POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: John Stuart Mill, Electoral District, Bernard Crick
Document Summary
Rulers enact responsive laws and policies: the greatest strength of liberal democracy may be the sophistication of its institutions that link the rulers and the ruled (elections are paramount) Autocratic governments: elections are not linked with rulers and the ruled, only exist to support the regime, voters are penalized for not participating in elections. Involve a set of rules that deal with translating votes into seats. Key concerns about smp: lack of proportionality, over-rewarding seats to parties with plurality of votes, wasting votes, tendency to reward regionally concentrated parties, which reinforces regional divisions, system"s role in underrepresenting women, aboriginal peoples, minority groups. Elections: who votes and why: according to a modern survey, people make voting decisions which are rational/irrational, for years, it was assumed that people made decisions based on their knowledge about the current issues. Factors that affect voting decisions of citizens: religion, class, ideology, party identification, region, education, gender.
