POL 2104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Proportional Representation, Droop Quota, Single Transferable Vote
Document Summary
Reasons for political participation: advent of industrial society and its associated physical and telecommunication infrastructures made it possible to overcome collective action problems, the nature of political regimes, mobilization of like-minded voters through organizational infrastructures. Individual traits, i. e. resources and dispositions: time, education. The less educated one is, the less deferent one is to authority. Theories of voting: sociological approaches: people vote according to their social group, focus on broader socio-economic patterns, sociological approaches fail to capture (1) subjectivities for not all groups necessarily vote the same way and (2) changes among voters. Preconditions for voting: citizenship and juridical equality, voting may not be enough to qualify a regime as democratic, though, elections in non-democratic countries are not unusual, voting is the main form of political participation. Preconditions for democratic elections: adult suffrage, secret ballot lets you vote your conscience without fear of reprisals.