Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy: Consensual Voting Procedures For Use in Parliaments, Councils and Committees

✍ Scribed by Peter Emerson (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 194
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Democracy is for everybody, not just a majority. This book describes the voting procedures by which majority rule may be replaced by a more consensual system of governance. In a word, such an inclusive polity can be achieved by asking the voters or, more usually, their representatives in councils and parliaments, to state their preferences, so to facilitate the identification of that option which gains the highest average preference score. The first part of the book describes three different voting procedures, the Modified Borda Count, the Quota Borda System and the Matrix Vote, and gives a number of hypothetical examples, all clearly depicted in tables. In the second part, the voting mechanisms are discussed against the background of the theory of voting, social choice theory, human rights and mediation practice. The book includes a foreword by Sir Michael Dummett and contributions by Elizabeth Meehan, Hannu Nurmi and Maurice Salles, among others.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XV
Introduction....Pages 1-12
Front Matter....Pages 13-13
Collective Decision-making The Modified Borda Count, MBC ....Pages 15-38
A Pluralist Parliament for a Plural Society The Quota Borda System, QBS ....Pages 39-60
Electing a Power-sharing Executive The Matrix Vote....Pages 61-85
The Art or Science of Manipulation....Pages 86-96
Front Matter....Pages 97-97
The Theory of Voting and the Borda Systems....Pages 99-108
Assessing Borda’s Rule and Its Modifications....Pages 109-119
Human Rights and Voting Procedures in Plural Societies....Pages 120-123
Inclusive Decision-making in Mediation and Politics....Pages 124-132
Front Matter....Pages 133-133
The Realpolitik of Consensus Voting Peter Emerson with Assistance from Elizabeth Meehan....Pages 135-146
Back Matter....Pages 147-186

✦ Subjects

Political Science; Microeconomics