The UK is scheduled to hold a referendum on May 5 to determine whether or not to adopt the Alternative Vote for Parliamentary elections. This is the first UK-wide referendum since 1975, and to my knowledge (ergo my students’ knowledge) only the second referendum to apply to the entire United Kingdom. I still hold the […]
Tag: electoral system
As the election has now been called, expect a lot of such breathless pieces describing the fact that the British “electoral system” could produce a result where one party receives a plural
Gordon Brown managed to get his proposal for a referendum on the Alternative Vote passed by the House of Commons yesterday. So, 1) What does this mean? 2) What would it do? 3) Why did he do it? Short
I want to flag this now, and I’ll have more to say about it in the next day or two. High points so far for me: Modeling an elected House of Lords after the United States Senate, which when I’m in charge, is the first US democratic institution up against the wall. Modeling after the […]
or “How to Amend an Unwritten Constitution”. Immediately following the salvaging of his career, yet again, Gordon Brown outlined his initiatives for Constitutional reform in yet another at
The comments to my Anarchy in the UK post on Thursday spawned an interesting discussion surrounding the cause of polarized politics in the CA state legislature. While I agree the damning variable th
Matt says that “I think there’s an underexplored historical counterfactual in which the United States uses a different kind of electoral system — like popular vote with a run-off — that resulted in a Stephen Douglas presidency without any change in the underlying shape of public opinion.” One of the best parts of Gerry Mackie’s […]