Preliminary communication
UNDERSTANDING, TYPES AND STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF ELECTORAL SYSTEMS
Gordana Iličić
orcid.org/0000-0001-8199-2379
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar
Abstract
Discussion about elections and electoral systems is in fact discussion
about the effects of representative bodies in democratic political systems.
Understanding of that link is not possible without knowing technical
details used for forming electoral systems. Despite nonexistence
of generally accepted conceptual framework and complexity of different
definition approaches and interpretation bases of both elections
and electoral systems, there is an agreement that elections are related
to representative democracy and they represent its central institution,
while electoral systems represent the ways in which voters can express
their preferences through their votes and possibilities how those voices
can be turned into representative mandates. Which elections strategy,
formed in electoral model, should be applied? How to combine structural
elements of electoral systems in order to achieve hoped-for political
effects? Those are the question which could be answered only by good
knowledge of the complex electoral problem area which is in contact
with total political landscape: institutions, processes and contents.
Keywords
elections; electoral systems; structural elements; electoral units; electoral competition; voting; recomputation of votes
Hrčak ID:
227301
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2014.
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