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Elections make a fundamental contribution to democratic governance. Because direct democracy—a form of government in which political decisions are made directly by the entire body of qualified citizens—is impractical in most modern societies, democratic government must be conducted through representatives. Elections enable voters to select leaders and to hold them accountable for their performance in office. Accountability can be undermined when elected leaders do not care whether they are reelected or when, for historical or other reasons, one party or coalition is so dominant that there is effectively no choice for voters among alternative candidates, parties, or policies. Nevertheless, the possibility of controlling leaders by requiring them to submit to regular and periodic elections helps to solve the problem of succession in leadership and thus contributes to the continuation of democracy. Moreover, where the electoral process is competitive and forces candidates or parties to expose their records and future intentions to popular scrutiny, elections serve as forums for the discussion of public issues and facilitate the expression of public opinion. Elections thus provide political education for citizens and ensure the responsiveness of democratic governments to the will of the people. They also serve to legitimize the acts of those who wield power, a function that is performed to some extent even by elections that are noncompetitive.
Elections also reinforce the stability and legitimacy of the political community. Like national holidays commemorating common experiences, elections link citizens to each other and thereby confirm the viability of the polity. As a result, elections help to facilitate social and political integration.
Finally, elections serve a self-actualizing purpose by confirming the worth and dignity of individual citizens as human beings. Whatever other needs voters may have, participation in an election serves to reinforce their self-esteem and self-respect. Voting gives people an opportunity to have their say and, through expressing partisanship, to satisfy their need to feel a sense of belonging. Even nonvoting satisfies the need of some people to express their alienation from the political community. For precisely these reasons, the long battle for the right to vote and the demand for equality in electoral participation can be viewed as the manifestation of a profound human craving for personal fulfillment.
Whether held under authoritarian or democratic regimes, elections have a ritualistic aspect. Elections and the campaigns preceding them are dramatic events that are accompanied by rallies, banners, posters, buttons, headlines, and television coverage, all of which call attention to the importance of participation in the event. Candidates, political parties, and interest groups representing diverse objectives invoke the symbols of nationalism or patriotism, reform or revolution, past glory or future promise. Whatever the peculiar national, regional, or local variations, elections are events that, by arousing emotions and channeling them toward collective symbols, break the monotony of daily life and focus attention on the common fate.
Types of elections
Elections of officeholders
Electorates have only a limited power to determine government policies. Most elections do not directly establish public policy but instead confer on a small group of officials the authority to make policy (through laws and other devices) on behalf of the electorate as a whole.
Political parties are central to the election of officeholders. The selection and nomination of candidates, a vital first stage of the electoral process, generally lies in the hands of political parties; an election serves only as the final process in the recruitment to political office. The party system thus can be regarded as an extension of the electoral process. Political parties provide the pool of talent from which candidates are drawn, and they simplify and direct the electoral choice and mobilize the electorate at the registration and election stage.
The predominance of political parties over the electoral process has not gone unchallenged. For example, some municipalities in the United States and Canada regularly hold nonpartisan elections (in which party affiliations are not formally indicated on ballots) in order to limit the influence of political parties. Nonpartisanship in the United States started as a reform movement in the early 20th century and was intended in part to isolate local politics from politics at the state and national levels. During the last decades of the 20th century, the significance of political parties declined in many democratic countries as “candidate-centered” politics emerged and campaigning and accountability became highly personalized.
Recall elections
Like most populist innovations, the practice of recalling officeholders is an attempt to minimize the influence of political parties on representatives. Widely adopted in the United States, the recall is designed to ensure that an elected official will act in the interests of his constituency rather than in the interests of his political party or according to his own conscience. The actual instrument of recall is usually a letter of resignation signed by the elected representative before assuming office. During the term of office, the letter can be evoked by a quorum of constituents if the representative’s performance fails to meet their expectations.
In the United States the recall has been used successfully against various types of officials, including judges, mayors, and even state governors. Although in practice the recall is not used extensively, even in jurisdictions where it is provided for constitutionally, it has been used to remove governors in North Dakota (1921) and California (2003). Following a bitter partisan fight between Democrats and Republicans over the rights of workers to bargain collectively, Wisconsin experienced in 2011 the single largest recall attempt in U.S. history; six Republicans and three Democrats in the 33-member state Senate faced a recall vote, though only two senators—both Republicans—were defeated.
Referendum and initiative
The referendum and initiative are elections in which the preferences of the community are assessed on a particular issue; whereas the former are instigated by those in government, the latter are initiated by groups of electors. As forms of direct democracy, such devices reflect a reluctance to entrust full decision-making power to elected representatives. However, because voter turnout in these types of elections often is quite low, voting in referenda and initiatives may be more easily influenced by political parties and interest groups than voting in officeholder elections.
Referenda often are used for bond issues to raise and spend public money, though occasionally they are used to decide certain social or moral issues—such as restrictions on abortion or divorce—on which the elected bodies are deemed to possess no special competence. Referenda may be legislatively binding or merely consultative, but even consultative referenda are likely to be considered legislative mandates. Referenda and initiatives at the national level have been used most heavily in Switzerland, which has held about half the world’s national referenda. Evidence from Switzerland has shown that referenda brought to a vote by legislators are more likely to succeed than those initiated by the public. For example, about half of all laws and nearly three-fourths of all constitutional amendments initiated by the Swiss government have been passed, whereas only about one-tenth of all citizen initiatives have been successful. Switzerland uses referenda and initiatives extensively at the local and regional levels as well, as does the United States. Near the end of the 20th century, referenda were employed more frequently around the world than in earlier years; this was particularly true in Europe, where referenda were held to decide public policy on voting systems, treaties and peace agreements (e.g., the Treaty on European Union), and social issues.
Plebiscite
Plebiscites are elections held to decide two paramount types of political issues: government legitimacy and the nationality of territories contested between governments. In the former case, the incumbent government, seeking a popular mandate as a basis for legitimacy, employs a plebiscite to establish its right to speak for the nation. Plebiscites of this nature are thought to establish a direct link between the rulers and the ruled; intermediaries such as political parties are bypassed, and for this reason plebiscites are sometimes considered antithetical to pluralism and competitive politics. Following the French Revolution in 1789, the plebiscite was widely popular in France, rooted as it was in the ideas of nationalism and popular sovereignty. In the 20th century, totalitarian regimes have employed plebiscites to legitimize their rule.
Plebiscites also have been used as a device for deciding the nationality of territories. For example, after World War I the League of Nations proposed 11 such plebiscites, the most successful of which was held in 1935 in the Saar, until the end of the war a state of Germany that had been administered by the League for 15 years; its inhabitants chose overwhelmingly to return to Germany rather than to become a part of France. This use of plebiscites, however, is relatively rare, because it requires the prior agreement of the governments involved on an issue that is usually very contentious.
Systems of vote counting
Individual votes are translated into collective decisions by a wide variety of rules of counting that voters and leaders have accepted as legitimate prior to the election. These rules may in principle call for plurality voting, which requires only that the winner have the greatest number of votes; absolute majority voting, which requires that the winner receive more than half the total number of votes; extraordinary majority voting, which requires some higher proportion for the winner (e.g., a two-thirds majority); proportional voting, which requires that a political party receive some threshold to receive representation; or unanimity.
Legislative elections
A wide variety of electoral systems exist for apportioning legislative seats. In practice, legislative electoral systems can be classified into three broad categories: plurality and majority systems (collectively known as majoritarian systems); proportional systems; and hybrid, or semiproportional, systems. The electoral system is an important variable in explaining public policy decisions, because it determines the number of political parties able to receive representation and thereby participate in government.