Negativity about the practice of politics is not news to many politicians anymore. Indeed,
some politicians seem to be intent on taking advantage of it by offering populist stances on …

This chapter examines the way in which proportional representation by means of the single
transferable vote (PR-STV) came to be adopted as the Irish electoral system and discusses …

Populist parties claim that democratic regimes fail to deliver results that are in line with what
'the people'want. To address this policy outcome failure, they favour direct democracy …

Untitled Page 1 Page 2 While Ireland was once perceived as being characterised by
conservatism, Catholicism and cultural isolation, by the first decades of the twenty-first century …

Scholars of democracy proposes an important relationship between the quality of elections
and democratic legitimacy, but there are few studies of how the conduct of elections affects …

Theories about the decline of legitimacy or a legitimacy crisis are as old as democracy itself.
Yet, representative democracy still exists, and the empirical evidence for a secular decline of …

Money is essential to the functioning of electoral politics, yet regulating its appropriate use
raises complex and controversial challenges in countries around the world. Both long …

Being born in Italy (being Italian is different, and I never completely understood what it really
means) has had some influence, albeit involuntarily, on my political and cultural education …

In mid-2011, the Florida legislature reduced the state's early voting period from fourteen
days to eight and eliminated the final Sunday of early voting. We compare observed voting …