Abstract
Having looked at both decision-making and electoral systems, it is time to consider forms of governance. The world has devised one-, two-, multi- and all-party states, as well as the oldest form of all, the non-party state. In many of these jurisdictions, parliaments do indeed represent the people, but many governments represent only a faction.
This chapter considers the bases of these forms of rule, before next examining the structure of government, whether that be presidential or parliamentary. Then, crucially, the manner in which debates are conducted is scrutinized, and so too the mechanisms by which people are consulted.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Will of the People was also the name of a very small terrorist organization in Russia in the latter part of the nineteenth century; their most infamous deed, after many unsuccessful attempts, was the assassination of the Tzar, Alexander II, in 1881.
- 2.
In the 2005 elections, the largest party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the Revolutionary Party, won 70% of the votes and 93% of the seats. In Tanzania today decision-making tends to be majoritarian. Interestingly enough, however, the word baraza (Sect. 1.1) is still in use: many a political party has a council of elders, baraza ya wazee, while the House of Representatives in Zanzibar is called Baraza la Wawakilishi.
- 3.
This was in a statement from the National Republican Movement for Development and Democracy and its more extreme offshoot, the Coalition for Defence of the Republic (The Guardian, 11.9.1994).
- 4.
The incumbent Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, though convicted by the International Criminal Court, icc, for war crimes in Darfur, won 68% of the vote, while the candidate from South Sudan, Yasir Arman, won a high percentage in his own balliwick and thus a fair amount of the total: 22%.
In Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, and its allies won 545 out of 547 seats in the House of People’s Representatives (The Guardian, 22.6.2010).
- 5.
In 1959, the Christian Democrats, cvp, the fdp, and the Social Democrats, sps, all got two seats, while the People’s Party, svp, got one. The latest formula is two each for the fdp and sps, plus one each for the cvp, the svp and a splinter group of the svp set up in 2008, the Conservative Democrats, cdp .
- 6.
By all accounts, Brid Rodgers mla, who was chosen to serve in the first 1998 executive, turned out to be an excellent Minister of Agriculture. That, however, is not the point. Under the d'Hondt arrangement, the ten ministerial posts were to be awarded in order, to the four big parties: uup, sdlp, dup, sf, uup, sdlp, dup, sf, uup, sdlp. So the sdlp knew who their third minister was going to be, long before they knew which post she was going to get.
- 7.
The 1995 Dayton Accord is otherwise known as the General Framework Agreement.
- 8.
Before the war, the presidency was based on a 2:2:2:1 ratio of Bosniak:Croat:Serb:Yugoslav respectively. Dayton stipulates only 1:1:1, with no Yugoslavs.
- 9.
‘Democracy meant all men were to be heard,’ he said. ‘A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.’ Later on, however, he changed his mind and stated that, ‘After 5 years, the government of national unity would become a simple majority-rule government’ (Mandela 1994: 25 and 727).
- 10.
This Irish Government response to the 1994 Irish Republican Army, ira,cease-fire brought together representatives of all Irish political parties, North and South, but not all of the former attended. One of the specific purposes of the Forum was to produce a consensus document on the nature of the Northern problem and the current author voted against; it was a majoritarian document, with nearly everyone acting inclusively to agree on exclusivity.
- 11.
Interestingly enough, many forms of fact finding involve academics with the most up-to-date computers and other associated technologies, not least to ensure the sample chosen is as random as possible. When it comes to decision-making, however, the chosen methodology is often a majority vote.
- 12.
The eu uses qualified majority voting, where each country has a certain number of votes, depending on their populations, and where a resolution is considered passed if it gains a predetermined number of these votes.
The imfis also majoritarian. In the wake of perestroika, Yugoslavia no longer held a strategic position in the world. The Federation began to fall apart, mainly through internal arguments over money – which Republic was to pay how much to, and which was to receive how much from, Central Government – but Yugoslavia was heavily in debt. Sadly, ‘…the imfbegan to tie conditions for new credits to political reform. Its first demand for re-strengthening the governing capacity of the federal administration… was to change the voting rules in the National Bank from consensus to majority decision.’ (Woodward 1995: 74)
References
Bogdanor V (1994) Western Europe. In: Butler D, Ranney A (eds) Referendums around the world. The AEI Press, Washington
Butler D, Ranney A (eds) (1994) Referendums around the world. The AEI Press, Washington
Churchill WS (1974) A history of the English-speaking peoples. Cassell, London
Dahl RA (1998) On democracy. Yale University Press, New Haven
Eban A (1998) Diplomacy for the next century. Yale University Press, New Haven
Emerson P (2010) Consensus voting and party funding: a web-based experiment. European Political Science 9(1):83–101
Emerson R (1966) From empire to nation. Beacon, Boston
Fisk R (2001) Pity the nation. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Havel V (1989) Open letters. Faber and Faber, London
Human Rights Watch (1999) Hostile to democracy. Human Rights Watch, New York. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/uganda/Uganweb-03.htm#P323_33670. Accessed 13 Jan 2011
Huntington SP (1997) The clash of civilizations. Simon and Schuster, New York
IDEA (1997) The international IDEA handbook of electoral system design. IDEA, Stockholm
Lewis Sir A (1965) Politics in West Africa. George Allen and Unwin, London
Lijphart A (1977) Democracy in plural societies. Yale University Press, New Haven and London
Lijphart A (1999) Patterns of democracy. Yale University Press, New Haven
Lyons FSL (1986) Ireland since the famine. Fontana, London
McLean I, Urken AB (1995) Classics of social choice. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Maher J et al (eds) (2009) The Europa world year book, 2009. Routledge, Abingdon
Mandela N (1994) Long walk to freedom. Little Brown and Company, London
Matlosa K et al (2007) Challenges of conflict, democracy and development in Africa. EISA, Johannesburg
Menang T et al (2007) Traditional leadership and democracy in Cameroon. In: Matlosa K (ed) Challenges of conflict, democracy and development in Africa. EISA, Johannesburg
Museveni YK (1997) Sowing the mustard seed. Macmillan, London
Sigmund PE (ed) (1966) The ideologies of the developing nations. Frederick A. Praeger, New York
Taylor R (ed) (2009) Consociational theory. Routledge, Abingdon
Woodward SL (1995) Balkan tragedy. The Brookings Institution, Washington
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Emerson, P. (2012). The Elected Dictator. In: Defining Democracy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20904-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20904-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20903-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20904-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)