Elections and Voters

Abstract

The right to vote is probably the only political right exercised by a majority of the world’s population. Elections are the predominant formal mechanism of orthodox participation in the modern world. But the existence of elections does not always give voters the ability to exercise a real choice. In parts of the third world, and until recently in the second world, elections were more often designed to confirm rather than select top political leaders. Even in the first world, most elections do not yield a major change in the parties in office. We therefore begin this section by looking at the significance of elections in each of the three worlds. We then turn to more detailed issues: electoral Systems; the social base of parties; and, briefly, voting behaviour.