This book offers a comparative study of minority-majority relations in post-conflict societies. Drawing on three contentious cases – Bulgaria, Croatia, and Montenegro –it explores how pluralist governance structures are established in the area of minority rights in new EU member and candidate states and how reform resilience is ensured. The author shows the importance of cooperation and moderation between political elites in democratising countries, developing a comparative analysis of three understudied cases in the Balkans region and offering a conceptual framework based on extensive field research data and archive materials. Of great interest to both scholars and practitioners alike, this book identifies transferable policy lessons of interest to a global audience and specifies under which conditions substantial reforms should be carried out. It will appeal to a broad audience of students interested in international politics, European studies, state-mandated displacement, and ethnic studies.

Defining Democracy reveals the history of a little-known experiment in urban democracy begun in New York City during the Great Depression and abolished amid the early Cold War. For a decade, New Yorkers utilized a new voting system that produced the most diverse legislatures in the city's history and challenged the American two-party structure. Daniel O. Prosterman examines struggles over electoral reform in New York City to clarify our understanding of democracy's evolution in the United States and the world.

Elections lie at the heart of democracy, and this book seeks to understand how the rules governing those elections are chosen. Drawing on both broad comparisons and detailed case studies, it focuses upon the electoral rules that govern what sorts of preferences voters can express and how votes translate into seats in a legislature. Through detailed examination of electoral reform politics in four countries (France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand), Alan Renwick shows how major electoral system changes in established democracies occur through two contrasting types of reform process. Renwick rejects the simple view that electoral systems always straightforwardly reflect the interests of the politicians in power. Politicians' motivations are complex; politicians are sometimes unable to pursue reforms they want; occasionally, they are forced to accept reforms they oppose. The Politics of Electoral Reform shows how voters and reform activists can have real power over electoral reform.

This book studies how American political reform efforts often fail because of the unrealistic ideal of a fully informed and engaged citizenry.

When and why do democratic political actors change the electoral rules, particularly regarding who is included in a country’s political representation? The incidences of these major electoral reforms have been on the rise since 1980. Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies argues that elite inexperience may constrain self-interest and lead elites to undertake incremental approaches to reform, aiding the process of democratic consolidation. Using a multimethods approach, the book examines three consecutive periods of reform in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country and third largest democracy, between 1999 and 2014. Each case study provides an in-depth process tracing of the negotiations leading to new reforms, including key actors in the legislature, domestic civil society, international experts, and government bureaucrats. A series of counterfactual analyses assess the impact the reforms had on actual election outcomes, versus the possible alternative outcomes of different reform options discussed during negotiations. With a comparative analysis of nine cases of iterated reform processes in other new democracies, the book confirms the lessons from the Indonesian case and highlights key lessons for scholars and electoral engineers.

Examining the experiences of Western Europe and South America, Professor Collier delineates a complex and varied set of patterns of democratization.

After more than a decade of reform efforts in Africa, much of the optimism over the continent's prospects has been replaced by widespread Afropessimism. But to what extent is either view well founded? Democratic Reform in Africa plumbs the key issues in the contemporary African experience - including intrastate conflict, corruption, and the development of civil society - highlighting the challenges and evaluating the progress of political and economic change. Case studies of Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa complement the thematic chapters, exploring the interactions between democracy and development.