Personal representation is an essential element to achieve a high quality of democracy. Many studies of electoral systems, by focusing on the allocation of seats to parties, have neglected the study of this essential dimension. In democratic countries a huge variety of ballot forms and rules exist to vote for individual candidates and to allocate seats. This book studies different voting procedures and formulas for personal representation, their origins and consequences, their compatibility with party representation and the strategies and normative criteria for electoral system choice.
This book thus contains much extremely valuable material. The chapters are diverse in the issues they address and the methods they use, but this does not detract from their individual merits. Still, much remains to be done... The country studies provided here are extremely useful: their findings give useful pointers and generate hypotheses and perationalizations that merit generalization. But most of the work of generalisation still lies before us. In short, this valuable book opens up a considerable research agenda that many of us will want to pursue over the coming years. -- Alan Renwick, University of Reading
Josep M Colomer is Research Professor in Political Science at the Higher Council for Scientific Research, Institute for Economic Analysis, in Barcelona, and Prince of Asturias Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Nir Atmor is Research Assistant at the Israel Democracy Institute and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works on comparative politics, electoral systems and candidate selection methods.
John M Carey is the John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. He works on comparative politics, elections, representation and Latin American politics. He is the author, among other publications, of 'The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems (with Simon Hix), (American Journal of Political Science, 2011), 'The Reelection Debate in Latin America' (in New Perspectives on Democracy in Latin America: Actors, Institutions and Practices, William C. Smith (ed.) Blackwell, 2010), and Legislative Voting and Accountability (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Harry J Enten is a graduate at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, working on American government, elections and statistics methods.
Reuven Y Hazan is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works on elections and electoral systems, political parties and party systems, legislative studies and Israeli politics. He is the author of Democracy Within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and their Political Consequences (with Gideon Rahat) (Oxford University Press, 2010), Cohesion and Discipline in Legislatures: Political Parties, Party Leadership, Parliamentary Committees and Governance (Routledge, 2006), and co-editor of 'Understanding Electoral Reform' (with Monique Leyenaar) (a special issue of West European Politics, 2011).
Lauri Karvonen is Professor of Political Science at Åbo Akademi, Finland, and Director of Democracy: A Citizen Perspective (D:CE, a Centre of Excellence in Research on Democracy). His previous books include Fragmentation and Consensus (1993) and Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited (2001). He has published articles in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Theoretical Politics, International Political Science Review and Party Politics.
George Lutz is Project Director of the Swiss Electoral Studies (Selects) at the Social Science Research Centre (FORS) in the University of Lausanne. His work focuses on political institutions and political behaviour from a comparative perspective, as well as Swiss politics. His recent publications include 'First Come, First Served: the Effect of Ballot Position on Electoral Success in Open List PR Elections' (Representation, 2010), and 'The Electoral Success of Beauties and Beasts' (Swiss Political Science Review, 2010).
Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute and a professorial fellow of Mansfield College, University of Oxford. She is a political scientist currently researching government, public policy and political behaviour in digital environments. Her recent publications include: Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended consequences of public policy reform (with Hood and Perri 6) (Oxford University Press, 2010), 'The Latent Support for the Extreme Right in British Politics' (with Peter John) (West European Politics, 2009), and Digital-Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and E-government (with Patrick Dunleavy) (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Michael Marsh is Professor of Political Science at Trinity College, Dublin. He works on electoral behaviour, elections, parties and Irish politics. He is the author, among other publications, of The Irish Voter (with Richard Sinnott, John Garry and Fiachra Kennedy) (Manchester University Press, 2008).
Louis Massicotte is Professor of Political Science at the Université Laval, Québec. He works on electoral systems, legislatures and federalism. His publications include 'Canada: Sticking to First-Past-the-Post, for the Time Being' (in Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell (eds) The Politics of Electoral Systems, Oxford University Press, 2005), Establishing the Rules of the Game. Election Laws in Democracies (with André Blais and Antoine Yoshinaka) (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and 'Electoral Reform in Canada' in André Blais (ed.) To Keep or to Change First Past the Post? The Politics of Electoral Reform, Oxford University Press, 2008).
Gideon Rahat is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works on political parties, candidate selection and electoral reform. He is author of The Politics of Regime Structure Reform in Democracies: Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective (State University of New York Press, 2008), and Democracy within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and their Political Consequences (with Reuven Y. Hazan) (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Pedro Riera is a Researcher at the European University Institute, Florence. He works on comparative politics, electoral systems and political behaviour. He is the author of 'Non bis in idem: voto escindido en sistemas electorales mixtos. Los casos de Nueva Zelanda en 1999 y 2002' (Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 2009).
