Embodying Democracy Electoral System Design in Post-Communist Europe

by Birch, Sarah; Millard, Frances; Popescu, Marina; Williams, Kieran

• ISBN13: 9780333993606
• ISBN10: 0333993608
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Embodying Democracy analyzes the politics of electoral reform in eight postcommunist states including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. By exploring the multiple factors that shaped the design of electoral institutions during the first ten years of postcommunist transition, it accounts for an important element of the postcommunist reform process and illuminates general features of institutional design in post-transition states.

Author Biography

Sarah Birch , Frances Millard and Marina Popescu are all at the Department of Government, University of Essex. Kieran Williams is Lecturer in Politics, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

Table of Contents

List of Tables	vii
List of Party Acronyms	viii
Preface	xi
Explaining the Design and Redesign of Electoral Systems	1	(24)
Elections under communism	3	(4)
The distinguishing characteristics of post-communist electoral reform	7	(2)
How electoral systems are shaped	9	(13)
Expectations and chapter plan	22	(3)
Poland: Experimenting with the Electoral System	25	(23)
The impetus to electoral reform	26	(8)
The process of change	34	(11)
Conclusion	45	(3)
Hungary: the Politics of Negotiated Design	48	(19)
The origins of the origins	49	(2)
The negotiating parties	51	(3)
The Round Table negotiations	54	(6)
The law	60	(1)
The aftermath	61	(2)
Assessing the outcome	63	(1)
The incentive system of the Hungarian law	64	(1)
Conclusion	65	(2)
The Czech and Slovak Republics: the Surprising Resilience of Proportional Representation	67	(23)
Initial choice of electoral regime	68	(7)
The unintended consequences of the pursuit of stable government	75	(11)
Explaining electoral reform in the successor states	86	(2)
Conclusions	88	(2)
Romania: Stability without Consensus	90	(19)
Provisional institutions and the first post-communist electoral law	91	(5)
The 1992 electoral legislation and the 1992 elections	96	(5)
Reform proposals after 1996	101	(4)
Conclusion	105	(4)
Bulgaria: Engineering Legitimacy through Electoral System Design	109	(19)
Bulgaria's electoral history	111	(2)
The Round Table talks and the electoral law for the Grand National (Constituent) Assembly, 1990	113	(6)
The parliamentary electoral law of 1991	119	(4)
Post-1991 changes to the electoral law	123	(2)
Conclusion	125	(3)
Russia: the Limits of Electoral Engineering	128	(15)
Late Soviet electoral liberalization: 1989-90	128	(4)
The 1993 electoral decree	132	(5)
The 1995 electoral law	137	(3)
The electoral law in the context of `managed democracy'	140	(1)
Conclusion	141	(2)
Ukraine: the Struggle for Democratic Change	143	(21)
The pre-independence period: elections before multi-party competition	145	(1)
Electoral reform in the wake of independence, 1992-3: parties versus the `party of power'	146	(16)
1994-8: the drive to institutionalize political parties	152	(6)
1998-2001: parties versus the president	158	(4)
Conclusion	162	(2)
Conclusion: Embodying Democracy	164	(25)
Characterizing the process of post-communist electoral reform	166	(12)
Explaining reform outcomes	178	(4)
Accounting for variations	182	(5)
Conclusion	187	(2)
Notes	189	(32)
Bibliography	221	(13)
Glossary	234	(3)
Index	237