Why Electoral Integrity Matters

Pippa Norris
Despite growing concern about elections around the world which are flawed or even failed, there has been little systematic understanding of the importance of this phenomenon. This book theorizes that electoral integrity matters for multiple reasons, including for political legitimacy, by strengthening public confidence in electoral institutions, a sense of external political efficacy, and satisfaction with the performance of democracy; for civic activism, by increasing levels of voting turnout and civic activism, while dampening the propensity to engage in protest politics; for political representation, including by improving the electoral accountability and thus the responsiveness of elected officials for the delivery of private and collective goods; for security, by accommodating all groups through electoral channels and thereby reducing the underlying grievances which lead towards electoral violence, popular unrest, and civil wars; and ultimately for processes of democratization, including encouraging the macro-level consolidation of democratic procedures, norms, and institutions. By developing a new conceptual framework, measured by new sources of cross-national evidence, this volume demonstrate the importance of all these relationships. This first volumes establishes the foundations for a trilogy of books published by Cambridge University Press.
External link: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/why-electoral-integrity-matters
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