We aim to advance existing normative debates about elections in general and democratic elections in particular. To this end, our objectives include an examination of such matters as the scope for combining representative and direct democracy; for distinguishing vote buying and campaign promises; and the relative merits of different ways of organising and funding elections and their constitutive rights, duties and permissions. We seek a better understanding of the relationship between elections, appointment, rotation and other ways in which political offices can be allocated; as well as when electoral participation is morally required of citizens and to what extent legally compulsory voting is justifiable. 

We are keen to promote interest in the ethics of voting (including strategic voting, vote selling, ignorance and prejudice) and research on the rights of citizens to stand as candidates for elections and that right’s relationship to research on political parties, political leadership, political (in)equality and political knowledge as well as its implications for the democratic value of elections.  We seek to better understand the relationship between elections as a way to distribute and justify political power and ideals of equality, freedom, solidarity and rationality. More broadly, we are interested in exploring the consequences for electoral theory and practice of developments in political theory/philosophy over the past fifty years, as well as the changes brought about by international migration, democratic backsliding, and social movements against sexism, racism, colonialism and speciesism.

Hence, members of this network are interested in both ideal and highly non-ideal political theory and their respective implications for political practice, as well as for critical and analytic political theory, moral and political philosophy, epistemology and the social and political sciences.