Multiparty Democracy
Elections and Legislative Politics

Offers a model of elections and legislative politics in Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the US, and the UK.

Norman Schofield (Author), Itai Sened (Author)

9780521456586, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 July 2006

258 pages, 27 tables
22.5 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.342 kg

"Multiparty Democracy is an ambitious project. Norman Schofield and Itai Sened have successfully tackled a long-standing problem in positive political theory -- that of linking together pre-electoral maneuvering, elections, coalition building, and governance in a single comprehensive framework. In doing so they have offered many innovations. Perhaps the most significant is a new emphasis on voter assessments, not only of candidate and party policy inclinations (as is fairly standard in the literature), but also of partisan fitness to govern. This is a major accomplishment and is likely to set the agenda for future research for years to come." Kenneth A. Shepsle, Harvard University

This book adapts a formal model of elections and legislative politics to study party politics in Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. The approach uses the idea of valence, that is, the party leader's non-policy electoral popularity, and employs survey data to model these elections. The analysis explains why small parties in Israel and Italy keep to the electoral periphery. In the Netherlands, Britain, and the US, the electoral model is extended to include the behavior of activists. In the case of Britain, it is shown that there will be contests between activists for the two main parties over who controls policy. For the recent 2005 election, it is argued that the losses of the Labour party were due to Blair's falling valence. For the US, the model gives an account of the rotation of the locations of the two major parties over the last century.

1. Multiparty democracy
2. Elections and democracy
3. A theory of political competition
4. Elections in Israel 1988–1996
5. Elections in Italy: 1992–1996
6. Elections in the Netherlands: 1979–1981
7. Elections in Britain: 1979–2005
8. Political realignments in the U.S.
9. Concluding remarks
10. References
11. Tables and figures.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Political parties [JPL], Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]