what circumstances do failed elections undermine legitimacy? With a global perspective, using new sources of data for mass and elite evidence, this book provides fresh insights into these major issues.
The political institutions under which we live today evolved from a revolutionary idea that shook the world in the second part of the eighteenth century: that a people should govern itself. Yet if we judge contemporary democracies by the ideals of self-government, equality and liberty, we find that democracy is not what it was dreamt to be. This book addresses central issues in democratic theory by analyzing the sources of widespread dissatisfaction with democracies around the world. With attention throughout to historical and cross-national variations, the focus is on the generic limits of democracy in promoting equality, effective participation, control of governments by citizens, and liberty. The conclusion is that although some of this dissatisfaction has good reasons, some is based on an erroneous understanding of how democracy functions. Hence, although the analysis identifies the limits of democracy, it also points to directions for feasible reforms.
This volume compares international and institutional accounts as alternative perspectives to explain why elections fail to meet international standards.
This book brings together recent research by a group of specialists in history and sociology to provide a new reading of the late Franco dictatorship, especially in relation to its political culture. The authors focus on the election of local, trade union and national representatives, the work of the first Spanish sociologists, the struggle over administrative reform, the role of the media and the intellectuals, as well as the evolution of the dictatorships political class and its response to the regimes decline. Not only are the politics of the late dictatorship scrutinised, but also the mechanisms that were deployed to control the fast-changing society of the 1960s and 1970s. In examining the late Franco period, the contributors do not believe that it contained the seeds of Spains later democratisation, but maintain that certain sectorial regime initiatives -- electoral and political changes, an evolving discourse and an interest in political processes outside Spain -- made many Spaniards aware of the dictatorships contradictions and limitations, thereby encouraging its subsequent political and social evolution. This transformation is compared with the latter stages of the parallel dictatorship in Portugal. The great majority of Spaniards felt that the embrace of democratic freedoms and integration into the European Community was the only way forward during the Transition. But the shift from dictatorship to democracy from the 1960s onwards in Spain needs to be understood in relation to the multitude of political and social changes that took place -- despite the opposition of Franco and the bunker mentality of the regime. These changes manifested in a complex interaction between internal and external factors, which eventually resulted in the transformation of Spanish society itself.
