This bold venture into political theory and comparative politics combines traditional concerns about democracy with modern analytical methods. It asks how contemporary democracies work, an essential stage in asking how they can be justified. An answer to both questions is found in the idea of the median mandate. The voter in the middle - the voice of the majority - empowers the centre party in parliament to translate his or her preferences into public policy. The median mandate provides a unified theory of democracy - pluralist, consensus, majoritarian, liberal, and populist - by replacing each qualified 'vision' with an integrated account of how representative institutions work. The unified theory is put to the test with comprehensive cross-national evidence covering 21 democracies from 1950 through to 1995.
This exciting book will be of interest to specialists and general readers alike, representing as it does a reaffirmation of traditional democratic practice in an uncertain and threatening world.
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Michael McDonald is a Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University who is interested principally in questions about political representation. He has served as a expert witness for civil rights organizations and as an adviser to the NYS Solicitor General, county governments, and state political parties on questions of electoral rules and racial discrimination.
Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has made major contributions both to cumulative research on democracy and to organisational developments in the discipline. His earliest research on Glasgow and Belfast focused on causes of democratic breakdown. After a period of studying elections, voting behaviour, and party competition, he turned to public policy and how it might become responsive to popular preferences - a central democratic dilemma. His research covers direct and representative democracy.
Professor Budge founded the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis in 1968, and he was Executive Director of the European Consortium for Political Research, based at the University of Essex, between 1979 and 1983. Among his recent publications are, (with Klingemann et al), Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electorates and Governments 1945–1998 (2001), Elections, Parties, Democracy: Conferring the Median Mandate (with Michael D McDonald) (2005); The New British Politics (Ian Budge, David McKay, Kenneth Newton and John Bartle) (2007).
