Journal Articles

Electoral Majorities, Political Parties, and Collective Representation

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In practice, democracies privilege plurality parties. Theories of the democratic process challenge the democratic credentials of this practice. Abstract social choice theory wonders whether an electoral majority even exists. A more optimistic line of argument, prominent in research on collective representation, assumes that the policy position of the median voter embodies the majority electoral preference. The conflict between what democracies actually do and what two leading theories of the democratic process say calls for a comparative inquiry into electoral majoritarianism. For each of a dozen countries, the authors ask whether any political party commands a predominant majoritarian position among voters—that is, is a Condorcet winner—and, if so, which party it is. They find that a Condorcet winning party exists in all 12 countries and that the plurality party can lay more claim to representing the popular majority than the left—right median party. These findings have important implications for the study of democratic representation, which the authors consider in their conclusions.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Small Group Research: An International Journal of Theory, Investigation and Application

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2012

Collation

p. 1104-1131

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0010-4140

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 45 Number 9, September 2012 p. 1104-1131

Subject(s)

Democracy
Political parties
Representation
Majoritarianism

Specific Detail Info

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