Legislative Voting and Accountability (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) - Softcover

Carey, John M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521711916 ISBN 13: 9780521711913

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Legislatures are the core representative institutions in modern democracies. Citizens want legislatures to be decisive, and they want accountability, but they are frequently disillusioned with the representation legislators deliver. Political parties can provide decisiveness in legislatures, and they may provide collective accountability, but citizens and political reformers frequently demand another type of accountability from legislators – at the individual level. Can legislatures provide both kinds of accountability? This book considers what collective and individual accountability require and provides the most extensive cross-national analysis of legislative voting undertaken to date. It illustrates the balance between individualistic and collective representation in democracies, and how party unity in legislative voting shapes that balance. In addition to quantitative analysis of voting patterns, the book draws on extensive field and archival research to provide an extensive assessment of legislative transparency throughout the Americas.

About this title

About the Author

John M. Carey is John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. He has also taught at the Universidad Católica de Chile, the University of Rochester, Washington University in St Louis, Harvard University, and at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid, Spain. His interests are comparative politics, elections, and Latin American politics. His research focuses on institutional design and democratic representation. Carey's books include Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (with Matthew Shugart, Cambridge University Press), Executive Decree Authority (also with Shugart, Cambridge University Press), Term Limits in the State Legislatures (with Richard Niemi and Lynda Powell, University of Michigan Press), and Term Limits and Legislative Representation (Cambridge University Press). He has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Public Choice, Estudios Publicos, Political y Gobierno, the Revista de Ciencias Politicas, and the Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, as well as chapters in twenty edited volumes. Data and results from his research are available on his website (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey/).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521711916
• ISBN 13: 9780521711913
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218