Wrestling with Democracy : : Voting Systems as Politics in the 20th Century West / / Dennis Pilon.

• VerfasserIn: Pilon, Dennis,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (408 p.)

Though sharing broadly similar processes of economic and political development from the mid-to-late nineteenth century onward, western countries have diverged greatly in their choice of voting systems: most of Europe shifted to proportional voting around the First World War, while Anglo-American countries have stuck with relative majority or majority voting rules. Using a comparative historical approach, Wrestling with Democracy examines why voting systems have (or have not) changed in western industrialized countries over the past century.In this first single-volume study of voting system reform covering all western industrialized countries, Dennis Pilon reviews national efforts in this area over four timespans: the nineteenth century, the period around the First World War, the Cold War, and the 1990s. Pilon provocatively argues that voting system reform has been a part of larger struggles over defining democracy itself, highlighting previously overlooked episodes of reform and challenging widely held assumptions about institutional change.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Contextualizing Democracy -- 3. Prologue to the Democratic Era -- 4. Facing the Democratic Challenge, 1900-1918 -- 5. Struggling with Democracy, 1919-1939 -- 6. The Cold War Democratic Compromise, 1940-1969 -- 7. The Neoliberal Democratic Realignment, 1970-2000 -- 8. Conclusion -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Author Index -- Subject Index