From Votes to Seats to Power: Strategies and Flaws of Political Representation

Simon Toubeau will present the conclusions of his study for CMC electoral contestability at the 2011 ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik.

His lecture will discuss elections being the cornerstone of any democratic system, the formal rules regulating the electoral process bear significant influence on the politicization of social cleavages, the expression and representation of citizens’ preferences and identities and the dynamics of competition between parties. Given its crucial function in translating votes into seats, the electoral system is one of the fundamental institutions of representative democracy. It is at the centre of debates on ‘electoral engineering’, which is founded on the premise that altering formal rules of the game can bring about social and political outcomes, such as the representation of ethnic and national minorities.

—

Download the abstract presented at the conference HERE

—

Find more information HERE

—

Get involved

Give us your opinion and share this information at CMC’s Facebook page

Press

Media inquires can be addressed to info@cmc-foundation.eu

—

The conference is co organized by the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the University of Iceland.

CMC Activities are financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the conference nor the opinions of the speakers.