Losers' Consent Elections and Democratic Legitimacy

by Anderson, Christopher J.; Blais, André; Bowler, Shaun; Donovan, Todd; Listhaug, Ola

• ISBN13: 9780199276387
• ISBN10: 0199276382
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Democratic elections are designed to create unequal outcomes: for some to win, others have to lose. This book examines the consequences of this inequality for the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and systems. Using survey data collected in democracies around the globe, theauthors argue that losing generates ambivalent attitudes towards political authorities. Because the efficacy and ultimately the survival of democratic regimes can be seriously threatened if the losers do not consent to their loss, the central themes of this book focus on losing: how losers respondto their loss and how institutions shape losing. While there tends to be a gap in support for the political system between winners and losers, it is not ubiquitous. The book paints a picture of losers' consent that portrays losers as political actors whose experience and whose incentives to acceptdefeat are shaped both by who they are as individuals as well as the political environment in which loss is given meaning. Given that the winner-loser gap in legitimacy is a persistent feature of democratic politics, the findings presented in this book contain crucial implications for our understanding of the functioning and stability of democracies.

Author Biography

Christopher J. Anderson is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.
Andre Blais is Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal.
Shaun Bowler is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.
Todd Donovan is Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University.
Ola Listhaug is Professor of Political Science and Chairman in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
List of Tables	ix
About the Authors	xi
1. Winning Isn't Everything: Losers' Consent and Democratic Legitimacy	1	(16)
I THE WINNER-LOSER GAP
2. Political Legitimacy and the Winner-Loser Gap	17	(16)
3. The Winner-Loser Gap: Contours and Boundaries	33	(17)
4. The Dynamics of Losers' Consent: Persistence and Change in the Winner-Loser Gap	50	(23)
II UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCES IN LOSERS' CONSENT
5. Individual Differences in Losers' Consent	73	(17)
6. Winning and Losing in Old and New Democracies	90	(30)
7. How Political Institutions Shape Losers' Consent	120	(21)
8. Comparing Losers' Assessments of Electoral Democracy	141	(24)
9. Losing and Support for Institutional Change	165	(17)
10. Conclusion: Graceful Losers and the Democratic Bargain	182	(13)
Appendix	195	(5)
References	200	(13)
Index	213