Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Rule of the Fewer: Electoral Inversions and their Consequences(2024) Friedman, Jack Ryan Chambers; Calvo, Ernesto; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The advent of democracy is supposed to represent a transition from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. In this folkloric account, majority rule is both the embodiment of democracy and its source of legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, however, democratic realities are far more complex—and sometimes more disappointing—than democratic ideals. Although democracy is often equated with the principle of majority rule, government by popular minorities is more common in modern liberal democracies than is government by popular majorities. But if the ideal of majority rule often goes unfulfilled, a redeeming quality of most elections in most democracies is that they nevertheless manage to satisfy the principle of “plurality rule.” That is, even when popular minorities govern, as is so often the case, the minority that governs is usually the largest minority. But not always. Sometimes governments are elected without even the support of a popular plurality. This phenomenon is called an electoral inversion; it is the focus of my dissertation. More precisely, electoral inversions occur when the party (or coalition of parties) that wins the most votes nevertheless loses the election. While scholars have long recognized that electoral inversions can and sometimes do occur, especially with respect to the U.S. Electoral College system for presidential elections, no systematic attempt has been made either to identify how often electoral inversions occur in the world’s established liberal democracies, or to understand what their consequences are for democracy when they do occur. I address both of these unanswered questions. My first objective is to understand where, when, and thus how often electoral inversions have occurred historically. To do so, I undertake a descriptive study of electoral inversions in 28 established democracies. The results show that electoral inversions have occurred in roughly 8% of elections between 1900 and 2022. To better understand the consequences of electoral inversions, my second objective, I examine how inversions affect democratic support in two countries that have experienced electoral inversions in recent years: Canada (2019 and 2021) and the United States (2000 and 2016). Building on the “winner-loser gap” literature, I show that electoral inversions magnify winner-loser effects on democratic support. While I find consistent evidence in the U.S. and Canada that inversions widen winner-loser gaps by weakening losers’ support for democracy, I also find, paradoxically, that the 2016 U.S. inversion increased winners’ support. I argue that the negative effect of electoral inversions on losers’ support is the consequence of a basic and widely shared normative expectation—which electoral inversions violate—that democratic elections ought to respond the preferences of the greater number. The positive effect of inversions on winners’ support in the U.S. is more difficult to explain. I consider whether this result indicates a propensity of these voters to conflate democracy with its short-term benefits, or whether it reflects underlying conditions of political polarization. Either way, since democracy depends on the support of its citizens—and in particular, on their willingness to accept the results of democratic processes—these findings have implications for continued democratic stability in countries that experience electoral inversions.Item A Better Place to Be: Republicanism as an Alternative to the Authoritarianism-Democracy Dichotomy(2016) Binetti, Christopher; Alford, Charles F; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: A BETTER PLACE TO BE: REPUBLICANISM AS AN ALTENATIVE TO THE AUTHORITARIANISM-DEMOCRACY DICHOTOMY Christopher Ronald Binetti, Doctor of Philosophy, and 2016 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Charled Frederick Alford, Department of Government and Politics In this dissertation, I argue that in modern or ancient regimes, the simple dichotomy between democracies and autocracies/dictatorships is both factually wrong and problematic for policy purposes. It is factually wrong because regimes between the two opposite regime types exist and it is problematic because the either/or dichotomy leads to extreme thinking in terms of nation-building in places like Afghanistan. In planning for Afghanistan, the argument is that either we can quickly nation-build it into a liberal democracy or else we must leave it in the hands of a despotic dictator. This is a false choice created by both a faulty categorization of regime types and most importantly, a failure to understand history. History shows us that the republic is a regime type that defies the authoritarian-democracy dichotomy. A republic by my definition is a non-dominating regime, characterized by a (relative) lack of domination by any one interest group or actor, mostly non-violent competition for power among various interest groups/factions, the ability of factions/interest groups/individual actors to continue to legitimately play the political game even after electoral or issue-area defeat and some measure of effectiveness. Thus, a republic is a system of government that has institutions, laws, norms, attitudes, and beliefs that minimize the violation of the rule of law and monopolization of power by one individual or group as much as possible. These norms, laws, attitudes, and beliefs ae essential to the republican system in that they make those institutions that check and balance power work. My four cases are Assyria, Persia, Venice and Florence. Assyria and Persia are ancient regimes, the first was a republic and then became the frightening opposite of a republic, while the latter was a good republic for a long time, but had effectiveness issues towards the end. Venice is a classical example of a medieval or early modern republic, which was very inspirational to Madison and others in building republican America. Florence is the example of a medieval republic that fell to despotism, as immortalized by Machiavelli’s writings. In all of these examples, I test certain alternative hypotheses as well as my own.Item China's IT Leadership(2005-08-03) Duan, Qing; Wilson, Ernest J.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)With the rapid expansion of China's information and communications technology (ICT) sector, there has emerged a strategic group of IT leaders. These IT leaders are characterized by their "amphibiousness". On the one hand, they have become bridges that introduce Western concepts of competition and decentralization to China. On the other, they do not want to challenge the state because they feel comfortable with their personal ties to promote their business interests. They belong to the "non-critical realm" of social elites and have not coalesced into a coherent and organized social force. Even though they may not represent an independently innovative force that would push for political change in China, they have become catalysts and have created part of the necessary conditions for political changes, for example enhancing institutional performance of the state and creating a forum for public debate and political participation of the grassroots. Therefore, they have a subtle political impact on state responsiveness and civic participation. By carefully contrasting the autonomous, parasitic, symbiotic, negotiating, and amphibious actor models, this study of IT leadership in China emphasizes the creative aspect of politics--their visions, craftsmanship, and courage for ICT diffusion in China. In contrast with the top-down or bottom-up paths of Communist transitions in East Central Europe, the Chinese path seems to be grounded in the middle. The conclusion of this dissertation is that in a time of uncertainty, a strategic group of IT leaders starts to inspire and lead this nation in new directions like a spark when China is in desperate need of a systematic and convincing rationale and vision for its progress in an era of great transformation.