Andrew Reynolds’s research while affiliated with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other places

Political scientists have long associated accountability with strong political parties, and have also frequently noted the weakness of parties in new democracies. This article disaggregates the strong party ideal into two components - legislative discipline and programmatic platforms and suggests that the former in the absence of the latter can undermine accountability. We describe levels of discipline in parties in various new democracies. Then we provide a taxonomy of political party origins, according to how origins affect the proclivity of parties toward both programmatic policy and legislative discipline.

There has been limited research into the impact of some aspects of voting procedure but very little research into ballot paper design and the act of voting in itself. This article gives a historical overview of the evolution of voting procedures from ancient times to the modern day, describes the results of a survey of 134 paper ballots used over the last decade for national legislative, executive and referenda elections in 107 countries, and gives the findings of a laboratory experiment testing the impact of ballot paper design. The evidence suggests three things: first, elaborate ballots (incorporating colors, symbols and photographs) are more likely to be found where literacy is lower and competitive multi party elections are a new phenomenon. But elaborate ballots are not significantly related to the level of democracy, the effective number of parties, or the type of electoral system. Second, there is little evidence to suggest that elaborate and costly ballots reduce spoilt ballot rates or are essential tools for illiterate voters. Rather, the negative correlation between ballot design and spoilt ballots, combined with the weight of historical evidence which shows that ballots are often a highly manipulative tools of political symbolism, implies that ballot papers symbols, photographs, layout, and color are of most interest as political cues (for both literate and illiterate voters). This intuition is confirmed by the results of a vote simulation experiment conducted on 401 students in which ballot design had a pronounced effect on voting behavior.

This article offers the beginnings of a methodology for assessing the quality of a national election, its freeness, fairness and administrative efficacy. The historical lack of a comprehensive framework of analysis has compelled election observers to make pronouncements on the basis of incomplete evidence, usually gathered on the day of the vote and count. It has allowed international observation missions to ‘call’ the results of elections on the basis of political expediency rather than the facts of the case. The intent in this article is not to offer a foolproof method for categorizing election quality but rather to lay out a framework which we believe is more comprehensive and meaningful than anything that has come before. To illustrate its workings the article scores six multi-party elections: two in established democracies – Australia and Denmark 2001– and four in fledgling democracies – South Africa 1994 and 2004, East Timor 2001 and Zimbabwe 2002. The framework outlined here will make it possible to identify patterns of success and failure in the fairness of elections. It should enable all kinds of observers from academics and election administrators to election observers to spotlight the weak areas of election administration, where a government might then choose to focus its efforts to improve the quality of subsequent elections.

Objective and Focus of the Course: The course provides an overview of the major theoretical approaches to the study of development and democratization debated in the literature. We will also discuss methodological issues that pertain to the study of comparative politics in general. The case material will be drawn from Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, along with writings on the historical development of today's advanced industrial societies. Given the wide variety of topics to be covered, we will only scratch the surface of most of them. The reason for choosing breadth over depth in this course is that this is a core course to prepare you for comprehensive exams in comparative politics. At the end of this course you should have a solid grasp of the major ideas and arguments advanced by those who have defined the field in the past and present. You should also have further developed your capacity for critical analysis of these ideas and arguments and for charting possible paths to improve upon them. Requirements: The seminar emphasizes intensive study of the literature. Thus, careful preparation for each seminar session in the form of an active engagement of the literature is essential. Each seminar member should come with several comments and questions about the readings to each session. Each member will choose two sessions for which to provide a summary of the key arguments in the readings along with comments and questions in writing. These written summaries will be presented by a different member of the class Ð outlining the material and commenting upon the argument. Thus two papers and two presentations are required. The topics for these short papers (3-5 pages) will be chosen in the first seminar sessions. These discussion papers are to be posted to the email distribution list by noon on the Sunday before class. These discussion papers combined with general quality of seminar participation will account for half of the final grade.

Abstract will be provided by author.