Product Description: A Natural Experiment on Electoral Law Reform provides an overview of post-WWII politics and electoral reform in Italy and Japan. Within this comparative framework, the authors explore changes in party competition, candidate selection mechanisms, and intra-party politics.

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Product Description: Illustrating how changing laws can shape future elections, each chapter in this collection narrates the history of, and the largely partisan political maneuvering behind, the evolution of electoral laws in the five Nordic countries...read more

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Widely regarded as one of the most successful pieces of modern legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has transformed the nature of minority participation and representation in the United States. But with success came controversy as some scholars claim the Act has outlived its usefulness or been subverted in its aim. This volume brings together leading scholars to offer a twenty-five year perspective on the consequences of this landmark act.The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, stated that the right of U.S. citizens to vote "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or condition of previous servitude." The South, however, virtually ignored this right, disfranchising blacks through violence, intimidation, literacy tests, and poll taxes. The primary purpose of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was to break down these barriers to minority voting.Beginning with chapters covering the key provisions of the Act, the book discusses the way the Act has transformed American politics and looks at the role played by major civil rights groups in lobbying for extensions and amendments to it and in insuring that its provisions would be enforced.

Product Description: The Madisonian approach to institutional design, as set forth in The Federalist Papers, is examined from the point of view of leading theorists of the "public choice" school who see themselves as the political heirs of that earlier legacy...read more