In their response to Timothy Meisburger’s essay, Andrew Reynolds and John M. Carey argue that the weight of the evidence—from nations actually going through democratic change, as well as from the scholarly literature that tries to understand such change—points to the conclusion that proportional systems, while not solving the all the problems by any means, are a better option than majoritarian systems in most contexts.
About the Authors
Andrew Reynolds
Andrew Reynolds is the author of The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World (2018).
Is pressing a troubled, intensely fragile “postconflict” country to hold elections a good idea? Somalia did so in late 2016 and early 2017, and the process was not pretty. But…
The massive corruption revealed by Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” points to fundamental flaws in multiparty presidential systems, where presidents must find ways to build coalitions in fragmented legislatures.
Read the full essay here. When the authors of India’s Constitution took the extraordinarily bold step of establishing universal suffrage, thus giving the right to vote to all adult citizens,…