Linking Citizens and Parties

How Electoral Systems Matter for Political Representation

Inbunden, Engelska, 2010

AvLawrence Ezrow,University of Essex) Ezrow, Lawrence (Lecturer in European Politics, Department of Government

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Linking Citizens and Parties addresses familiar questions about political representation: Are parties responsive to their core supporters or to the public in general? Do parties that adopt centrist policy positions benefit in elections? Does proportional representation encourage party extremism? These fundamental questions about democracy are paired with the empirical observation of Western European democracies during the last thirty years. The study highlights the pathways (mainstream and niche) through which citizens' political preferences are expressed by their political parties. It concludes with a positive evaluation of these democracies as their citizens have access to at least one, and possibly both niche and mainstream pathways.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2010-05-27
Mått162 x 240 x 19 mm
Vikt456 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieComparative Politics
Antal sidor202
FörlagOUP OXFORD
ISBN9780199572526

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Lawrence Ezrow is a Lecturer in European Politics in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His research is on comparative political representation, Western European politics, elections, political parties, voting, party strategies, political institutions, and quantitative methodologies. His articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, and Journal of Politics.

This very important book reports state-of-the-art research that bridges the study of institutions, political representation, and parties' election strategies. Lawrence Ezrow employs theoretical arguments and empirical analyses of data from more than a dozen European democracies, to demonstrate that political parties respond in unexpected ways to voters' policy preferences; that party policy positioning exerts unexpected effects on election outcomes; and, that the conventional wisdom on how electoral laws affect parties' policy positioning incentives requires revision. Linking Citizens and Parties is a wide-ranging, theoretically-innovative book that marks a major advance in the study of mass-elite policy linkages in Europe.