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November 15, 2021

Electoral systems and the futility of ‘tactical’ voting

Costas Panayotakis Costas Panayotakis recently exposed the fiction in the ‘Every Vote Counts’ thesis. Here, he explores the implications of that fiction for different electoral systems, notably those based on Proportional Representation and First Past the Post. In so doing, he reveals the futility of tactical voting Read more
November 12, 2021

To understand your government’s welfare policies, look at its ministers' backgrounds

Despina Alexiadou Using a test case of social welfare policy, Despina Alexiadou argues that if we want to understand the policy choices of different governments, we should start by analysing the social class composition of its ministers Read more
November 12, 2021

How might Irish unification be decided?

Alan Renwick Alan Renwick and Conor J. Kelly explore the vexed issue from the perspective of how best to plan for a referendum Read more
November 11, 2021

🦋 Lost in translation? Democracy and its non-English variants

Ryusaku Yamada Based on English language terms, Jean-Paul Gagnon’s democracy data mountain faces considerable problems in translating non-English words which have no exact equivalents. Ryusaku Yamada uses the example of ‘mass’ (as in ‘mass democracy’), and a Japanese word, ‘taishū’, to reveal the potential comprehension gap in any translation exercise Read more
November 10, 2021

The state of Polish-EU relations reflects geopolitical and ideological clashes

Filip Ilkowski Relations between Poland and the EU have reached a nadir with the recent clash between the Polish Constitutional Court and the European Union Court of Justice. This conflict, argues Filip Ilkowski, reflects much deeper divisions connected to EU geopolitics and ideological clashes in Polish society Read more
November 9, 2021

An increasingly Eurosceptic French electorate threatens the EU

Giovanni Capoccia Giovanni Capoccia argues that the 2022 French Presidential elections could constitute a greater threat to the EU than any current challenge. Although unlikely at present, a Eurosceptic French President would precipitate the greatest crisis in the EU’s history – and there is still much to play for Read more
November 5, 2021

🦋 Democracy is an essentially contested concept

Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann To strengthen democracy, we need new, innovative thinking, write Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann, Toralf Stark and Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach. They propose to identify the core norms underlying a universally valid concept of democracy, opening up dialogue between empirical and theoretical approaches, and linking inductive and deductive methods Read more
November 4, 2021

Improvement in Iranian-European relations is possible – and the EU should play its part

Mahmoud Javadi Relations between Iran and Europe are in a pretty poor state. But Mahmoud Javadi argues that there are avenues for improvement through identification of 'shared interests' – and the EU can, and should, play its part Read more

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