Legislative Assemblies: Voters, Members, and Leaders
Oct 2023 · Oxford University Press
Ebook
416
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
By whatever name they are known (Parliaments, Legislatures, or Assemblies, to name but three) legislative assemblies in democratic societies face the twin challenges of institutional capacity and accountability to their citizens. In addressing these challenges, assemblies vary in the extent to which they serve the respective interests of three critical sets of actors: their members, party leaders, and voters. In this book, Shane Martin and Kaare W. Strøm identify three ideal types of democratic assemblies - the members' assembly, the leaders' assembly, and the voters' assembly - and analyze national legislative assemblies in the world's 68 most populous democracies, from Finland to Papua New Guinea, in light of these models. Based on extensive new cross-national data, they trace the implications of the three assembly types for the design, internal organization, resources, and powers of democratic national assemblies, develop indices of each assembly type, and score each of the 68 legislative assemblies on these indices. The analysis of legislative re-election rates in these countries reveals that the fate of incumbents depends on member resources as well as on leadership control, but is ultimately constrained by voter confidence. In conclusion, the authors discuss the past and future trajectories of legislative assemblies, including their susceptibility to democratic backsliding.
About the author
Shane Martin is Dean of Postgraduate Research and Education at the University of Essex where he also holds the Anthony King Chair in Comparative Government. His research focuses on legislative organization and in particular on how electoral incentives shape representatives' preferences, the internal structures of parliaments, executive oversight and the production of public policy. He maintains a strong interest in Irish politics. He previously taught at the University of Leicester, Dublin City University, the Pennsylvania State University, and the University of California, San Diego. Awards include a Government of Ireland Research Fellowship and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship. Kaare W. Strøm is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, having previously taught at Michigan State University, the University of Bergen, and the University of Minnesota. His research interests include political parties, coalition theory, European politics, and legislative institutions. He has held fellowships at the Hoover Institution on War, Peace and Revolution, the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS). He is a Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences and also a Fellow of the Royal Norwegian Society of Science and Letters.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
