Date of Award

5-6-2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Political Science, MA

First Advisor

Rollin Tusalem

Committee Members

Alexander Sydorenko; Charles Hartwig

Call Number

LD 251 .A566t 2010 O52

Abstract

Free and fair elections are crucial elements for defining democracy. Fair elections will have to represent voters' true intent in the sense of proportionality between the votes gained in the election and the seats obtained in parliament. My project compares both the Majoritarian model and the Consensus model of democracy in terms of their electoral fairness. I ask the fundamental question: Which of the two systems promotes fairness and legitimacy in the electoral process? Most scholars have looked at this issue from different perspectives. Thus far, no study exists which explores both systems (Majoritarian and Consensus) from a fairness perspective. I argue that the Consensus model combined with low levels of electoral disproportionality should determine the fairness of the system and with that higher level of voter turnout on the elections. The findings affirm my expectations that fairness of the system is strongly correlated with the higher voter turnout.

Rights Management

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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