Electoral Systems : A Theoretical and Comparative Introduction

This text gives students a comprehensive view of the British electoral system. Its innovative comparative and theoretical approach will provide a link between courses in British politics, comparative politics and political theory. The book looks at electoral systems in relation to democratic theory and examines the justification for modern electoral rules. It compares parliamentary elections with various other kinds of election, and it looks at the differences between British experience and that of other countries. Andrew Reeve and Alan Ware aim to inform the debate about whether our electoral system should be reformed, by raising such crucial issues as the connection between democracy and the electoral process, the significance of the territorial dimension in the British electoral system, and the role the election system plays in allocating values in a society.

Elections, the process by which representatives are chosen to vote on our behalf, have come to be accepted as an integral part of most democratic systems. But there are many varieties of electoral system: proportional representation, and first-past-the-post are two such systems currently in operation. The issue of whether the rules governing the current electoral process are in need of reform, provokes perennial debate. In this book, Andrew Reeve and Alan Ware attempt to inform this debate by analysing such critical questions as the role an electoral system plays in allocating values in a society, the principles which should be invoked in the analysis of such systems, the significance of the territorial dimension, and the connection between democracy and the electoral process. These questions are analysed from both a comparative and a theoretical standpoint. The book looks at electoral systems in relation to democratic theory, it examines justifications for some aspects of modern electoral rules, and it links the study of electoral systems to that of voting systems. This book should be of interest to students of politics, political theory and also to journalists and politicians.

Andrew Reeve is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Warwick. He is the co-editor of Liberal Neutrality (Routledge, 1989) and Modern Political Theory from Hobbes to Marx: Key Debates (Routledge, 1988). Alan Ware is Fellow in Politics, Worcester College, Oxford.