Shoring Up the Right to Vote for President: A Modest Proposal

Keyssar, Alexander

doi:10.1002/j.1538-165x.2003.tb00391.x

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…78–79) attributes the move to direct elections to centralizing tendencies: “At a time when the search for a strong state came together with the concentration of power at the center, an electoral system that relied on the muscle of regional caciques, caudillos, and the like … encountered increasing difficulties to survive.” Hence, moving to direct voting, even conditional on obtaining a majority, hurt the smaller units and undermined the power of local elites. Their resistance has been a major obstacle toward the adoption of direct voting in the United States (Keyssar, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electing presidents: A hidden facet of democratization

2023

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A hidden facet of democratization in the world over the past two centuries has been the increased weight of people's voice in electing presidents. On the basis of new data on all presidential elections in the world since 1789, we show that they evolved from systems in which the final decision was made by someone other than voters, to systems in which the choice of voters was decisive only if it generated a majority, to systems in which the final decision is made by voters. This means that in countries where presidents have executive powers, elections may not be the mechanism by which the people, as a collectivity, always selects its rulers, thus violating the fundamental norm of democracy. We document the history of presidential election rules, offer some tentative explanations, and explore the consequences of particular systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electing presidents: A hidden facet of democratization

2023

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“…Since the end of the nineteenth century, most U.S. states adopted registration laws to keep track of voters and prevent electoral fraud (Keyssar, 2009). Voter registration takes place either at the county or at the municipality level.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

Bernini

Facchini

Tabellini³

et al. 2023

SSRN Journal

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“…Those seeking to better understand these dynamics of regime contention would benefit from greater engagement with a significant literature on American political development that has returned to these themes time and again to show how such ideational struggles have been resolved historically in favor of greater or less inclusion. A long line of work has shown the importance of coalitions in moving democracy both towards inclusionary expansion (King and Smith 2011;Mickey 2015;Noel 2012;Rhodes 2017;Schickler 2016;Teele 2018) and toward exclusionary retrenchment (Ahmed 2013;Bateman 2018;Keyssar 2009;Rana 2011;Valelly 2009). These works show the contingency of the struggle for democracy, and demonstrate that, while there are no assurances that inclusionary visions will prevail, inclusive coalitions can be forged under even the most hostile circumstances (Gilmore 2008;Krochmal 2016).…”

Section: Democracy and Contentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the American Public Really Turning Away from Democracy? Backsliding and the Conceptual Challenges of Understanding Public Attitudes

Ahmed¹

2022

Perspect. polit.

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Recent scholarship has warned that the American public is turning away from democracy, with many focusing on the role of polarization in driving these trends. While these studies devote a great deal of attention to conceptualizing and measuring polarization, however, there is much less attention to the concept of democracy itself. As a result, they encounter several problems: First, lack of attention to the categorical and contextual differences between various democratic transgressions can lead to misleading findings. Second, slippage between macro and micro level analysis of backsliding can make it difficult to draw solid inferences about attitudes. Finally, lack of attention to contestation within the concept of democracy obscures a different kind of regime contention reflected in public attitudes. These problems confound efforts to understand whether the American public is truly turning away from democracy and point to the need for greater collaboration among scholars from different intellectual traditions and methodological orientations.

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Shoring Up the Right to Vote for President: A Modest Proposal

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Electing presidents: A hidden facet of democratization

Electing presidents: A hidden facet of democratization

Black Empowerment and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act

Is the American Public Really Turning Away from Democracy? Backsliding and the Conceptual Challenges of Understanding Public Attitudes

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