Losers' Consent : Elections and Democratic Legitimacy Hardback
by Christopher J. (, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University) Anderson, Andre (, Department of Political Science, University of Montreal) Blais, Shaun (, Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside) Bowler, Todd (, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University) Donovan, Ola (, Department of Sociology and Political Science, The Norwegian University of Science Listhaug
Part of the Comparative Politics series
Hardback
Description
Democratic elections are designed to create unequal outcomes: for some to win, others have to lose.
This book examines the consequences of this inequality for the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and systems.
Using survey data collected in democracies around the globe, the authors argue that losing generates ambivalent attitudes towards political authorities. Because the efficacy and ultimately the survival of democratic regimes can be seriously threatened if the losers do not consent to their loss, the central themes of this book focus on losing: how losers respond to their loss and how institutions shape losing.
While there tends to be a gap in support for the political system between winners and losers, it is not ubiquitous.
The book paints a picture of losers' consent that portrays losers as political actors whose experience and whose incentives to accept defeat are shaped both by who they are as individuals as well as the political environment in which loss is given meaning.
Given that the winner-loser gap in legitimacy is a persistent feature of democratic politics, the findings presented in this book contain crucial implications for our understanding of the functioning and stability of democracies.
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:236 pages, numerous figures & tables
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:13/01/2005
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199276387
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:236 pages, numerous figures & tables
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:13/01/2005
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199276387