Every Vote Counts? Comparing Electoral Systems in the Global ‘Super Election Year’
Image credit: Parker Johnson/Unsplash.
The “super election year” of 2024 has drawn attention to national elections in countries around the world. Elections are considered the cornerstone of a democracy, but even most autocracies organize elections. Why is that? When is an election considered democratic? What does it actually mean that “every vote counts”? How differently are elections designed and organized? And what impact do different electoral systems have on voting behavior, representation, parties — and ultimately on the content of politics? In this seminar, we work out answers to these questions and use political science tools and methods to classify and systematically compare electoral systems. Special attention is paid to the principles of democratic elections and how these are implemented in the different electoral systems. A special session is devoted to the presidential election in the US, in which we talk to an international election observation expert. The learning objective of the seminar is for students to recognize the characteristics of different electoral systems, interpret their significance in the political process, and classify various reform efforts. The semester is accompanied by practical examples and exercises.
