This Handbook was developed for electoral administrators and those involved in reforming EMBs. It provides comparative experience of and best practices on EMB structures and funding models, as well as means for evaluating performance. A range of case studies illustrate examples from specific contexts in Afghanistan, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Haiti, India, Kenya, the Republic of Korea, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, Republic of Seychelles, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States. This new and revised edition of the 2006 International IDEA Handbook includes updated country-level data and case studies and significantly expanded sections on the role of gender, professional development and technology in elections.

Democracy’s Achilles Heel argues that the structure of democracy is a combination of two incompatible worldviews: one relativist and liberal, the other absolutist and conservative. This combination of opposites is essential for its survival, yet places democracy at risk since each worldview is prone to trying to engulf the other, creating threats from both the right and the left. This is democracy’s Achilles heel: it never goes away and can only be avoided. The nature of open societies means that absolutisms, for example of a religious kind, can exist quite comfortably within democracy, yet for democracy to succeed, they must permit other belief systems and worldviews, absolute or otherwise, to exist alongside them. Likewise, relativism can undermine the liberal nature of democracy itself in seeking to reduce the existence of absolutisms to nothing, thus threatening freedom and destabilizing democracy. Reacting to the recent clashes in Western democracies between left and right, and drawing on the theories of such now-classic thinkers as Fromm, Berlin, and Hoffer, as well as more recent sources such as Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die, the author moves beyond the usual defenses of democracy, accepting the fact that democracy, because of its combination of opposites, is always unstable and always at risk, while urging those who live within democratic polities to strengthen its chances of survival by remembering its fundamental value and purpose. An impassioned defense of the democratic way of life even given (and indeed because of) its eternally threatened nature, Democracy’s Achilles Heel will appeal to scholars, students, and readers with interests in political sociology, philosophy, and political theory.

This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi-party competition with little blood shed. Nonetheless, this survey reveals that for those who imagine democracy to be the panacea for every social, economic and political ill, Taiwan's continuing struggles against corruption, isolation and division offer a cautionary lesson. This book is an ideal, one-stop resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political science, particuarly those interested in the international politics of China, and the Asia-Pacific.

Featuring the first in-depth comparison of the judicial politics of five under-studied Central American countries, The Achilles Heel of Democracy offers a novel typology of 'judicial regime types' based on the political independence and societal autonomy of the judiciary. This book highlights the under-theorized influences on the justice system - criminals, activists, and other societal actors - and the ways that they intersect with more overtly political influences. Grounded in interviews with judges, lawyers, and activists, it presents the 'high politics' of constitutional conflicts in the context of national political conflicts as well as the 'low politics' of crime control and the operations of trial-level courts. The book begins in the violent and often authoritarian 1980s in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and spans through the tumultuous 2015 'Guatemalan Spring'; the evolution of Costa Rica's robust liberal judicial regime is traced from the 1950s.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.