The alternative vote re-visited
Electoral reform re-emerged in the 1980s as a significant issue in British politics. After a long spell in which the established system was very widely accepted, warts and all, political developments in the last ten years have undermined satisfaction with the system. The 1983 and 1987 general elections produced a particularly disproportional relationship between the parties' votes and seats, and thereby highlighted the inherent unfairness of first-past-the-post. The Liberals and Social Democrats presented electoral reform as a central feature of their Alliance programme, and the Nationalists and Greens advocated systems other than first-past-the-post. Since 1987 growing concern over the Conservatives' electoral dominance has prompted renewed interest in electoral pacts between out-of-office parties, and thus in electoral systems which might facilitate such pacts. As well as doubts about the adequacy of the electoral system for the House of Commons, the proposals to create Assemblies for Scotland, Wales and the English regions, and Labour's recent proposals to establish an elected Upper House, involve the question of the electoral system that should be used. The 1990 Labour Conference recommended that the party consider the creation of a Speakers' Conference to examine the whole issue of electoral reform.
Trading party preferences: the Australian experience of preferential voting
Abstract Political parties respond to electoral rules in ways which gain them partisan advantage and enable them to make strategic choices about the use of their electoral support. The alternative vote (AV) and proportional representation by the single transferable vote (STV) provide considerable opportunity for this kind of partisan activity. The ability of the voter under such electoral systems to rank candidates in order of the voter's preference creates a kind of property which can be used by parties, especially minor parties, to influence the behaviour of both candidates and other parties. The paper investigates this aspect of preferential voting systems and the extent to which the context of electoral rules can encourage or discourage a trade in partisan preferences. Elections for the Australian House of Representatives and Senate are used to show how political actors can respond to electoral rules which permit the control and trading of preferences to be developed into a series of sophisticated transactions.
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.