Secrecy and Publicity in Votes and Debates

Offers the first comprehensive discussion of the effects of secrecy and publicity on debates and votes in committees and assemblies.

Jon Elster (Edited by)

9781107083363, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 June 2015

268 pages, 8 b/w illus. 18 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'This book makes a significant contribution to the field of democratic institutional design, history, and theory. This work contributes to the broader, exciting developments that have emerged over the last two decades in the theory and practice of democratic institutional design (to which several contributors to this volume have made major contributions) … In this collection of wide-ranging essays, democratic theory is brought down to ground through demonstrations of how the large theoretical issues play out in the context of specific institutional design choices, and through portraits of how consequential for the structure and outcomes of politics small-scale changes can be in the ground-rules and institutional forms in which democratic politics is channeled. This collection will be highly influential across a number of academic disciplines, including comparative studies.' Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University

In the spirit of Jeremy Bentham's Political Tactics, this volume offers the first comprehensive discussion of the effects of secrecy and publicity on debates and votes in committees and assemblies. The contributors - sociologists, political scientists, historians, legal scholars - consider the micro-technology of voting (the devil is in the detail), the historical relations between the secret ballot and universal suffrage, the use and abolition of secret voting in parliamentary decisions, and the sometimes perverse effects of the drive for greater openness and transparency in public affairs. The authors also discuss the normative questions of secret versus public voting in national elections and of optimal mixes of secrecy and publicity, as well as the opportunities for strategic behavior created by different voting systems. Together with two previous volumes on Collective Wisdom (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Majority Decisions (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the book sets a new standard for interdisciplinary work on collective decision-making.

Introduction Jon Elster
1. Public voting and political modernization: different views from the nineteenth century and new ideas to modernize voting procedures Hubertus Buchstein
2. Semi-public voting at the Constituante Jon Elster and Arnaud le Pillouer
3. The introduction of the vote by ballot in the election of the Syndics of the Republic of Geneva (1707) Raphael Barat
4. Suffrage and voting secrecy in general elections Adam Przeworski
5. Secret voting in the Italian Parliament Daniela Giannetti
6. Open decision-making procedures and public legitimacy: an inventory of causal mechanisms Jenny de Fine Licht and Daniel Naurin
7. How publicity creates opacity: what happens when EU ministers vote publicly Stéphanie Novak
8. Secret-public voting in FDA advisory committees Philippe Urfalino and Pascaline Costa
9. Disclosed and undisclosed vote in Constitutional/Supreme Courts Pasquale Pasquino
10. Why open voting in general elections is undesirable Bernard Manin
11. Open-secret voting Adrian Vermeule
12. Secret votes and secret talk John Ferejohn.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Sociology [JHB]