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Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures, Tables and Boxes -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- 1 Why Elections? -- Political parties -- Functions of elections -- The turnout paradox -- Limitations of elections -- Recurring themes -- Voters, electorates, parties and party systems -- The axis of political competition and the median voter -- Representation -- Electoral change -- Topics -- Countries -- Institutional arrangements -- Voters and the puzzle of the ignorant electorate -- Plan of the book -- 2 Studying Elections, Parties and Voters -- The political context: party systems -- The institutional context -- Problems of parliamentary government -- Problems of presidential systems -- Government formation -- How elections condition coalition bargaining -- Institutional influences on the structure of political life -- Habits and routines -- Socialization, immunization and party identification -- Preferences and choice -- Institutional change -- 3 Electoral Institutions -- Free and fair elections -- Votes and outcomes -- Electoral rules -- Trade-offs in designing an electoral system -- Electoral reform -- Rules of the game for government formation -- The role of the voters -- The majoritarian and proportional visions -- Dispersed versus concentrated power -- Presidents and monarchs in parliamentary systems -- 4 Voters and Parties -- Party identification -- Age, immunization and generational differences -- Group loyalties -- The decline of cleavage politics -- The rise of issue voting -- Long-term changes in electoral competition -- Strategic considerations -- The role of the Prime Minister in parliamentary regimes -- Tactical voting -- Candidate evaluations -- Implications -- 5 Outcomes of Elections -- Consequences of electoral shifts -- Incumbency and term limits -- Accountability -- Fairness in election outcomes.

Enthält Rezensionen von:‡‡Herpen, Marcel H. van: Putin's wars : the rise of Russia's new imperialism. - Lanham : Rowman and Littlefield, 2014‡‡Mendras, Marie: Russian politics : the paradox of a weak state. - London : Hurst and Company, 2012‡‡Zimmerman, William: Ruling Russia : authoritarianism from the revolution to Putin. - Princeton ...: Princeton University Press., 2014‡‡Dawisha, Karen: Putin's kleptocracy : who owns Russia?. - New York : Simon and Schuster, 2014

The oldest Russian document has been called an "immunity charter." It dates from the first half of the twelfth century. Many other immunity charters have survived and are among our most prized sources on medieval Russia. Although few date back to the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, about five hundred remain from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and a recent survey lists 1,039 for the years 1504-84. Such documents have been found from each of the sixty-three districts (uezdy) which comprised the Russian state before Ivan IV's conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, and newly discovered charters, or references to previously unknown charters, are still turning up. The terms of individual charters are usually clear, but scholars have advanced conflicting views on what these documents, taken together, really tell us about Old Russian immunities. Is one justified in claiming that such immunities even existed? If they did, two vexing questions remain.

The benefits of winning elections, and the disadvantages of losing them, must be reduced to avoid the violence that a winner-takes-all situation can trigger. Election observers should pay more attention to subtle forms of violence, intra-party tensions and incumbents playing the security card to justify increased use of force. This policy note considers how to curb the increase of violence in African elections. ; This policy note is based on the book Violence in African Elections , edited by Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs and Jesper Bjarnesen (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:nai:diva-2185). It is a collection of eleven case studies from different Sub-Saharan countries, offering a comprehensive examination of the causes of Africa's violent electoral clashes, and the consequences for African democratization and peace-keeping.