We speak often of 'representative democracy' and we tend to regard it as the dominant form of government in the modern West. But who or what is represented by the electoral systems of the modern democratic state? Although we may be prone to regard contemporary democracies as embodying...

Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments : an introduction / by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan -- pt. 1. The English-speaking democracies. Class voting in the Anglo-American political systems / by Robert R. Alford -- Class voting in New Zealand : a comment on Alford's...

Broadly speaking, this paper seeks to assess whether or not reformers crafted anticipated outcomes. This can be understood along two dimensions. First, there are outcomes that vary in benefit for a particular party. Secondly, there are outcomes that result in anticipated structural changes in...

This study investigates the extent to which contemporary democracies are representative of the policy preferences expressed by the majority of electors, parties and governments there in. The analysis concentrates on parties' and governments' manifestos in 34 democracies with data provided by the...