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Volume 11 - September 2013

Contents

Page 9 of 20

Book Reviews: American Politics

Book Reviews: Elections, Contestation, and Democracy

Critical Dialogue

  • Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy. By J. Eric Oliver with Shang E. Ha and Zachary Callen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 234p. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

  • Elaine B. Sharp
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 May 2013, pp. 601-603

  • In this creative and important book, Eric Oliver and his coauthors offer a comprehensive analysis of a largely overlooked phenomenon, electoral behavior in smaller communities, here defined as jurisdictions with populations under 100,000. In the broadest sense, the central theme of the book is that elections are different in these small jurisdictions from what theories and empirical analyses of national, state, and big-city elections have made familiar. More specifically, they argue that a triumvirate of jurisdictional characteristics—1) population size, 2) scope (i.e., the extent to which institutional arrangements provide government officials with powers on a broad array of matters), and 3) bias (i.e., the extent to which government distributes resources in something other than an evenhanded fashion)—are crucial factors shaping the behavior of voters and candidates and, hence, are the essential character of elections. In separate chapters analyzing who votes, who runs for office, what shapes incumbent advantage, and what shapes voter choice, the authors explore hypotheses developed in their overview chapter about how size, scope, and bias impact each of these aspects of local elections.

Book Reviews: Politics in The Face of Financial Crisis

Book Reviews: American Politics

Book Reviews: Elections, Contestation, and Democracy

Book Reviews: Politics in The Face of Financial Crisis

Critical Dialogue

  • Response to Elaine B. Sharp's review ofLocal Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy

  • J. Eric Oliver
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 May 2013, p. 603

  • Rather than a rebuttal, I offer a confession. Mostly this is because Elaine B. Sharp's assessment is both fair and precise. As she notes, there is a big gulf between our book's rather grandiose theory of electoral politics and its subsequent empirical tests. After making some sweeping hypotheses about the role of size, scope, and bias as the primary determinants of electoral politics across all types of democracies, our empirical analysis tested only a limited range of values and cases. While my colleagues and I hope that our theoretical framework will prove useful for future comparative electoral studies, our book does not provide a definitive test.

Book Reviews: American Politics

Book Reviews: Politics in The Face of Financial Crisis

Book Reviews: Elections, Contestation, and Democracy

Book Reviews: Politics and Nature

Book Reviews: American Politics

Book Reviews: Politics and Nature

Book Reviews: Elections, Contestation, and Democracy

Book Reviews: Politics in The Face of Financial Crisis

Book Reviews: Elections, Contestation, and Democracy

Book Reviews: Politics and Nature

Book Reviews: American Politics

Book Reviews: Politics in The Face of Financial Crisis

Page 9 of 20